“Coach, it’s been training after training for race after race. I know I signed up for that and I’m grateful for the opportunity to compete but in so doing I’ve let everything else fall to pieces. My focus has been on one thing and one thing only, running. It’s time to pick up the pieces and fix things before they get swept away”
A single tear fell from the coach’s eye as though the eye realised the gravity of the moment and power of the speech and so formed a quick ballot on which tear would have the honour of amplifying the moment. If there was an award for best single teardrop in an emotional scene, this tear would win by a landslide.
“You’re right. I’ve been too hard on you. I’m so sorry, Jerome. I can do better. I will do better”
“Coach, it’s not you, it’s me” evoking the famous line every partner in a failing relationship says, but this time, Jerome actually meant it. “You haven’t pushed me as hard as I’ve pushed myself. You’ve been a great coach and I hope to still have you as my coach when I decide to return to racing. Right now, I just need you as a friend”
“Then I’ll be the best damn friend you ever had”
“Sure, coach, Sure. Take me home” The coach was an endearing fellow and never failed to make Jerome smile.
Jerome’s home was evidently the home of an athlete. There were running shoes strewn everywhere, trophies lining the walls and various medals hanging in various places. He crutched into his kitchen to pour a juice and reflected on a life without running. His life had always been about running, about being the fastest man alive, so much so that everything else fell by the wayside. He stared lovingly at an image of himself with his daughter, she was wearing one of his medals. He had to see her, even if it meant speaking to her mother.
“Hi Karen, is Hallie home?”
“Jerome, you’re not scheduled to see her this weekend”
“I broke my ankle, doctor says I’ll be out for six weeks, maybe more. Figured with all this spare time I’d like to spend it with our daughter”
“You push yourself too hard, all the time, you pushed so hard that it pushed us away, Jerome. It’s about time you broke something” Karen’s tone was rising, she’d said her piece long ago and many times since and yet Jerome hadn’t heeded her words then, he took his frustrations out on the track and perpetuated the cycle of his single focus.
“I didn’t call to argue, Karen. Can I see her this weekend?”
“She’s busy this weekend” She said abruptly.
“Oh, ok then” Sensing Jerome’s disappointment and not wanting their daughter to grow up without a father, Karen relented. After all, it seemed he was making a conscious effort this time.
“You can see her on Monday, after school of course”
“Thank you, I miss you”
“Goodbye, Jerome”
Of course, Jerome was a little disappointed at being hung up on, but at least there was the hope of seeing his daughter, even if it was for a short time. Such a thought made Jerome want to leap with joy, however, the broken ankle soon put a stop to that. As he lay in bed at the close of the day, Jerome thought about all the kinds of activities he could do with his daughter. Maybe they’d go for ice-cream, watch a movie or maybe they could just sit in the park if it was a nice day. He settled into bed and slept. That night something bizarre happened.
Jerome was still adjusting to life with a broken ankle, it had only been a day and so he could be forgiven for simply forgetting that it had occurred. Therefore, when he swung his legs off the bed to get up, he didn’t notice the lack of pain when he applied pressure on his broken ankle. In fact, he had gotten all the way to the kitchen, pulled a bowl from the cupboard, poured the cereal into said bowl and then poured over the milk on said cereal in said bowl, but still hadn’t realised that he left his crutches in his room. It was only when he felt an itch on his ankle that he noticed that he still had a cast on. It certainly explained why one foot was heavier and slightly higher up than the other. At first, Jerome put it down to that groggy feeling people get in the mornings. Upon realisation that he should probably get his crutches, Jerome zoomed into his bedroom to take them, leaving a sparkling trail in his wake. He assumed that he had just walked into his bedroom and that the magnets that had suddenly gone from the fridge to the floor had always been there. When he took his crutches he hobbled around the house to await his coach’s arrival to take him to the hospital.
As the car pulled up, Jerome could hear the loud music blaring from within and was out of the door in a flash to greet his coach who didn’t seem to notice his speedy arrival.
“Ah Jerome, here let me help you in”
“Thanks, coach”
“X-Ray time today, I wonder what it’d be like to have X-Ray vision” The coach pondered as they pulled up to the hospital.
“Beats me. I’m gonna ask for the X-Ray, Hallie would love to see it”
“How is she doing?”
“Seeing her on Monday”
“That’s great news, Jerome. I’m so happy for you” The coach genuinely sounded sincere, after all, this gentle giant really did care.
“Thanks, coach. Say, do you know of any activities we can do together?”
“Well, when I was about Hallie’s age, my dad would take me to the park so he could drink a can on a bench and leer at the mothers. If he was in a good mood, he’d let me have a sip and if he was in a bad mood he’d force a sip down my throat regardless. He was a great dad for building character”
“I don’t think I’ll be doing that, coach”
“I dunno, the monkey bars were alright” The pair laughed about it in a twisted way someone laughs at other people’s misfortunes. You’ve got to laugh otherwise you’ll cry they say.
Many people were in the waiting room upon their arrival, however, Jerome had an appointment and so was fortunate not to have to wait alongside the strange cast of characters that can only seem to be found in hospital waiting rooms. The kind of people with various household items sticking out of them or more often stuck inside of them. Pleasant bunch.
“Sir, all ready for your X-Ray?” The doctor wasn’t the same as the day before, this one was cuter in a stern kind of fashion. Coach was beside himself, totally smitten at first sight.
“Yes ma’am, Jerome is ready for anything” He said with a puffed out chest. The doctor smiled.
“Great, come this way and we’ll take that cast off to have a look shall we?”
“Yes we shall ma’am and might I add that is a beautiful name you have there sewn on your coat” The coach was attempting to make inroads in a manner that was as subtle as a clown at an Elvis convention, as smooth as a pebble beach on a particularly windy day, as charming as whatever simile you can come up with.
“Why thank you, sir. Right this way” The doctor shrugged off coach’s advances, she’d probably heard them a thousand times before and will hear them a thousand times over. Truth be told she was a little flattered the first dozen times but now it had simply become monotonous. If more truth be told, she was actually interested in women but didn’t have the heart to tell the legion of guys chasing her.
Nobody noticed as Jerome walked to the X-Ray room without making proper use of his crutches. He simply had them on and every now and then made it seem like he was using them. He didn’t do it intentionally, it was just that he wasn’t used to using crutches and didn’t actually know how they worked. Crutches are complicated contraptions.
“Take a seat here and we’ll get this cast off” The doctor produced a rather vicious looking saw from wherever one keeps the vicious looking saws and started to cut through the cast. She assured Jerome that it was safe but it didn’t stop him thinking that if she sneezed then he would lose a leg.
“Now I’m just going to place this machine over your ankle and that will take the X-Ray to have a look at” The machine wasn’t ominous, a modest chamber that covered the afflicted part and then made a foreboding humming noise as it fired X-Rays to see the skeleton beneath the fle
sh. After a few brief moments, the X-Ray was completed and the doctor was loading it up on her computer to inspect. When the image had fully loaded, the doctor made several perplexed noises and a plethora of hmmms.
“There must be something wrong with the machine. Let’s try again, remember to stay perfectly still and we’ll have this done in no time” Again with the foreboding humming and again with the perplexed noises.
“What is it doctor?” Jerome asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before” The doctor opted for a somewhat clichéd line “If we take the image taken yesterday and the images taken just now” She said as she placed the images on the light screen for dramatic effect “You’ll see that the fracture has completely healed. In fact, it looks stronger than before” The doctor had used her pen to demonstrate this, much like the doctor from the previous day.
“Doctor, if Jerome needs a new leg please take mine, I’m certain it’s compatible” The coach opined, clearly unaware of how amputations and transplants work.
“That won’t be necessary, sir. Jerome is in fact healed from what I can see. There must’ve been something wrong with the X-Ray from yesterday or perhaps a mix up. A broken ankle healing overnight is impossible” She laughed at the notion of rapidly healing bones, but stopped herself short as she pondered on the ramifications.
“What does it mean, doctor?”
“It means you can go home, you’re in good health. I’d advise to avoid putting extraneous strain on your ankle to be safe though”
“Thank you, doctor. Really, thank you, you’re a great doctor ma’am” Coach was all a flutter.
“You’re welcome, sir”
“Hey, Doc. Any chance I can keep those X-Rays, my daughter would love to see them”
“Of course” The doctor took the scans from the light panel and handed them to Jerome “How old is your daughter?”
“8, looks like her mother thankfully”
“And nothing like me double thankfully” Coach interjected.
“I’m sure she’d be beautiful even if she did look like either of you two” Coach was paralysed by the compliment, his face stuck in a bashful grin.
As soon as coach regained sensation in his body the pair departed the hospital, unaware that a few days later the doctor would be wrestling with the seemingly miraculous recovery in her mind over and over again causing her to have an aneurysm and die in her pokey apartment. The service was very nice the attendees said, despite it being all about the death of a loved one. A nice funeral is an oxymoron in of itself, unless of cause you hated the deceased and took up dancing lessons for the sole purpose of putting on a beautiful display on the grave, in that instance it probably would be a nice funeral.
“I think I want to go to the track tomorrow, coach”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? The nice doctor did say to take it easy”
“Coach, I feel fine. She also said that my ankle was stronger than before. Come on, just to see”
“One lap. And that’s all. Coach’s orders” He was firm but fair.
Jerome took the crutches from his coach’s car, not that he needed them, and headed into his house waving goodbye to the coach who promptly accelerated on to his destination. When he was all alone in his house, Jerome was at a loss, he didn’t know what to do with his day and so decided to go out for a little jog to clear his head.
People turned their heads when they saw Jerome coming, he was sure that he was simply jogging but to the other pedestrians it looked as though the man was running for his life. Jerome’s route was a path that he had followed many times before during training. It took him along the canal, through the parks and suburbs and then back to his house. He would stop by the canal and watch the boats go by while recovering his energy. It was peaceful, calming. This time, however, he didn’t stop to watch the boats go by because he didn’t feel exhausted, he kept on going without taking a break to enjoy the picturesque surroundings. It did cross his mind that he was overtaking a lot of cyclists, more so than usual, but he just figured they were being particularly slow that day, what surprised him more was when he returned to his house and noticed that it had only taken him fifteen minutes to run the route that would typically take him two hours at a jogging pace. He could run the route again but what would be the point, so he entered his house and unlaced his shoes. During the act of unlacing, he noticed that the rubber soles had worn away considerably, it seemed to him that this was more a case of frequent use and not the extraordinarily brisk jog. Thankfully, Jerome was an avid collector of running shoes, having accumulated enough to make a top tier basketball player weep.
With more hours in the day than he cared to have, Jerome took the X-Ray scans out of their manila envelope and held them up to the light. It was fascinating how one day there was a clear fracture and then the next there was none. It defied logic, moreover, it greeted logic and lured it into a false sense of security before pummelling it to death with a comically large mallet. Jerome couldn’t wrap his head around the conundrum, perhaps there had been a mix up and he had received the wrong scan, however, that didn’t explain how the two feet looked almost identical save for the fracture. Not wanting an aneurysm, Jerome put the scans back in the envelope and made some dinner.
He was famished, the jog had really taken it out of him. His fridge was laden with healthy nutritious meals which resembled a veritable gardener’s delight, and so he prepared one of such meals and wolfed it down. Yet, he was still hungry, he took another meal and finished that in rapid time and then another followed by another and a side of pistachios to boot. He finally felt full after the third meal, leaving the pistachios to snack on while settling into a film.
The next day was consumed by Jerome’s anticipation to go to the track, he missed every facet of it, the sounds of shoes pelting the dirt, the smells of sweat as each athlete pushed themselves to their limits and the tastes of…well nothing much in particular because he was thinking about a running track and not a restaurant. When he heard coach pull up to his driveway he rocketed out of the door just as coach was thinking about blasting the horn to signal his arrival. Thankfully the neighbours didn’t have to hear the arrogance of the car horn because coach noticed Jerome at his door before he could complete the motion.
“One lap.” He added a full stop to prove that this time he was serious.
“Yes, coach. Just the one” Jerome entered the passenger side.
“How’s the ankle?”
“You know, it’s the strangest thing. I could’ve sworn it was broken but I feel fine now. As good as new, better even”
“Still, I don’t want you overworking yourself, Jerome. That nice doctor said not to”
“You took a real shine to her didn’t you coach?” That line of inquiry made the coach turn a charming shade of crimson.
“She was a very nice lady”
“That she was coach. That she was”
A few people were at the race track when coach’s car pulled up, the usual mix of dedicated runners and casual joggers going around the track, there was even a couple of rebellious souls walking around the track, not even power walking, the kind where they furiously flail their arms about, just walking and having a natter about whatever the other one did at the hair salon the other day. Insufferable people.
There was, however, a new person at the track, one which neither Jerome nor coach had seen there before. This was strange considering the pair were regular frequenters of the race track, they knew everyone and everyone knew them. To have a stranger in their midst was curious indeed, especially considering this stranger was running laps around the others on the track.
“Who’s that guy, coach?”
“No idea, but he’s running laps around the others”
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