Cupid Painted Blind

by Marcus Herzig

  “All right, guys, this is it,” Chris says. “This is what we’ve been working for, so let’s make it count. The Lincoln guys are strong, but their anchor’s got nothing on me, so as long as we’re at least even with them by the time Matt passes the baton to me, this will be ours.”

  Pumped up, we all say, “Yeah!” because there isn’t really anything else to say. We all want this. As we break up to get on our positions Jack slaps my butt, but he’s doing the same with Jason and Chris so I’m not taking it personal.

  The second leg runners need a minute to reach their starting positions at the opposite end of the track, so I jog over to the bleachers for a quick chat with Zoey.

  “Anything yet?” I ask.

  She looks at my phone in her hand and shakes her head. “Not yet.”

  “Maybe the plane got delayed?”

  Still shaking her head, she says, “Airport website says they landed twenty-five minutes ago. They’re probably still waiting to pick up their luggage or something.”

  “Right,” I say, but I’m not convinced. I imagine waiting by the luggage belt in the arrivals hall of an airport to be a pretty boring affair and a perfect opportunity to send a text message. Phyllis texted me last night, promising me to check in with me as soon as they land. It was only the second text she sent since she and Phil arrived in Maine on Sunday night, and it was all she said, so I have no idea how the week went for Phil, and I’m dying to find out.

  “You want me to text her?” Zoey asks.

  “No!” I say. “It’ll make me look desperate. Just keep your eye on it and let me know when you hear something.”

  “All right then.”

  I look back at the track. Almost everyone is in position now.

  “I have to go,” I say. “My school needs me.”

  She gives me a tight hug. “Run, Forrest, run. You guys got this in the bag.”

  “Thanks, Zoey.”

  The moment I turn to leave, my phone chimes. I look back at Zoey as she reads the incoming message. “Is it them?”

  She looks at me, and her face augurs nothing good. Whatever it is, I can tell she doesn’t want to say. She wants me to go and concentrate on the race.

  Behind me, a referee is calling out my name.

  “Zoey, what is it?”

  “Nothing, just go, Matthew! They’re calling for you.”

  The referee is calling my name again, and from fifty meters away I can hear Coach Gutierrez shout, “Get your ass on your position, Dunstan, or I’ll get it there for you!”

  I make a step forward and grab my phone from Zoey’s hand. On the screen is a text message from Phyllis.

  Phyllis:

  There’s been an emergency. We’re at Orange County Global Medical.

  That’s all. No further explanation. I feel my heart beating in my throat, my knees trembling.

  “This is your final call, Mr. Dunstan. If you don’t get on your starting block now, your team will be disqualified!”

  “Matthew, you have to go!”

  I drop the phone back in Zoey’s hand and say, “I’ll meet you at the car. Go!”

  As Zoey turns on her heel, I make my way onto the track. The referee is scowling at me, but I don’t even care. All I can think about is one word: emergency. Way to be vague, Phyllis!

  Did the plane have to make an emergency landing, and they had to be pulled out of a flaming inferno?

  Did Phil’s stomach not tolerate the airline food and he fell ill?

  Were they in a car accident on their way home from the airport?

  A million nagging questions torment my mind, but one question dwarfs them all, and that question is: what the hell am I still doing here? The sports ground of Lincoln High is the last place on earth I want to be right now.

  “On your marks!”

  I don’t have to be told twice. I’m on my mark at the end of the back straight, looking across the field at Jason cowering in his starting block. A hundred meters behind me, at the beginning of the back straight, Jack is also looking at Jason, shaking his arms and legs. Over at the start of the home stretch Chris is not looking at Jason. He’s looking at me. Even from across the field I can see he’s worried, and it’s that look on his face that finally makes me snap out of it. Chris is our anchor runner, we can’t have him worried. He needs to concentrate. I need to concentrate, just for the next sixty seconds, so I nod at Chris and give him a thumbs up. Relieved and reassured, he nods back and raises his thumb at me.

  “Get set!”

  I’m all set, so let’s get on with it already!

  I’m so concentrated that at the sound of the starting pistol, my body twitches and I almost dash off. Three meters behind me in the second lane, the Lincoln runner cackles at my amateurish near faux pas. He looks reasonably handsome with his boyish face, his dark brown, wavy hair, and his long, skinny legs, but his sophomoric sense of humor destroys it all. You can look handsome all you want, pal, but if your personality sucks, you suck.

  But whatever. Pride goes before a fall.

  I rub my sweaty hands on my thighs and look across the field where Jason is catching up to the Lincoln runner stride by stride. The beauty of running on the inside lane is that even if the second-lane runner is slightly faster than you, it still looks like you’re catching up. It’s a priceless psychological advantage, and sometimes it’s psychology that makes all the difference.

  At the end of his stretch, Jason has made up nearly half the distance to the Lincoln runner, and he passes the baton to Jack perfectly, as if the two have never done anything else in their entire life. The Lincoln guys almost mess up their exchange, so Jack quickly makes up another two meters, and with powerful strides he manages to keep the distance to Lincoln small. By the time the runners approach the end of the back straight, the audience are on their feet, their cheering and shouting reaching deafening levels.

  “Come on!” I shout at Jack and start running, maybe a moment too early, but we’re doing great. Jack is doing great, and I trust he can catch up with me before I reach the end of the exchange zone. I get my legs pumping at full speed, and without looking back, I stretch out my arm in anticipation of the baton. As I approach the end of the exchange zone, I glance back. Jack is close, but not close enough to pass the baton, and I can’t afford to slow down and lose valuable fractions of a second. He makes three more strides, then he thrusts his arm forward, sending the baton flying through the air. It’s only two or three inches, and I’m thinking it’s probably against the rules to have the baton airborne for the tiniest moment, but then I remember the coach’s advice.

  It’s not my job to observe or interpret the rules.

  My job is to run, so the moment the baton touches my hand, the moment I pass the check mark, I clasp my fingers around it and I run. I run like I’ve never run before, my legs cutting through the noise-filled air, catching up with Lincoln inch by inch.

  At the end of the curve, I’m neck and neck with the Lincoln runner, leading the other teams by several meters. As I enter the home stretch, I catch Chris’s glance. He nods at me, claps his hands three times, and then he’s off. My legs are burning now, but I just keep going. I have to keep going. When I’ve almost caught up with Chris I shout, “Stick!”

  Without looking back he stretches out his left arm, and with a downward swipe I place the baton securely in his hand. From the corner of my eye I see the Lincoln guys pass their baton almost simultaneously, but Chris is already half a meter ahead, still increasing his speed.

  And I?

  I just keep on running.

  My legs keep pounding the track, not slowing down. For me the race and, in fact, the Schoolympics are over, and I need to get out of here. I need to get to the parking lot where Zoey is hopefully waiting for me in the car, the engine running, ready to take me to the hospital. The shortest way out is the tunnel at the end of the home stretch, so I keep going at top speed, hardly losing any ground on Chris two meters in front of me and keeping up with the Lincoln anchor
to my right. When the crowds in the bleachers realize I’m not slowing down, the already deafening noise rises to a thundering roar lashing me on like a whip, making me forget the fire in my thighs and the stinging pain in my lungs. Stride by stride the noise gets louder, the pain harder to bear as I take deep breaths through my nose and exhale hot air through gritted teeth, spewing droplets of saliva. And then, suddenly, Chris slows down and the Lincoln runner next to me falls behind, but I keep on running.

  “What the hell?” I hear Chris say as he turns around and I run past him and almost make him stumble backward over his feet.

  As I enter the tunnel, the noise behind me slowly subsides. At the end of a long hallway I push the door open, and in the parking lot I see Zoey leaning against the car, her head bent over my phone.

  “Get in the damn car!” I shout at her.

  Startled, she stares at me for a second, her eyes wide open. Then she opens the door and jumps into the driver’s seat just as I open the passenger door.

  “Any news?” I say, panting heavily.

  She shakes her head and turns over the engine. “No.”

  “Give me that!” I say and grab my phone from her lap as she pulls out of the parking space. “Do you know the way?”

  “O.C. Global Medical?”

  “Yes!”

  “Yeah, I know,” she says, making her way to the exit of the parking lot.

  “All right, then go!”

  “I am going, Matthew!”

  “Go faster!”

  “All righty!” She steps on the accelerator and pulls into the moving traffic with screeching tires, causing cars behind us to brake and honk their horns at us.

  “So how’d the race go?”

  “Fast,” I say. “I think we won.”

  “Hey, congratulations!”

  “Thank you. Turn right onto Harbor Boulevard.”

  “I know the way, Matthew!”

  “I’m just saying,” I say, frantically tapping the screen of my phone. “Nothing on Twitter.”

  Taking a right turn, Zoey says, “Twitter? What on earth do expect to find on Twitter? The airport’s website said—”

  “Look, if a plane were to make an emergency landing, the website would still list it as landed, not as emergency landed or something. But passengers on that plane would most likely take to Twitter and, you know, tweet about it and post pictures of their burning plane or whatever.”

  Zoey sighs. “You need to get your imagination under control, Matthew.”

  “Well, I don’t have very much to go on, do I? I mean, that text was so vague. Emergency. It could be anything.”

  “You could simply text her back and ask,” Zoey says.

  I look at her. “I could. But what if she didn’t get more specific because it’s the kind of news you don’t want to find out via text message?”

  Zoey doesn’t reply. I’m grateful she doesn’t make me spell out what kind of news that might be.

  My phone chimes. My heart skips a beat, but it’s just a text from Alfonso.

  Alfonso:

  Dude, what happened?

  Me:

  Phil’s in hospital. Some kind of emergency is all I know. Talk later.

  Alfonso:

  Shit! D: Good luck!

  Some twenty-five minutes after I’ve crossed the finish line at the Schoolympics we pull into the parking lot of Orange County Global Medical Center, and not a moment too soon, because apparently Zoey learned how to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto. She parks the car, and we run inside.

  “Can I help you?” a young nurse asks as I approach the information counter.

  “We’re here to see Philip Thongrivong,” I say. “Some kind of emergency, I don’t know.”

  The nurse arches her eyebrows. “Philip who?”

  I spell the name for her, and she checks the computer.

  “He’s in the ER,” she says pointing over her shoulder. “Down this hallway, turn right at the end.”

  “Thank you.”

  As we make our way down the hallway, I look at Zoey. “He’s in the emergency room! This can’t be good.”

  “Relax,” she says. “If it’s an emergency, where else would you want him to be?”

  “I don’t know! Do I look like a doctor?”

  “I’m sure he’s going to be fine, Matthew.”

  I appreciate her attempts to calm me down, but I find her continuing use of my full name alarming rather than soothing.

  We find Phyllis waiting outside the ER, together with Phil’s family. I don’t take it as a good sign to see them all here, but then again, they don’t seem all that upset. Worried, yes, but not upset. At least not as upset as I feel.

  “Matt!” Phyllis says as she sees us coming.

  “What happened? Where’s Phil?”

  “He’s getting an MRI scan at the moment.”

  “What happened?” I ask again.

  “About an hour before we landed, Phil started not feeling well. He said he had a headache and blurred vision. So I gave him an aspirin and some water, but then his speech got slurred, and all of a sudden he had a seizure.”

  “Oh my God,” Zoey says.

  “Luckily, there was a doctor sitting in the row behind us. He checked on Philip and said it was probably a thrombosis.”

  Shaking my head, I say, “I don’t know what that means.”

  “A blood clot,” she says.

  The term blood clot sends a shiver down my spine as I remember Phil telling me how he’s always at risk of developing a blood clot due to his many surgeries, and that a blood clot can actually kill you.

  “When we got here,” Phyllis continues, “the doctors examined him, and they think it might be somewhere in his head, so they’re scanning him now to see if they can find anything.”

  “Is he gonna be okay?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Sorry.” She looks at Zoey. “Are you Matt’s friend?”

  “I’m his sister. Zoey.”

  “Very nice to meet you, Zoey. I’m Phyllis. I’m Philip’s godmother.”

  As Zoey introduces herself to Phil’s family, I take a seat on one of the chairs lining the walls in the waiting area. Resting my elbows on my knees and putting my hands on my head, I close my eyes, trying not to burst into tears.

  Why? I’m asking myself. Why Phil? After all the shit he’s already been through in his life, what has he done to deserve this? What have I done?

  Phyllis sits down next to me and puts her hand on my back. “He’s going to be fine, I’m sure. He may not look like it, but he’s strong. He’ll pull through this. Somehow.”

  I slowly shake my head. I want to believe her, but what does she know? She’s not a doctor. She’s doing what every adult would do in this situation: comfort a scared kid by assuring them of something nobody can be sure of.

  “I’m so scared,” I whisper.

  Her hand rubs my back. “I know.”

  My phone chimes. It’s a text from Chris. Attached is a picture of Jason, Jack, and himself, all of them wearing a Schoolympics gold medal around their necks and grinning into the camera. Chris is holding a second medal in his hand.

  Chris:

  No idea where you’re at, but I picked this up for you. You okay?

  Me:

  Thanks! Can’t talk right now. Check with Alfonso.

  I pick my phone back in my pocket and rub my eyes when Zoey alerts me with some urgency in her voice.

  “Matt!”

  When I look up I see a handsome young doctor of Asian descent approach Phil’s parents, and it’s funny how I find his ethnicity comforting because he probably won’t be racist toward Asian patients. In the blink of an eye, Phyllis and I are on our feet to join Zoey and Phil’s family.

  “How is he?” Phyllis asks.

  The doctor looks at her. “I’m sorry, you are?”

  “I’m Philip’s godmother. This is his family.”

  “Right, okay,” the doctor says. “So, we ran an MRI scan on Philip’s head, and it
confirmed our suspicion that he suffers from a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. In layman’s terms that’s a blood clot in the veins that drain blood from his brain. When the blood can’t drain properly, it will increase the pressure on his brain, giving him a headache, blurred vision, and seizures, all of which is consistent with his symptoms. If not treated, the clot could break off and migrate to the lungs, causing a pulmonary embolism and, in the worst case, death. But fortunately he made it to the hospital just in time.”

  “Is he gonna be okay?” Phyllis asks.

  The doctor looks at her. “He’s stable now. We’re administering heparin. It’s a blood thinner that will dissolve the clot, and within a few days he should make a full recovery.”

  “Oh thank God,” Zoey says, grabbing and squeezing my hand.

  “However …,” the doctor continues, and I feel my heart sinking because however is never a good thing. “… given Philip’s medical history—I understand he’s had several facial surgeries and he’s bound to have more—he’s always at an increased risk to develop blood clots, so once we’re done with the initial treatment, we want to put him on warfarin—a different type of blood thinner—to reduce that risk. It’s just a pill a day, nothing too dramatic, but he’ll have to take it at least for several months, maybe indefinitely.”

  “Doctor,” I say, “is that why he got a blood clot now? His recent surgery?”

  “How recent was it?”

  I look at Phil’s parents. They think about it for a moment, then his mom says, “Three month? Yes, August. Three month.”

  The doctor tilts his head. “Not impossible, but unlikely. The risk his high in the first few weeks after surgery. Three months seems a bit long.”

  “What about air travel?” Phyllis asks. “People can develop thrombosis on long-haul flights, no?”

  “Not this kind of thrombosis. The problem with long-haul flights is that people sit cramped in their seats for too long and they don’t move their legs, so that’s where a blood clot would form. In the legs. A more likely cause would be trauma to the head. Did he take a fall recently? Or hit his head?”