If.
3.1.23: Dallas
“Hi, Mom!” Carla Kwan says brightly, waving into the camera that peers out from over the reporter’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she laughs, “I always wanted to do that, but I’ve never been on TV before!” She waves and laughs again. “Hi, Dad!”
“Well,” says Jeff Grimsley, “I can understand why you’re excited. This must be the most important triathlon that you’ve ever won.”
“It’s the only triathlon I’ve ever won,” Carla points out. “Since I turned pro, anyway. Can we walk while we talk? I don’t want my legs to tighten up.”
“Sure, no problem,” Jeff says uncertainly. Motioning to his cameraman to follow, he trots after Carla, who has begun to walk off at a brisk pace without waiting for his answer.
“Congratulations, Carla!” a young woman says effusively, throwing herself around Carla’s neck and giving her an affectionate squeeze. “You were great! Outstanding!”
“Superb, truly superb,” a tanned young man says, grabbing her hand and pumping it furiously. “Spectacular,” he adds, “truly spectacular.”
“Marty, I don’t think we’re going to get through to Carla Kwan for a while,” Jeff says, giving up the chase. “As you can see, she’s being mobbed by fans and well-wishers, and she’s earned every bit of the attention she’s receiving. We’ll get back to her in a few minutes when things calm down. But now, let’s take a minute to size up the situation with the rest of the women who are still out on the course.
“Obviously, Carla Kwan has already come in first, so that spot is settled. But remember, two more women will qualify for the Olympics here today, and the battle for second and third places is far from settled. For more on that, let’s go to Michelle Stackhouse in the ESPN truck. Michelle?”
“Thanks, Jeff. We’re looking at Sunshine O’Malley, who led throughout the entire race, from the very beginning, until Carla Kwan passed her just a few miles ago. But as you can see, she’s nearly stopped running. She really hasn’t done much more than a fast walk since Carla passed her, although she breaks into a trot every once in a while. She looks very tired, Jeff, and I think that she’s still favoring her knee a little, but it’s hard to tell for sure. She may have just gone out too fast, and maybe it just caught up with her.
“You know, Jeff, she had established such a big lead over everyone but Carla that I told Leida Andersen that she could just walk to the finish line and still come in second. But I may have spoken too soon, Jeff, because it looks like Sunshine’s competition is closing in on her right now. In fact, if we can just pan back on the camera – got her? – good. Jeff, I think we’ve got a shot of Jill Kendal. Despite two serious accidents earlier in the race, she’s actually closing in on Sunshine O’Malley even as we speak, as I think you folks at home can see.
“But Jeff…” – Michelle pauses and frowns – “… I don’t know what it looks like on the screen, but I’m looking at Jill through my binoculars, and she doesn’t look so good to me. She’s limping noticeably. Her right knee is obviously bothering her – she’s got it all taped up, and she seems to be in a lot of pain. She flew by the Kelso twins a couple of miles back, but that effort might have put too much of a strain on her knee, because she’s slowed way down in the last mile. She’ll probably pass Sunshine pretty soon if Sunshine doesn’t pick up the pace, because Sunshine’s barely moving at all. But Sunshine may not be Jill Kendal’s real problem, Jeff.
“The big problem for both Jill Kendal and Sunshine O’Malley may turn out to be the Kelso twins, the college girls from Houston. They’ve run a very strong race, and they look really good right now, and they’re rapidly closing in on both Jill Kendal and Sunshine O’Malley. If we can take a look from the drone… Do we have it? Okay, thanks, Marty.
“Okay, there they are, running side-by-side like they have throughout the entire race. They’re only about half a mile behind Jill Kendal, and they’re closing fast. It’s starting to look like they may pass Jill just about when Jill catches up to Sunshine O’Malley, which looks like it could be maybe a mile before the finish line. If it weren’t for her knee, I know that Jill could hold them off, Jeff, and she’s giving it her best shot, but I don’t know how long she can keep it up…”
3.1.24: Dallas
My God, that’s Sunshine, she realizes with a start.
Jillian’s been concentrating so much on the pain in her knee and on trying to maintain a steady pace that she hasn’t even noticed that she’s about to close in on yet another runner.
Not that Sunshine is actually running: She’s walking, at a fairly brisk pace, but walking just the same. She just ran out of steam, Jillian thinks, shaking her head in disgust. She went out too fast – again – and she just wore herself out.
How can anyone just up and quit so close to the finish line?
But as Jillian approaches, Sunshine – perhaps alerted by the shouts of the spectators – glances over her shoulder, and then brakes into a trot. My God, Jillian thinks, she’s actually going to try to make a race of it. She’s got more spunk than I gave her credit for.
But as Jillian pulls along side of her, Sunshine settles into a matching pace. She’s not really interested in the race after all, Jillian realizes. She’s just trotting to keep me company.
“What’s the matter with your knee?” Sunshine asks, her voice full of concern. “It’s all taped up.”
“I always tape it up when I run.”
“But you’re limping, Jill. And you look so… Jill, I don’t mean this the way it probably sounds, but you don’t look so good.”
Is she trying to psyche me out? Jillian wonders. No, not Sunshine. Couldn’t be.
“I had a couple of bike accidents,” Jillian admits. “Scraped it up pretty bad.”
“Does it hurt?”
Does it hurt? No, asshole, I’m running like a crippled old lady because it feels good. “It’s okay,” Jillian says, simply. “I’ll live.”
“My knee hurts too,” Sunshine says. “That’s why I slowed down.”
It couldn’t hurt too bad, Jillian thinks. You’re not even favoring it. Sounds to me like you’re looking for an excuse to slow down. But, hey, if you want to concede second place to me… “That was probably a good idea,” Jillian says.
The ESPN truck is rolling along maybe fifty feet in front of them. Jillian can see Michelle Stackhouse talking into her headset. The cameraman by her side lazily scans the runners and the crowd. Sitting next to him, feet swinging over the tailgate, Leida Andersen appraises the action blankly.
“Maybe you ought to slow down, too,” Sunshine suggests. “You could really damage your knee running with an injury like that.”
“With the ponytail twins breathing down my neck?” Jillian is incredulous. “We’re only a couple of miles from the finish line, I’m sure as hell not going to quit now. I don’t care if I have to crawl across the goddamn finish line.”
“But Jill,” Sunshine pleads, “it’s just a race. I mean, what if you mess up your knee so bad that you’re never able to run again? You don’t want to go through the rest of your life with a bad knee, do you? It could cripple you.”
Jesus, the voice of doom. “I’ll take my chances.”
“But, Jill…”
“Look, if you want to curl up and die, you go right ahead,” Jillian says curtly. “I’m not a quitter. I finish what I set out to do. I always do my best, and I’m not about to change that for you or anybody else. You do what you want.” She turns away and tries to pick up the pace, to pull away from Sunshine, but the pain in her knee won’t allow it. She mutters a frustrated curse under her breath.
Sunshine seems to be stung by the rebuke. “I’m doing the best that I can, too,” she says, wounded, like it’s a matter of some importance to her.
Like hell, Jillian thinks, but she holds her tongue. Getting Sunshine riled up was a mistake, she thinks. I shouldn’t say anything that might motivate her to run faster. She looks like she’s in a hell of a lot better s
hape than I am.
“I just don’t think that winning a race is worth injuring myself, that’s all,” Sunshine says, defensively. “It’s just a matter of priorities. But I am doing the best that can under these conditions,” she adds earnestly. “Really I am.”
“What a load of shit,” Jillian says, her anger getting the best of her. “You’re just a goddamn quitter.”
“I am not!” Sunshine responds testily.
Wow, thinks Jillian, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard her raise her voice. I guess I hit a nerve.
“I am not,” Sunshine repeats, but more quietly, as if she’s embarrassed by her outburst. “I’m not a quitter. Nathan says that we should always do our best. And I am doing my best, whether you believe it or not.”
Ease off, Jillian thinks. Don’t get her all wound up. It sounds like it has some kind of religious significance, like she’d be sinning against the Great God Nathan if she admits that she’s not doing her best.
“I’m sure you are,” Jillian soothes. But even as she says it, she realizes that a tinge of sarcasm has crept into her voice.
“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Sunshine sniffs. “I know that I’m not a quitter. And that’s all that matters.”
They run along side-by-side in silence for a few minutes. Maybe she’s right, Jillian thinks, maybe I am damaging my knee. But then, in the next instant, she shakes her head angrily to banish the thought. If it’s damaged, it’s damaged. I’m not going to make it any worse if I run another mile or two. And I’m certainly not going to quit. Not under any circumstances. Not this lady. No way.
And she’s concentrating so hard, psyching herself up for the final push, that she completely misses hearing what she really should have been listening for all along: the unmistakable sound of two pairs of running shoes behind her, gaining on her, nipping at her heels, closing the narrowing gap with astonishing speed.
3.1.25: Dallas
“I don’t think that she even knows that they’re coming up behind her,” Michelle says. “But even if she did, I don’t think she’d be able to do anything about it.”
“Her knee seems to be a lot worse,” Leida says, not sounding especially displeased.
“Yes, it really does,” Michelle agrees. “Oh, I’m sorry, Marty,” she laughs, “I keep forgetting that you can’t hear her. Leida Andersen, who’s sitting next to me in the ESPN truck, says that Jill Kendal’s knee seems to be getting a lot worse, and I was just agreeing with her. Jill’s been limping for some time, but it’s gotten so bad in the last couple of miles so that it looks like she’s hobbling more than running. And from the look on her face, you can tell that she’s fighting a lot of pain. If there wasn’t so much at stake here, I doubt that she’d be…
“Oh, look, she saw them, she knows they’re there now, Marty. Did you see her glance back over her shoulder? She looked, well, surprised, I guess – like I said, she didn’t have any idea that the Kelso twins were so close. She probably figured that she wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore when she passed them a little ways back. But they didn’t give up, Marty, and now it looks like they’re going to pass Jill Kendal not a half a mile from the…
“I don’t believe it, Marty, but she’s trying to fight them off! They blew past her, but she picked up her own pace, and she’s chasing after them. Sunshine O’Malley didn’t respond at all – in fact, she may have even slowed down a little. But Jill Kendal just has too much heart to let the twins beat her without a fight. But I don’t think that she can do it, Marty, every time her right foot hits the ground, you can almost see the pain in…
“Oh no! She’s down! It looked like her knee just buckled, and she… I think she landed right on her injured knee, too. It all happened so fast that I can’t be sure, but it looked to me like her knee hit the pavement pretty hard.
“Can we stop the truck? Jeff can pick up the twins at the finish line, can’t he? Can we stay here and see if Jill’s alright? She’s just lying there, holding her knee, she’s obviously in a lot of pain. Oh, I don’t like this, Marty. And I don’t see any medics around. Marty? Or Jeff? Can you tell someone to get a medic over here right now? She needs some help, fast.
“Here comes Sunshine O’Malley – and good, I think she’s stopping to see if Jill’s okay…”
3.1.26: Dallas
“Don’t touch me!” Jillian screams. “Get your fucking hands off of me!”
Sunshine had placed a hand on Jillian’s shoulder, but now she pulls it away as if she had grabbed a hot coal. She sucks in a wounded breath.
“What are you trying to do, get me disqualified?” Jillian says angrily.
“Jill, I just wanted to see if you were okay,” Sunshine says. She sounds as though she’s going to cry.
“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” Jillian says, pulling herself painfully to her feet. This is unbelievable, she thinks. I’m doing my damnedest to finish the race even though I can barely stand up, and Sunshine’s looking for any excuse not to finish it even though she’s in perfectly good shape.
“I was only trying to help,” Sunshine says softly.
“Don’t do me any favors,” Jillian snaps. “Just get the fuck out of my way.”
And as Jillian hobbles off toward the finish line, and although there’s no one there to hear her, Sunshine says it again – “I was only trying to help” – a desperate whisper, as if she’s trying to convince some unseen judge of the purity of her motives.
3.1.27: Dallas
“I don’t know why she’s doing this, Marty, the first three places have already been settled, and coming in fourth won’t put her on the team, so…
“I don’t even know if you can hear me over the crowd, Marty, they’re going absolutely crazy, screaming for Jill Kendal at the top of their lungs…
“She’s refused all offers of help, Marty. You saw the way she reacted to Sunshine O’Malley, and she waved off the medics a couple of times. She’s just determined to finish the race, and nothing’s going to stop her, that’s all there is to it…
“I think she’s going to make it, she only has maybe a hundred yards to go, and nobody but Sunshine’s within a couple of miles of her. And for some reason, Sunshine’s not even trying, she’s just been sort of trotting along a few paces behind Jillian. She looks so forlorn, Marty, like a lost puppy…
“Here she comes, Marty… Can you hear me? It’s absolutely deafening down here, I can barely hear myself. Oh, she doesn’t look good at all, she’s limping very badly, as you can see, and her knee’s already starting to swell up…
“But it’s her expression that worries me the most, Marty. She’s not even really showing the pain anymore, she just looks completely blank, dazed, like she doesn’t even know where she is. Could she be in shock? Is it possible to keep moving when you’re in shock? A couple of paramedics and an ambulance are standing by, they’re all ready to put her on a stretcher the minute she crosses the finish line, which will be in just a second now…
“There, finally, she’s across the line! That’s her coach, Jago Danziger, reaching for her, and… oh my God, I think she passed out just as Jago was going to grab her… I can’t see what’s going on, Marty, it’s so confusing, everybody’s running around like… Yes, there she is, she’s just lying on the ground, Marty, she looks like she’s out cold, and there’s all sorts of people gathered around her, and Jago’s yelling for the crowd to back up and give her some room, but nobody’s paying any attention… and here they come with the stretcher…”
Transition
Book 3: Preparation
Part 2:
The Recovery
3.2.1: Dallas
She can see the tape, it’s stretched across the finish line, but it keeps receding, growing smaller, even as she tries as hard as she can to reach it. Now it’s as thin as a thread, and she’s running faster and faster, but it keeps shrinking, moving farther and farther away…
I must be doing something wrong, she thinks. Is there a hitch in my st
ride? Or maybe it’s some kind of attitude problem? Something wrong with my state of mind?
And my knee is so sore, so incredibly sore. Maybe that’s the problem…
Her knee is indeed producing a constant, throbbing ache. I better not look at it, she thinks. What I don’t know won’t hurt me.
But she can’t help it. And when she looks, it’s even worse than she imagined. Her knee is blood-red, tendons and bones exposed, skin scraped away and hanging off in tattered shreds.
Fascinated, she watches the joint operate as she runs, mesmerized by the intricate interplay of muscular contractions. It reminds her of a toy from her childhood, some kind of anatomical model. The Visible Knee, she thinks dimly.
Some of the tendons (or are they ligaments?) are clearly torn, and the tears are growing, stretching, even as she watches. Shards of muscle are starting to flap. If I don’t quit soon, she thinks, forcing herself to look away, I’m not going to have much of a knee left at all. They might even have to amputate.
Maybe I better stop.
Nobody else seems to be having a problem. A steady stream of runners zooms past her, she can see them crossing the finish line, even as it continues to distance itself from her. I should feel frustrated, she thinks, idly, but I only feel puzzled. And that’s puzzling in itself.
And then Sunshine is running next to her, and Jillian’s relieved to realize that Sunshine, who is matching her step for step, is making no better progress than she is.
What’s going on? Jillian asks.
It’s my knee, Sunshine says. It hurts so bad.
Your knee! Jillian is stunned. Sunshine’s knee looks fine, and her gait is unhindered. What about my knee? Jillian insists.
Casually, Sunshine glances down at Jillian’s knee, but she’s noticeably unimpressed. Gimme a break, she sneers, there’s nothing wrong with your knee. You’re just looking for excuses.
Transition Page 44