Overcomer

by Chris Fabry

“Well, that runner is fifteen years old. She lives with her grandmother.” He let the detail sink in. “She was born on Valentine’s Day.”

  John couldn’t take his eyes off Thomas’s face. There was a solemn resignation to it as he listened, as if hearing a new diagnosis from a physician who had x-rayed his soul. Thomas’s eyes wandered, shifting left to right, trying to view unseen things. When he didn’t speak, John gently told him the whole truth.

  “Her name is Hannah Scott.”

  Thomas reeled from the revelation. He and John had, without knowing it, been coaching Thomas’s daughter. Every training tip, every pointer he had given to help John’s “team” run faster had been for his own daughter.

  Amy moved around the side of the bed and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” she said gently.

  Thomas’s voice trembled. “Your runner is my daughter?”

  The words were more than a question. They showed the heart of a man struggling with his past choices, his present condition, and all the years between.

  Thomas shifted in the bed. “Tell me about her,” he said softly.

  “She’s beautiful,” Amy said. “She’s quiet. She’s observant. She’s athletic.”

  As Amy spoke, Thomas couldn’t hold back the emotion. His face tightened, his eyes filled with tears, and John thought they were treading on holy ground. Had Thomas prayed to hear from his daughter? How long? Was it even something he thought possible?

  “We wondered,” John said slowly, “if you would want to meet?”

  Thomas struggled through the emotion, a vein showing in his forehead. “Does she know about me?”

  “No, we haven’t told her anything yet,” Amy said. “We don’t even know how she would respond. We wanted to talk to you first.”

  Thomas broke. Tears ran down his cheeks into his gray beard. He rolled his head from side to side. “I’ve had a conversation in my mind with her a thousand times. I’ve wanted to talk to her. But what daughter would want a dad like me?”

  John wanted to reach out, say something, do anything to help with his friend’s pain. But it was the comforting voice of his wife he knew Thomas needed to hear.

  “Thomas, she needs a father. You still have so much to offer her.”

  Thomas choked on the emotion. “She’d be disappointed.”

  “No, that’s not true.”

  Tears continued and Thomas did nothing to hold them back.

  “Thomas,” John said, “would you be willing to pray about it? If she’s willing to meet, would you want to?”

  Thomas calmed himself as if searching for something lost on a dark path.

  A verse flashed in John’s mind. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

  Then came the soft voice of surrender, the door of a heart opening to the work of God.

  “Yes. We can pray about it.”

  With that, Thomas reached out both hands. John drew closer on one side of the bed and Amy on the other, and the three of them prayed through their tears. They thanked God for bringing them together. They thanked God for preserving Thomas.

  “Lord, You know how long I’ve prayed for my daughter. And how much shame and guilt I feel. I know You’ve forgiven me, but I don’t know if Hannah can do that. Or Barbara. Oh, Father, she has gone through so much pain. Thank You she’s raised Hannah. Now, would You give me the faith to believe that You’re in this? I don’t want to live the rest of my life in fear. I want to live by faith, not by sight. But I need You to help me. Lord, I’m so afraid.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Hannah felt confident at her next race. The Harrisons picked her up early and Mrs. Harrison walked the entire course with her. There was a hilly section that felt challenging and two muddy, swampy areas. It was helpful to know what was ahead instead of being surprised as she ran with the pack.

  Hannah stretched, then sat on a bench with the Harrisons before the start. She had come in under twenty-one minutes in her last two practices and hoped she could keep that pace.

  Coach Harrison asked how she was feeling and Hannah said she was okay.

  “Well, at the coaches’ meeting they said this course shows who the real runners are. So we’ll see if these new drills have helped. Got your inhaler?”

  “It’s on my hip,” Hannah said.

  Coach Harrison paused and looked her in the eyes. “Hannah, I want to pray for you. Can I do that?”

  He’d never said that before a race, so it felt strange. And yet his voice was comforting and reassuring. She nodded and noticed Mrs. Harrison closing her eyes and bowing her head. They both acted as if talking to God was something real.

  “Lord, we thank You for the chance to be here today. Thank You for Hannah. And, God, I ask that You would protect her today and help her to do her best. And I ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.”

  As he prayed, Hannah looked up, glancing at them. When Coach Harrison finished, she felt a warm sensation inside.

  “You ready?” Coach said.

  “I think so.”

  She stretched some more as she moved to the starting line. When she lined up, she noticed Gina Mimms to her right again. She chased Gina in her dreams. And most of the time it felt like a nightmare. Hannah tried to shake the butterflies, but they were always present at the start of a race. Instead of chasing them away, she jumped in place. Maybe the butterflies could help her.

  Someone yelled her name from the sidelines and Hannah scanned the crowd. It was Ethan Harrison. She had teased him in the lunchroom the day before about how long it took him to finish the race with her. Now he smiled and pointed at her. “You got this!” he yelled. And a group from Brookshire clapped and yelled encouragement.

  All that fuss for one runner, Hannah thought. She glanced at the parents and coaches and saw the Harrisons staring at Ethan and the others. It was great having a cheering section, but she secretly wished her grandmother would come to a race. She couldn’t because of her work, of course. Hannah knew that. Still, it would be nice to have a family member cheering.

  Hannah took a deep breath, stepped to the line, and when the gun sounded, she ran hard. She heard her name yelled and as she passed the crowd, she settled into her rhythm.

  Protect her. Help her do her best. That’s what Coach Harrison had prayed. Could God do that? Was God interested in her? Didn’t He have more important things to do than watch a fifteen-year-old run?

  The first incline was tough, but Hannah paced herself well and she attacked it. There were runners ahead, but after a mile she glanced back and saw there were more behind than in front.

  Stay focused, she thought. I want to make the top ten.

  Her legs felt heavy in the muddy sections and she slid once but managed to keep her balance. When she reached a paved path by a lake, a breeze hit her and it felt like someone had turned on a fan at just the right time.

  Something strange happened after the second mile. Instead of other runners passing her, she was the one passing them. She was tired, her legs fatigued, but the training had worked. She had more stamina, more power, and her pace actually increased.

  She had become so focused on her stride and technique that she wasn’t concerned about her breathing. She had her inhaler at her side but she didn’t need it.

  Coming down the final hill, she looked ahead and saw Gina Mimms. Hannah was always trailing her. But at least she could see her this time. That was progress. And that caused her to lengthen her stride and kick toward the finish.

  The crowd cheered when runners came into view and by the time Hannah was a hundred yards from the finish line, people screamed and clapped. She heard Coach Harrison as she passed him.

  “Come on, Hannah! Fight, Hannah! You got it!”

  The last few yards before the finish line, she was spent. Instead of catching up to the runner in front of her, a girl behind pulled ahead. Hannah crossed the line and clapped as other runners finished.

  She grabbed some water as the
Harrisons joined her. “You did so good. That was amazing,” Mrs. Harrison said.

  “Nice job,” Coach said. “Did you even need your inhaler?”

  “No. What place did I come in?”

  “You were eleventh,” Coach said tentatively.

  Hannah shook her head and pulled away but Coach Harrison wasn’t having it. “Don’t you be upset. You just ran your best race.”

  “That’s right. That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Mrs. Harrison said. “That was fantastic.”

  Their words were encouraging, but Hannah couldn’t shake the fact that she had run out of gas at the end. “I thought I’d at least made top ten.”

  “You keep running like that and you will,” Coach said. He waved at someone. “I think you’ve got a couple of friends who want to say hello.”

  Ethan and a group from Brookshire surrounded her, clapping and encouraging her. Grace was there, wrapping her in a hug, sweaty as she was, and Ethan gave her a high five. It was one thing for kids who weren’t athletes to compliment her, but someone like Ethan knew what it took to compete. Was he just doing that because his dad was the coach? His excitement seemed genuine.

  They packed up and the crowd dispersed. Coach Harrison drew her aside by the lake and sat on a cooler while she sat on a bench. “Every competitive athlete I’ve ever known has had this thing deep inside that wants to win. And when you don’t do as well as you’d like, it feels awful. But what you’ve done in a short amount of time has been amazing. You know that, right?”

  She nodded. “I think the training has made me faster.”

  “Hannah, can you tell before a race whether you might have an attack?”

  “Sometimes. Today I felt good.”

  She remembered Coach’s prayer. Protect her. Had that happened?

  Mrs. Harrison sat beside her and Hannah wondered why they weren’t heading to the car.

  “You’re a good runner, Hannah,” Coach said.

  “Ethan said he’d pick up Will,” Mrs. Harrison said. “So we’ve got time.”

  The two of them looked at each other and nodded, like there was a secret code between them.

  Coach Harrison leaned forward. “So I want to ask you a question and I want you to think about it, okay? Who is Hannah Scott?”

  He stared at her like she was supposed to know the answer. Like this was a pop quiz in Hannah Scott 101. The longer he looked, the more nervous she became. Finally she said the only thing that came to her mind.

  “I don’t know.”

  He nodded as if he anticipated the answer. “Do you believe God loves you?”

  She shrugged.

  “He does, more than you know.”

  Something rose up inside. Normally she’d sit and listen to people talk about God and His love. This time she responded.

  “Why did He take my parents?”

  Coach dipped his head as if she’d played a card that beat all the others on the table. He paused, then said, “I think it’s easy sometimes to blame God for decisions that we make. Or other people make. What do you know about your dad?”

  “He was a runner,” Hannah said. “He got into drugs. And it killed him.”

  “Your grandmother told you that.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you know his name?”

  She hadn’t spoken his name in a long time. Nobody wanted to hear it, especially her grandmother. “Thomas Hill,” she said. It felt good to say it, to just put it out there.

  Coach Harrison looked at his wife and there was the code again. A look. A nod. What was it with these people?

  Coach paused like he was trying to get up enough speed for a long jump. “Hannah, I went to the hospital recently and I met a man there. He’s not doing very well. Diabetes has taken his eyesight. We’ve gotten to know each other. He used to be a runner years ago. And got on drugs. He had a daughter. A baby girl. And he left her with a relative when he left town fifteen years ago.”

  Hannah winced. She heard the words Coach said but she felt like she was someplace else. She saw the look of concern on his face, but her arms felt tingly. Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

  Coach Harrison looked up, into her eyes. “His name is Thomas Hill.”

  She sat back. All she could say was “What?”

  “Hannah, you were told your father died, and I believe that was to protect you. I don’t want to go around your grandmother, but I don’t know how much time you have.”

  Her breath was short now. Her heart beat fast. This couldn’t be true. But what reason would her coach have for lying to her?

  “My father’s alive?” she said.

  “He wants to meet you,” Coach said. “But only if you want to.”

  Mrs. Harrison leaned down and spoke softly. “Hannah, you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do.”

  Hannah had a million questions. The one that came to her was “Why did he leave?”

  Coach looked pained. “He regrets it. He regrets it with his whole heart.”

  “But my grandmother told me . . .”

  Mrs. Harrison put a hand on her shoulder. “Sometimes people who love us and want the best for us don’t make all the right decisions. Your grandmother was just doing what she thought was the best for you.”

  Hannah stared at the ground, then looked back at her coach. “It’s really him? Are you sure?”

  Coach Harrison nodded and Hannah saw something in his eyes, something that made her feel he really cared.

  “How long has he been at the hospital?”

  Coach Harrison said he hadn’t been back long and that he’d come from Fairview. “They sent him here so he could get dialysis.”

  “What’s dialysis?” Hannah said.

  The coach looked at his wife. It was like handing a baton to a runner in a relay race. She immediately picked it up.

  “When a person’s kidneys slow down or stop working, a machine is used to do what healthy kidneys do. Your dad needs that, so they sent him here.”

  Coach leaned forward. “Your dad has such a positive outlook. He’s funny. He’s taught me about running. But he’s also challenged me about how I live.”

  “And dialysis is what’s keeping him alive?”

  Coach Harrison nodded.

  Hannah shook her head. “I don’t understand. How did you find him? Did you go looking for him?”

  Coach explained he met Thomas by accident. “But looking back, I don’t think any of this was chance. I think God was part of this.”

  They settled into silence and headed for the car, and when they reached Hannah’s house, she got out quickly without saying anything and ran inside. As she closed the door, she waved to the Harrisons. She knew she should have said something, should have thanked them, but so much had stirred inside she couldn’t.

  She put her things on the couch and ran to her room, her footsteps echoing in the empty house. She showered and dressed, then crept into her grandmother’s room. Her grandmother was at work but her room was off-limits, so Hannah couldn’t leave any evidence she’d been here.

  She opened the closet and saw her grandmother’s uniforms. But it wasn’t clothes she wanted. High on the top shelf was a small green box. It had been her mother’s. As far as Hannah knew, her grandmother hadn’t touched the pictures inside. She also hadn’t told Hannah about them. Hannah had found them when she was ten, leading her grandmother to institute a rule about “not rooting around in my room.”

  “You keep out of my things and I’ll keep out of yours,” her grandmother said sternly, putting the box high in the closet.

  Hannah pulled it down, then sat on the edge of her grandmother’s bed and took off the top. Inside were old pictures, some faded with age, and she leafed through them until she found the one she wanted.

  A young man with a #77 on his shirt was in midstride on a cross-country course. His legs looked strong and his form perfect. He leaned forward, his momentum propelling him, his arm muscles showing. His eyes drew Hannah. He was ru
nning past a tree and looked straight into the camera. Was it Hannah’s mother who had taken the picture? A reporter for a local newspaper? She didn’t know. All she knew was that this was her father. And the few times she had seen the picture, she had thought he was dead. That made it a sad photo. His eyes were ghostly. He was simply a memory she didn’t share, a name she couldn’t say around her grandmother.

  Every time she asked about him, her grandmother got angry. So Hannah stopped asking. She didn’t like upsetting her grandmother.

  Now, with the Harrisons’ news, the picture changed. Her father was alive and at a hospital about the length of a cross-country race from her house. He could have died there and she would never have known. And it struck her that the picture hadn’t changed. She had changed with the truth that her father was alive.

  She thought about Coach Harrison’s words and what Mrs. Brooks said. Were they right? Was God real? Did He care about her? When anyone brought up her parents, Hannah blamed God for letting them die. But could God have made a way for her to see her father?

  She put the top on the box and placed it back on the shelf in the closet exactly how she had found it. She closed the doors and left the room, then returned to smooth out the bedspread. Back in her room, she pulled out a book to study, but she couldn’t stop looking at the picture.

  CHAPTER 25

  Barbara Scott checked her watch every few minutes of her shift at the hotel, imagining what Hannah was going through at that moment. She knew when Hannah was being picked up. She knew when the race started. She knew Hannah would finish about twenty minutes later, depending on how well she ran and if she had one of her asthma attacks. That concerned Barbara the most.

  It had been several days after the last meet that Barbara found out why Hannah hadn’t finished the race. She wanted to call a halt to the whole thing. No sense dying over a sporting event. She’d picked up the phone to call Coach Harrison, but Hannah stopped her.

  “Grandma, you can’t take this away. I feel like I was made to run.”

  “If you were made to run, God wouldn’t have given you those lungs.”