by E.A. Schmidt
* * * *
He woke up in a bright, white room 11 hours later. The smell of hospitals always made him squeamish. It reminded him of sick, meek people. Sick people always freaked him out. He was only vaguely aware of the fact that he had recently joined their ranks. A nurse and resident doctor were talking quietly near the doorway.
“He’s a model student”, the nurse said, “A bunch of his friends came by earlier and they were singing his praises. They were mostly nice young men from the school’s track team. They told me that he came in third place in a big race yesterday. He’s apparently been working himself very hard. One of the boys told me that he had been spending all of his free time in the library and hasn’t even taken the time to break for meals.”
“Well, that would explain his very low blood sugar”, the resident said. He was hooked up to an intravenous drip.
“Yup, and all that work had him thrown into a fever. His temperature was hovering around a hundred and two for a few hours last night. It’s since come back down.”
“I see. Well, he looks like he’s waking up now. I’ll fill him in.”
“Yes, Dr. Johnson.” The nurse’s shoes tapped all the way down the linoleum hallway.
He blinked his eyes heavily and stared at the wall in front of him. His vision was blurry and his head hurt from where it hit the pavement. Dr. Johnson came over to his bedside and flipped through his chart.
“And how are we feeling today?”
“Mmm…all right. What happened?”
“You worked yourself into a fit. Your blood sugar plummeted because you didn’t eat anything after that big run you had yesterday. That caused you to faint last night and a fever set in soon after that, probably because of the stress that you’ve put yourself under by working so hard.”
“Oh.” His voice was disinterested and his eyes drifted toward the window where there was a cornucopia of flowers, gifts and get-well-soon cards all basking in the warming rays of the sun. They were mostly from other members of the team and his classmates. “What’s all that?”
“You’re friends have been stopping by all morning when they heard you were sick.” He kept staring at the gifts. He simply couldn’t believe that all of that was for him. What had he done to deserve all of that? All he did was get sick. He blinked heavily again and tried to think of who would drop off cards for him. They were obscure faces of friends and teammates whom he saw everyday but never really seemed to be in touch with.
“Did a kid named Dan come by?”
“Uh, I don’t remember seeing that particular name on the sign-in, although you can check with the nurse.” Dr. Johnson cleared his throat, “Now, I think that you’ll be okay to go home soon. Your blood sugar stabilized and your fever dropped off a lot.”
He looked at his watch and nearly jumped, “Oh jeez, I missed my meeting for this morning!”
“And that reminds me, don’t overdo it. We’re going to release you but only under strict instructions to not undergo any seriously stressful activities. That means taking it easy with the studying and make sure you take at least one full day off from the running and then ease back into it. Also, be sure to get a lot of rest. And don’t forget to eat again, okay? You guys are working yourselves too hard. It’s a rat race even before you graduate nowadays.”
“Ok.” He slowly nodded his head but he wasn’t really listening to these instructions he had no intention of following.
The doctor left and had the nurse remove his IV drip. He lay in bed for a few more minutes before his next visitor came.
“What happened?!” Her shrill and worried voice reached his ears before she came into his periphery. She looked flushed, as if she had been running. Her hair was disheveled and her bag was open. It was his girlfriend.
“Your bag is open”, he remarked.
“Are you all right, sweetie?” She knelt beside his bed and stroked his face.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“You can’t do this to yourself! What have I been telling you? I knew something like this was going to happen. You just don’t take care of yourself. This is like what happened last semester. Oh, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“When you get out of here I’m going to be sure to cook you dinner at night from now on. No more of this not eating. If you get any thinner you’re going to vanish.”
“Okay.”
“I heard about your race”, her face changed from an exasperated look to a small smile. “Good for you, sweetie.”
“Thanks, I can do better next year though.”
“Oh, c’mon. Don’t do that to yourself. You did great. You really did. Everyone I spoke to on the team was singing your praises. It was a great race. Give yourself that much at least. And I’m sure your lab turned out great too. But, hey”, she pulled his chin up toward her eyes, “you gotta be more aware of taking care of yourself. You’re going to get really sick next time if you don’t take it easy every now and then. You hear me?”
“Yes, you’re right.”
She sighed with the vain hope that some of her words had gotten through to him. “I’m worried about you. Just promise me that you’ll be careful and not work too hard, okay?”
“I promise.”
“Good.” She looked at the now-removed IV and cringed, “Why do you do this to yourself?” she asked quietly.
He thought for a moment and looked up at her and suddenly felt like talking a little, “I always think of success as like the finish line of any race. It’s so small. It’s just a little line of white paint and sometimes the margin of difference between who gets over that line first can be just as small. But that line is still there. I just always want to be on the right side of that line. I don’t want there to be any question of where I am in relation to that thin line. I wanna be perfect.
“Well, no one can be perfect.”
“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get as close as you can to it.”
“I suppose.” She bit her lower lip and held his hand. Her anxiety was palpable. “You know, there’s also a thin line between perfection…and other things too”, she said warningly.
“I suppose”, he said.
* * * *
Although Dr. Johnson had warned him against strenuous activity, when he got out of the hospital he felt great, fantastic even. He mostly attributed this to his innate strength as an athlete and only partially to the copious amounts of sleep and glucose he received in the hospital. As he was sitting on his front porch he saw Dan walking in front of his house.
“Hey Dan”, he sat up in his deck chair. He had his chemistry book on his lap.
“Hey, man. I just wanted to stop by to see how you were doing. I heard that you had a bit of a slip up last night.”
“Yea, the doctor said I had a fever from overdoing it.”
“Bummer, dude. We’ll I’m glad you’re feeling better now. You look better.”
“Thanks, yea, it’s great to see you again. What are you up to now?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking of doing a few repeats on the track.”
“Do you mind if I join?”
“You sure you’re up for that?”
“Absolutely. I feel great.”
“Okay, cool. It’ll be good to have the company.”
“Great!”
The two jogged up to the track and warmed up. They jumped into the intervals. They were running two laps hard and jogging every third.
“Hey…Dan”, he panted after their third interval. He had been tailing Dan the whole time. When he pointed this out Dan politely attributed it only to his recent hospitalization.
“Yea?”
“Slow down, man. We were 10 seconds fast there.”
Dan looked back and smirked. “C’mon, let’s see what we’re made of.” Suddenly, Dan took off on the fourth repeat, cutting the rest short. Surprised, he yelled at him, “You, bastard! I’ll give
you a race!” He smiled as he sprinted to catch him.
As the duo peeled around the curve of the track for their fourth half-mile repeat, they passed two walkers. They were middle-aged women wearing bright sweats looking to burn a few calories before their kids hopped off the school bus. The one turned to the other and asked, “Who is he talking to?”
“I have no idea”, she replied as she stared at the single runner, doing lap, after lap, after lap.
