by Deacon Rie
Stephen was still squirming in pain when something in his back detonated, releasing a wave of nausea that nearly overwhelmed his dignity. He felt the Earth's gravitational pull increase and his body began to slump over. Stephen responded to the siren song of the road and dropped his gaze into the unknown which rested a few thousand feet below the asphalt's surface. As if taking the cue from the other body parts, Stephen's knees came ablaze. Each of his increasingly minuscule steps punished him with an excruciating stripe that cut through the upper quads of both legs. Stephen felt a barrier in his lungs, and he found difficulty breathing. With no accord or deliberate intention, he felt his muscles completely run out of gas. The rotation of his legs slowed to a complete stop and left his obliterated body lingering awkwardly in the middle of the road.
His face went flush and a tingling sensation formed in the base of his jaw. Stephen could feel the rise of bile and felt as though he would hurl at any moment. He attempted to take a deep breath to relieve the sensation but his upper back responded to the initiative with a barrage of cramping sensations. A pounding began in his head that overwhelmed his sense of equilibrium. Nearly losing balance and trying to pucker cool air to his burning lungs, he leaned over in pain. His feet were firmly planted in the ground and he stood still, waiting; not in expectation but simply because he could physically do nothing else.
Hunched over in the locked position, Stephen placed his finger on the other wrist and checked his pulse. Despite having stopped for almost a minute his heart rate had skyrocketed and it didn't appear to be slowing. He quickly became convinced he was experiencing a heart attack. He wanted to look around for the medic he had seen miles before but when he raised his head it seemed as though the planet dropped off its axis and was spinning uncontrollably. He leaned farther towards the ground and barely kept from collapsing by focused his throbbing eyes on a few small loose rocks of asphalt.
Stephen assessed his situation: he had become extremely weak and dizzy without warning, and the addition of a severe headache had made it all the worse. Panic set in as he realized it wasn't a heart attack but instead, he was having a stroke. Having learned through his father's experience, he determined that an emergency review of his physical capabilities was imperative. Still leaning over, he blinked his eyes and wiggled his fingers. They ached but he felt no paralysis settling in. With nothing less than a herculean effort, Stephen erected his back and raised both hands into the air at the same time to test mobility. Successfully performing a test of his physical limitations caused a gentle drop of comfort to come over him at the realization that he was not actually having a stroke. Teased with a small sprinkle of relief accompanying the minor victory, his arms collapsed back onto his knees.
It must be muscular. Touching each of his joints, Stephen tried to determine where the injury had to be located. He had lost all of his strength and it seemed as though every body part had completely shut down. His limbs each felt like jelly and the slightest movement instigated an immediate disorientation which had to be met with outstretched arms to keep from toppling over, but not without consequence. Stretching out his arms to keep from losing his balance only caused more pain and forced him to recoil. The sudden jerk of recoiling would then send a lightning bolt through each of the spinal nerves, in which case he would then have to reach out his arms to catch his balance. It was a horrible cycle of anguish and he was convinced it must have been quite a pathetic sight to any observer. He prayed the race photography union was on strike.
No heart attack, no stroke, no injury. It took a few moments but Stephen was able to reconcile the pain in his brain long enough to figure out he wasn't about to die. In fact, he realized there wasn't even going to be enough damage for a sympathy trip to the hospital. When his senses finally regained control over Stephen's traumatized body he came to the conclusion that he had found himself face to face with what runners typically and quite unaffectionately refer to as "the wall."
Immobile, confused and quite unsure of how to proceed, he peered at the road ahead, first with speculation and then pure disbelief at his location. With every muscle rebelling, he could only stand and wonder what the protocol was for laying down on the road in the middle of a citywide marathon. A more conscience man with any shred of decorum would have had the courtesy to move his degrading carcass to the side of the road and make way for other runners, walkers, pregnant women pushing strollers, and snails.
Stephen remained still, ignoring all who sped by him, accepting his new role as the stationary road block others would now have to make their way around. They would glare, curse and probably sneer at him. None of which mattered to Stephen because it was only a matter of time before the city's work crew posted some bright orange cones around him.
His suffering led Stephen to believe the best reaction to this moment was to strike from his estate anyone and everyone who had ever encouraged him to run this stupid race. His mind barely lingered off the cliff long enough to prevent him from seeking a piece of chalk to draft a provisional will into the road to inscribe his imprecatory intent. Stephen lifted his head and took a deep breath.
"This sucks. This really… really… sucks," he exhaled with the faint voice of pure exhaustion.
Stephen focused his mind on getting his ragged body moving in a forward motion again. His legs felt burdened by 30 pound sandbags added to every attempted step. Each time he tried to fight the stiffness, his entire body resisted and threw him into another fit of agony. The lower back felt like it had been dipped in concrete and was shifting lower to the ground. Every single joint in his body was in flames and waves of nausea continuously passed over him. The only thing masking the pounding of his chest was the constant and thunderous throbbing from within his head. Dried blood stained the bottom of the shirt where Stephen had earlier wiped his scratched hand after falling. His knees were also skinned and he was pretty sure the maroon discoloration on his left shoe suggested that his volcanic blister had erupted sometime during the misery of the past mile. For the next five minutes he practically crawled his way across another tenth of a mile. With another four or five miles ahead of him, there was no relief in sight.
Still fighting a full body breakdown and cognitive deterioration, Stephen wasn't completely sure of himself when he looked ahead and saw the elderly man leaning against the opposite side of a street barricade. He squinted and shook the sweat from his eyes to get a better look. Leaning on a wooden, orange and white crowd control barrier alongside the road, carefully examining the sparse few passing marathoners with a determined stare stood Stephen's father.
Mile 23
Tom stood by himself, his one capable hand locked for balance on the reflective barricade which kept pedestrians separated from the runners. Clearly looking for Stephen, Tom squinted his eyes to visually interview each distant runner as they came within his view. When Stephen emerged from the road close enough to be seen, Tom slowly raised his arm to ensure his son spotted him.
Balancing between physical agony and the cognitive disconnect of seeing his father, Stephen was disoriented by his own confusion. It was a welcome confusion as the sight of his father gave a brief moment of distracted relief from the pain, but it was very brief. Looking at his father in such an out-of-sort context left Stephen bewildered and he half expected to see his mother. Aware that he wasn't hallucinating, the pain returned to his lower back and each step emphasized the miserable condition of his broken and deteriorating body. He looked around to search for the person who would have driven his father to this isolated location along the race path. Drifting the unseaworthy craft of his body closer to the curbside, Stephen wondered how his father could be there completely alone. He did his best to fight off the pain coursing through his body and hobbled towards Tom's location.
"Dad!" Stephen called out as he continued to fight the constant rebuttal of every joint and muscle he had. "Dad; what are you doing here?" Tom looked back with the same blank stare he had held for the past dozen years. "Did Sarah drop you off
?" He pleaded for an answer, for some response from his father's stroke impaired body. Looking past Tom's oversized frame and broad shoulders was challenging enough, but it didn't help that Stephen was hunching over. He peered past Tom's torso to try and get a look for Sarah or a helpful neighbor who may have driven his father. Seeing no one else but Tom in sight, Stephen looked toward the pocket of his father's khaki pants and saw the unmistakable outline of car keys.
"You drove?" he chided. Relief was disruptively replaced with a hot frustration and an awareness of just how unworkable the situation was. He immediately knew his father's insistence on driving would once again require his intervention. Working from a fuse which was already less than a quarter of its normal quick length, Stephen had no patience left for the man who repeatedly and willingly endangered and inconvenienced others.
Stephen popped off, "Dad! Do you still not realize how dangerous it is for you to drive? What were you thinking?"
Stephen's rising inflection was filled with an unnatural condemnation and heavy with the condescending emphasis one typically reserved for a misbehaving child. After years of accommodating and nurturing his father, it was apparent the inevitable completion of role reversals had finally arrived. Stephen knew his loose encouraging of his father needed to be replaced with an instructive and firm parental authority. In a series of consequential thoughts that did not pause for serious consideration, Stephen irrationally decided that if Tom could no longer respect the rules, living at home would cease to be an option. Tom would spend his remaining days in a nursing home.
"That's it, Dad! That's the last time! You know you can't drive and the fact that you would just ignore that is completely irresponsible. You can't do the things you used to do and at some point you're going to have to come to grips with that!" His emotions were entirely unchecked as he grit his jaw and raised a finger to the withered but steadfast oak who had taught him what it meant to be a man.
"I'm selling the car!" Stephen had no idea where that one came from. Self-actualization began to peer through the fog of his mind and he slowly became conscience of his surroundings.
"Maybe."
Stephen let out a deep breath while Tom remained stoic and expressionless. A trickle of steadily paced runners passed through Stephen's peripheral. The chastisement of his father had been exhausting. With muscles aching and twitching uncontrollably throughout his body, Stephen returned to the former empty shell of himself. With a broken body and a spent mind, Stephen mentally prepared to gather the keys from his father and drive Tom home.
He would figure the rest out later but today's run was finished. This race was over for him. He knew it. Stephen had known it from the very beginning. He hadn't trained enough. He hadn't slept enough. He hadn't planned enough. When excuses and justifications could no longer walk alongside him, Stephen had to admit to himself that he simply hadn't been good enough to take on this challenge. And now, it was over.
Stephen's head dipped towards the ground, his eyes catching a glance at his stained and saturated shoes. He rested an aching palm against the road barrier inches away from his father's hand. Head hanging low, he winced not from the pain of exhaustion, but from the familiar chest tightening of disappointment and guilt as the twin oppressors reminded him that he was, after all that had happened, once again standing before his father, another failure in hand.
Tom released the barrier and gently clenched his son's forearm. The old man leaned his head down to look into his son's disheartened gaze.
Without meeting his father's eyes Stephen mustered, "Dad, I've got to take you home."
Stephen knew taking his father home had less to do with Tom's safety. It was his escape. His shoulders slouched and the air trickled from his lungs. The hot air flowing across his lips left Stephen nauseous. He couldn't think entirely straight but he felt certain everything in his body caused him pain. But he knew it wasn't just his body which was afflicted. The dam of his willingness had finally given way and he knew he had been beaten. Any shred of motivation capable of keeping him in the fight had abandoned his body and his mind. The miles of this road had been more than he could bear. Beyond the wear of the race, Stephen felt the burden of the miles he had yet to leave behind. The miles of a desert war he didn't know how to leave. The miles of a long road back to a home he hadn't known how to return to. The miles of hurt and helplessness as he had watched his daughter suffer beneath an enemy he had no ability to confront. The miles of grief from the devastating abruptness of his mother's death. The miles of struggling to work so hard to provide for his family. Even the miles of finding his way back to a marriage he was now willing to fight for and honor. There were simply too many miles and they had taken too much of a toll. Stephen had gone as far as he could and now there was nothing left for the remaining miles ahead. Whatever he had to give lay exhausted on the road behind him buried under his burdens. With every sense of who he was, he realized the distance of his race had been too long.
Tom's forehead shifted while his expressionless gaze remained unchanged. Stephen reached down to pull back the barrier to begin the long path of failure. Tom, moving faster than Stephen had seen in years, reached down with his capable arm and firmly grabbed the wooden barrier, keeping a strong grip on it.
"It's alright, Dad." Stephen reassured his father in a calm and resolved voice. There was a wave of comfort beginning to settle into Stephen's mind. He knew he was done and while his mind hated him for it, his body could not have been more agreeable.
"I'm done here. My body's a wreck and I can't go any further. I have to stop." Riddled with guilt and beginning to feel the cool tingles of numbness leaving his body, Stephen lifted the railing off the ground and began sliding it back so he could push past.
The railing slid up and back about six inches when Tom's teeth clenched. Instead of letting go, Tom leaned forward and shifted strength into his arm with a forceful downward thrust. The barricade was ripped out of Stephen's hands and crashed into the asphalt with all the force and emotional rejection of someone slamming a solid wooden door shut on an intruder.
"Dad? What are you doing? I told you I'm done here. I need to get you home." His body sent a brief shiver over his skin as if to warn him that he didn't have the energy to argue with his father at that moment. Stephen again attempted to lift the barrier but Tom's one-handed grip on the railing was immovable, its strength revitalized by the pure willpower of a frail but unbroken man. His eyes locked onto Stephen's with a stern and commanding parental glare. Stephen, justified in his decision to stop, avoided eye contact and gently placed his hand back on the railing.
"It's okay. This was a bad idea. It was always a bad idea." Deciding against the confrontation, Stephen instead moved to the right of the barrier and began pushing the adjoining guardrail aside to create a new exit from the course. "I can't do this," he said with a depressed confidence. "I'm busted up pretty bad. I think I probably injured something and I'm going to stop. It's just a race and it's time to go, Dad. We need to get you home."
Tom peered into the brokenness of Stephen's eyes and released his grasp on the guardrail. In a combined movement of frailty and power, Tom raised his arm up, firmly clenched his hand and slammed his fist into Stephen's chest. The impact of the aged and disabled man's punch was surprising to Stephen's body but his mind went blank with shock. Unable to verbalize his befuddlement over the fact that his father had just struck him, Stephen stood in stunned silence, fixated on the feeble man's eyes.
The punch woke his body and Stephen began to have feelings return. His stiff back began to groan. His inner thighs blazed from the miles he had spent unconscious of the persistent chaffing. The heavy beating of his heart echoed and gave his head the feeling of being compressed. Reverberations from his core pulsated and forcefully pumped blood vessels, awakening strained tendons and overworked muscles throughout each fiber of his body. The heightened sense caused each nerve to heat up as if they were the unified voice of a thousand infernos erupting from within. Tom's
punch had knocked Stephen back into the harsh reality of his moment, a cataclysmic shattering of the escape which had quickly becoming Stephen's false salvation.
Tom's hand was still raised before Stephen. As the fist began to move again, Stephen braced for another punch. Instead, Tom's jaw tightened and his mouth slowly opened as he pulled in a deep breath. A finger extended from Tom's hand and slowly drifted into Stephen's chest.
Exhausted and despondent, Stephen stared at his father's extended finger lingering at him. The palm of his father's hand opened and moved to rest onto his chest. Tom leaned his head forward and forced his jaw into his own chest before raising it and revealing an overly exaggerated open mouth. Not since a previous lifetime had Stephen heard his father make a sound beyond grunts of discomfort but in that moment of Tom's grip, a purposeful noise began to erupt, "Ah-nnn…g!"
His mouth opened and closed several times as Tom fought to coordinate the sounds. He turned his head from side to side as if to gain momentum and topple the words from his lips, all the while he kept his palm on Stephen's chest.
"Dad, what is it? Are you okay?" Stephen rested his hand on Tom's shoulder and felt his own body shiver with concern. Closely watching Tom's movements, Stephen knew he would be in a challenging position to assist his father if another stroke was upon him.
"Shhhh… aaahhh!" Tom's voice became forceful and louder.
Tilting his head as if to hear his father better, Stephen observed his father with a hopeful disbelief as Tom repeated, "Shhhh… oooo… gggg!"
Tom was clearly trying to say something. Stephen's observation shifted from concern to curiosity in a realization that his father was not just communicating, but instructing.
"Sssshhh… oooo… nnnggg!" his voice raised as Tom's finger extended again into Stephen's chest and steadily began to jab. Tom paused and surveyed his son.
Stephen found himself unable to speak as he maintained his bearing into the deep richness of his father's eyes. To Stephen, the debilitating stroke had taken away the greatest man he had ever known. Tom had been athletic and his physical prowess could be counted on, but he was also a steadfast guide who could be trusted to stand behind his family, his friends and that which he believed. Tom had always been compassionate to others and remained a tenacious debater who had walked with the non-arrogant confidence of a man secure in knowing who he was and what he stood for. Even as Stephen became a man, Tom seemed to stand so tall to him. But in a losing battle with his body, Stephen had watched Tom whither into a clumsy shell while a brilliant mind drifted into a distant shadow of the man he once was. As hard as it was for Tom to deal with the debilitating results of his stroke, the loss of his father's capabilities had been a crushing and confusing blow for Stephen. Tom's new state represented the loss of Stephen's closest friend, confidant and greatest role model. The loss was something Stephen had failed to realize and as a result, he failed to mourn or overcome. As Tom eventually resolved himself to the new windows he would be forced to view the world through, Stephen had dealt with his own pain and fear by resenting his father's disability and letting frustration brew to his new burden.