Here Comes the Flood

by Kate McMurray

  DAVIS: I never thought I’d see this, Jim, I gotta tell you. We all thought Flood was done after the last Olympics. He retired, he partied a little too much. We counted him out. And then he showed up at the US Olympic Trials without having swum in international competition in three years. And he just destroyed everyone.

  O’TOOLE: He’s been back training with his longtime coach Adam Vreeland. I talked to Adam this morning, and he had nothing but good things to say about Flood. And Flood is swimming all over this program, with the potential to win as many as nine medals.

  DAVIS: Realistically, what do you think his chances are?

  O’TOOLE: You know, I wouldn’t count him out. He has so much natural talent and a work ethic like no one I’ve ever seen. He’s not quite as fast as he used to be, but he’s got strength and endurance, and I expect he’s got a good shot at a medal in the middle-distance races. But you never know. He’s said he feels like he’s in the best shape of his life, so let’s see if that’s true.

  DAVIS: At twenty-nine, he’s one of the older members on this team. Lot of young swimmers on Team USA.

  O’TOOLE: Sure, but you had swimmers like Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte winning gold medals at thirty-two. I don’t see age as a big factor here. The three years he’s had off from swimming might be. Keep in mind also, some of Flood’s old rivals are back. Look for McKeown and Pearson from Australia in the breaststroke races. Pearson edged out Flood four years ago to win gold. And there are some promising young sprinters from Hungary as well that Flood is going to have to look out for. And that’s not to mention his own teammates. This American field is maybe one of the best they’ve ever sent to an Olympics. They’ve trained well, they’re strong, and they’ve got a pile of world championship medals.

  DAVIS: But you like Flood’s chances?

  O’TOOLE: You know, I do. I think he’ll be reaching for the podium in all of his races. I watched him in practice yesterday, and his times are slower than what they used to be, but his form is good. Adam Vreeland says he looks solid. And it’s the Olympics. Anything can happen.

  “TWO HEATS down,” Adam said. “Fastest time was 4:08 so far, so these heats are slow. You have McKeown, Hsu, and LeBlanc in this heat with you, so it’s going to be faster than the previous heats, but you can swim faster than 4:08 without trying that hard. So take it easy here. Swim a solid race, don’t slouch, but don’t feel like you have to go all out either. If you push too hard, you’ll tire yourself out.”

  “Yup.” Isaac pulled on his cap and fiddled with his goggles.

  “You don’t need to win your heat to make it to semis, is what I’m saying.”

  “I know.”

  “But there are six heats. Why the hell are there six heats? I didn’t know there were so many IM swimmers.”

  Isaac had basically stopped listening. He knew all this. “Not my first rodeo, Adam.”

  Adam nodded and slapped him on the back. “I’m just saying, these are slow heats. Don’t slack, but don’t kill yourself either.”

  Isaac walked out of the ready room and followed the other swimmers out to stand on deck for the fourth heat.

  The 400 individual medley used to be Isaac’s favorite race, but he found that the older he got, the more this race punished his body. It was a tough way to get the meet started, and he’d have to swim it twice today: the preliminary heats now and the semifinals tonight. If Adam wanted him to swim in the relay tomorrow night, that could end up being a tall order.

  But no matter. He walked out to the blocks as the third heat exited the pool. The fastest time in that heat was only 4:07.85. Isaac could swim this race in 4:06 easy, 4:05 if he pushed it, and, as the scoreboard had indicated four years ago, in 4:03 on freaky days when he’d destroyed the world record.

  He unzipped his jacket and glanced at the field. Hsu, a Chinese swimmer, was the reigning world champion. McKeown had been at this as long as Isaac had, an old vet but probably still a factor. LeBlanc was good but past his prime. And anyway, given how slow the previous heats had been, Isaac just had to finish in the top four and he’d advance.

  He stripped to his swimsuit and went through the prerace ritual: checked his cap, tugged it over his ears, checked his goggles, adjusting them, even though they didn’t really need adjusting, stretched his arms over his head, tugged on the waistband of his swimsuit, shook out his arms, bowed toward the pool, splashed water on himself, then stood back up. The ready whistle sounded. He stood beside the block and watched McKeown do the dumb prerace dance he’d been doing for fifteen years, kind of a kicky samba thing.

  The whistle to get on the blocks sounded. Isaac consciously tried to shove aside the fact that this was the first swim in this Olympics. Just another meet. He had this.

  “On your marks.”

  Isaac crouched into position on the block.

  The buzzer sounded.

  Jumping off the block was a Pavlovian response at this point. Isaac got in the water before his brain caught up to what was happening. Then he threw out his arms to start the butterfly. Butterfly was the hardest stroke for him, so he was happy to get it over with first; it took a lot of strength to get his upper body out of the water enough to bring his arms out and in front of him to act as paddles as he pushed himself forward in the water. But he felt good. He swam strong, he sliced through the water, and then spotted the wall. He touched the side of the pool and turned to do it again. And he flew. In no time, he reached the wall again. He flipped back, raised his arms for the backstroke. His pace was not leisurely, and his arms tingled a little, but this stroke was easier on his body. He essentially floated down the pool until he saw the flags indicating the turn was ten meters away. He flipped and did it again, looking up at the ceiling of the Aquatics Center, following along with the latticework grid of the unfinished ceiling to help keep him swimming in a straight line. Then he turned into the breaststroke, which was his stroke, and he found the joy of it now. He didn’t look at the lanes beside him. He didn’t think about semifinals or finals. He just swam the way he knew he could. He glided through the water. This was easy. This was fun. Then the final turn, and he pulled his arms into the crawl stroke, and just… went. Moved like the water was pushing him instead of working against him. He swam to the wall, flipped, and then turned it on a little, pushing himself to finish the race. He touched the wall and popped his head up.

  Well, considering men were still swimming, he’d done all right. He glanced up at the scoreboard. 4:06.25. First place in the heat by two seconds.

  Christ.

  He treaded water for a second, trying to catch his breath. His body burned, but in a satisfying way. Hsu tapped his hand in congratulations.

  He climbed out of the pool. A reporter interviewed guys as they walked back to the ready room, but Isaac ignored her. He gathered his things from the side of the pool and gave the reporter a wide berth, hoping not to be stopped. When he was safely inside the athletes-only area, Adam walked over and slapped him on the back. “You might just pull this off.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. That was insane. Best I’ve seen you swim in a while. You beat the rest of the field by a body length. How much are you hurting?”

  “I feel all right.” He still panted, not quite having regained his breath, but his body felt good. Felt alive.

  “I did tell you not to push it.”

  “I didn’t push it.”

  Adam raised an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me you did the 400 IM in 4:06 without pushing it?”

  “I didn’t think about the time, honestly. I just swam.”

  Adam laughed. “Keep it up, kid.”

  TIM WATCHED Isaac’s heat from a TV monitor near the diving pool while he waited for his practice time. In the distance, he could hear the Chinese coach yelling at his divers, which irritated Tim because they were already pushing everyone else’s practice times later. The silver lining was that for lack of anything else to do, Tim got to watch Isaac swim.

  The race was incredible. And
it was a prelim. Isaac seemed to fly through the water. Tim had seen him race before; he’d watched Isaac’s first two Olympics on TV. But it was a different experience knowing Isaac the way he did now and knowing what Isaac had been through.

  “That’s why he’s the best in the world,” said Jason, watching from behind Tim.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wanted to be him when I joined the swim team in college, but I never quite swam fast enough.”

  “You wanted to be Isaac Flood?”

  “Here. Comes. The. Flood!” Jason shouted. “Yeah, I did. That guy was the coolest, if you were a swimmer.”

  The Chinese team did another perfectly synchronized dive, which somehow still angered their coach, and they finally cleared off the platform.

  Then a reporter showed up.

  The press had been in the booth all day, watching practice dives, occasionally coming down to confer with the divers and coaches about which dives they were planning for Monday’s final. A lot of the commentators were former divers and came to many of the international competitions; they had a good rapport with the athletes and also knew when to keep their distance. But this reporter was not one of the regular commentators. She immediately got Tim’s back up.

  “We’re up,” Jason said.

  Tim nodded and walked over to Donnie. “There’s a reporter here.”

  “Okay. I’ll send Rudy to get rid of her. Get to the top of the platform. Let’s start easy with dive number one.”

  As Tim climbed the stairs to the top of the platform, he heard Rudy, Donnie’s assistant, arguing with the reporter.

  “What does she want?” Tim asked Jason.

  “No idea. Well, I mean, probably to talk to you.”

  “But why?” Tim knew she could want to know about what dives he had planned, but he sensed she was here to ask him nosy questions he didn’t want to answer.

  “Forget about it, Tim.”

  But Tim could still hear Rudy’s adamant refusals to grant her an interview. He felt sick to his stomach as he stood at the edge of the platform with Jason. He pushed it aside, looking forward to the dive but still distracted. Donnie blew the whistle, indicating they should go. The dive was a forward pike, low difficulty level, a slam-dunk dive any novice diver could do, meant to show synchronization more than anything else. They got into position. Donnie blew the whistle again.

  And Tim totally whiffed it.

  He came off the platform and got enough height to pull himself into formation, but he knew his legs weren’t straight, and then when he kicked his legs up to enter the water, he kicked too hard and rotated past vertical. The backs of his legs slapped the water as he entered.

  Fuck.

  The worst part was that the fucking reporter still stood right fucking there when Tim got out of the water.

  “The hell was that?” Donnie said, seeming more mystified than angry.

  “She wants to talk to me,” Tim said, gesturing toward the reporter.

  Donnie turned the full force of his wrath on the poor woman then. “Lady, you need to get out of here. You’re distracting my divers.”

  “Timothy!” she shouted. “Timothy Swan. How much is your breakup with Patterson Wood affecting your performance here?”

  Tim started to panic. He had to get this woman out of here. He couldn’t talk about Pat. He didn’t want to talk about Pat. Not here.

  Diving had always been his sanctuary. On the platform, it was just him and the air and the water. It was his safe place. And this woman had invaded it.

  “Have you faced any homophobia here in Madrid?” she shouted.

  Tim looked at Donnie. Donnie looked just as panic-stricken.

  “There’s a rumor you and Patterson Wood are back together. That he’s in Madrid to watch your dives. Can you tell me if it’s true?”

  Pat? Here in Madrid? No, there was no way. They’d been broken up for weeks. Why the hell would Pat be in Madrid?

  Tim started to hyperventilate.

  “Can we have her arrested?” Jason asked.

  Tim’s panic was so vivid, he could hear only the rushing in his ears as he struggled to catch his breath. Everything else faded as he struggled to pull air into his lungs. He became aware of hands pushing him toward a bench, and then of his head being shoved between his knees. Then a medic appeared beside him and took his vitals, and the panic began to subside.

  When Tim had a handle on his breathing again, he took a few long, shaky breaths and looked around. He sat on a bench behind one of the showers. It was a spot usually reserved for coaches during the competition. He drew in a few more breaths and looked for Donnie.

  “She’s gone,” Donnie said. “She wasn’t supposed to be here. She’s a reporter for one of those entertainment shows, which is doing a series of special episodes from Madrid, and she wanted to interview you for the show.”

  “She wants gossip on Pat.”

  “Looks that way. She got past security because she flashed her press credentials and they didn’t know any better. I could have had her arrested, but I didn’t want to make the situation worse for you. They are tightening security, though. Only reporters here for official broadcasts will be allowed in. There’s a list with the names, so the security guards will check that from now on.”

  “Okay.” Tim sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it like that. But I saw her, and I couldn’t deal.”

  “You have enough to deal with,” Donnie said kindly.

  “I think I’m going to need the rest of the day off. We can resume tomorrow.”

  Donnie nodded. “Go sleep it off. The pool will still be here in the morning. Do you want me to line up a security escort to get you back to the Athlete Village?”

  Considering the reporter hadn’t been arrested, and the potential for there to be more reporters, Tim said, “Yeah. Please.”

  When Donnie wandered off to confer with security, Jason sat next to Tim. Tim said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing. You’ve been through a lot this year. You should be able to put it behind you to compete here, not deal with nosy reporters. What happened with Pat is none of her business.”

  “Yeah.” Tim felt weary. He rubbed his forehead.

  “Timmy, you’re one of the best divers who has ever been on a platform. I mean that. Not just right now. Not just among Americans. But in the world, you’re the best. Defending Olympic champion. World champion three times over. I’m honored to be your partner. That asshole reporter wants to make this about your personal life, but that doesn’t matter at all. You’re the best. Period.”

  “Thanks, Jason.”

  On the way back to his room, Tim couldn’t get over the feeling that he wished Isaac was there to say something acerbic and shake him out of his funk. Isaac was likely still at the Aquatics Center, or else he was napping before his semifinal that night.

  But Tim texted him anyway: Reporter showed up at my practice and totally threw me off my game.

  It took a long moment, but Isaac texted back: Fuck ’em.

  BEFORE HEADING back to the Athlete Village to get some sleep, Isaac climbed into the stands and sat beside his mother, Rebecca. She was a quiet type, supportive and loving but not demonstrative with her emotions. When Isaac sat beside her, she put her arm around him, gave him a quick squeeze, and then retracted it.

  “You’re swimming well.”

  “So far.”

  “Considering it looked like you would never swim again for a while there, I think you’re doing just fine.”

  “You’re my mother. You have to say things like that.”

  She laughed. “In my eyes, you’re still that gangly six-year-old who wanted to take extra swim lessons. You were all arms and legs in those days. Now look at you. All grown-up.”

  “I just… I fucked up. And I hurt a lot of people, you included. And I recognize that winning a medal here fixes absolutely none of that, but I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t completely useless.”

&nbs
p; “I forgave you.”

  “That’s a very mom-like thing to do too. Abby hasn’t.” Abby was Isaac’s sister, and she had more or less disowned him when his drinking had gotten really bad. He didn’t blame her; he’d been awful in those days, drunk more than he’d been sober, wasting his money on cheap beer and bottom-shelf liquor just so he could get through each day. They’d forged a peace since he’d come out of rehab, but things were still unsteady some days.

  “She’s here, you know.”

  “She is?”

  “Yup. She wasn’t feeling well this morning, so she stayed at the hotel. She said she ate something weird on the plane, I think. But she’ll be here to watch you tomorrow.”

  Isaac nodded and watched as the next heat started in the pool. Softly, he said, “I haven’t really forgiven myself.”

  “I know. You’ll get there.” She sighed. “I blamed myself for a long time. Or my genes, at least. Your grandpa was a nasty drunk.”

  Isaac had heard the stories. Grandpa had stayed sober when his grandkids were around, and Isaac had been oblivious until the man had died when Isaac was fourteen. After the third or fourth person at the wake had called Grandpa “a real son of a gun,” Isaac had asked his mother about that, and the floodgates had opened. Perhaps his death had made it okay to talk about him.

  He shook his head. “It’s no one’s fault but my own. Maybe alcoholism is a disease, but I did some shitty things. That I was drunk at the time is a weak excuse.”

  “You’re sober now, and that’s what matters. We didn’t lose you.”

  “I still want to drink.”

  “But you won’t. I have faith in you.”

  “I appreciate that, Mom, but—”

  “Focus on the Olympics. Focus on swimming. Then focus on the next thing. You’ll earn your next chip, no problem.”

  Isaac sighed. He put his arm around his mother and leaned his head against hers for a moment. She stiffened a little—even with her own son, she was awkward when it came to being touched—but let out a sigh. The truth was that he’d focused on her a lot in rehab, though he hadn’t wanted to say as much. But Isaac’s father had never really been a part of his life, and his mother had worked extra jobs to make ends meet and bring up two kids who had caused her a lot of grief over the years, Isaac more than Abby. But after everything she’d done for him, Isaac had wanted to get better so he wouldn’t throw everything she’d done for him away. “I love you, Mom.”