Knowing what was coming, I eased myself up off the couch and paced toward the TV, preparing myself nearly as much as she had to be. As her hands left the bar for her Piked Tkatchev, I held my breath knowing she’d be going straight into her Deltchev immediately after.
But it didn’t come.
She left the bar beautifully but traveled too far to form a comfortable grip on her return, and I could do nothing but watch as her fingers stretched to hang on, prolonging her swing and changing the angle of her body.
I reached for her as though I could actually catch her through the TV, but her fingers left the bar unplanned and unhindered. She tucked into herself like someone practiced at falling, but the momentum was too much to combat, and the very apex of her neck and spine struck the ground with a brutality that nearly made me sick.
Her body crumpled into itself before slowly unraveling into a state of stillness I’d never seen it take on before. Her lifeless legs lulled open and her empty, grip-covered hand fell to her side and unfurled.
Every normally vibrant indicator of consciousness was absent, and the immediate silence of the crowd and announcers settled hauntingly into my bones.
My first instinct was to go to her immediately. Just drop everything, run straight out the fucking door, and not even bother turning back.
Thankfully though, I gave myself just a moment to think it through and realized that would be about the dumbest thing I could do.
Carli grabbed me on one side and Connor took the other, chaining me like a wild fucking animal, but I’d already figured it out on my own.
Reasoned it in my head and heart and fucking accepted it just like I did every-fucking-thing else.
“Cal,” I whispered to myself, watching her on the screen and sinking to my knees in order to pray for a miracle. All I could do was ask for everyone that was there to help her. I couldn’t ask them myself, so I asked God to deliver a message for me. I didn’t pray often, and I didn’t use language He would be proud of, but I believed. In that moment, I believed and I did it as hard as I could because I had to.
I was helpless to do anything more.
She was in Brazil, for fuck’s sake.
I scrubbed angry hands down the tears on my face.
It wasn’t like I could be there for her now, in this instant. It was going to take me at least a day to get there. Guaranteed. Between getting on a flight, getting to the airport, actual travel time, and finding my way to her once I got there, I had a long road ahead of me.
One I fully intended to traverse, but I’d rather do it with some information.
Stepping closer to the TV, I watched as a crowd of people worked on her, willing her to give me some sort of sign, some sort of indicator that she was okay.
“Come on, little Pea. Give me something. Move. Please move.”
Mindless of distance and futility, my fingers sought the skin of her wrist, touching the highly pixilated virtual depiction of it lightly. I willed her to feel me despite impossibility, to give me just one fucking thing I asked for.
She didn’t.
Disregarding the past had done me no favors. History—despite hope and mental sorcery—
Repeated.
Over and over I pictured his face in my head.
His eyes were like actual pools of water—moving, flowing, and changing color along with depth. Each time his focus shifted, so did mine, zeroing in on a new fleck of deep blue and trying to help it float through the much more abundant aqua. Their magnetism made it hard to focus on his words, but I wouldn’t have traded those moments spent studying their nuances for all of the words in the dictionary.
Sure, looks were shallow and words could mean everything, but in those split seconds when his eyes changed before my own, I would have sworn on my every Olympic medal it was the opposite.
And right now, I needed the comfort of that feeling. I needed it to swaddle me in its warmth and make everything feel right again.
The word wrong had never been a concept worthy of my focus, but as I tried to make sense of what was happening, denying its existence was no longer an option.
Up felt like down and left very nearly tricked me into believing it was right.
Voices called out to me constantly and on repeat, but none of them were the one I wanted. Like they were speaking through water, every pronunciation of my name seemed foreign and unwelcome, and my brain did nothing but scream another.
I tried valiantly to talk my uncooperative body into bending to my will, but for the first time in my life it wouldn’t.
Digging deep down into my sternum, I found the last vestiges of my energy and willed them into one single action.
Into one single word.
“Nik.”
Priorities shifted and silence mocked me.
My entire life had been a series of events all specifically driven toward this very moment. I’d known all of my work was meant to culminate in a flourish of glory and significance. I’d known there’d be a second in time when I knew why each part of my life had played out the way it had.
I’d even known it would probably happen now—on this stage, in front of all of these people.
I’d just had the timing wrong by about three minutes.
But I knew now.
This was it.
This moment of reflection and clarity forced on me by the inability to move made it fucking impossible to deny.
He was everything.
“Calia,” I finally heard, the sound of Coach Banning’s concerned voice finding its way through the muck of my confusion.
I didn’t answer though.
I tried.
But the chain of communication from my brain to my lips was obviously hindered by a temporarily broken link.
God, I hoped it was temporary.
“Callie, listen to me. Do not move,” she instructed, making me mentally roll my eyes.
I wasn’t even responding vocally. Moving seemed pretty fucking unlikely. But, given the grave look on her stricken face, I decided to take note of the memo and put an asterisk next to it. Move it up to the very top of my Don’t Do List.
With my options for activities dwindling, I tried again to make sound vibrate properly off of my vocal chords.
“N-N-Nik.”
No one paid me any mind, but I wasn’t sure if it was because they couldn’t hear me or that they just had more important things to worry about. Everything seemed surreal to the point of feeling out of body, and it made it nearly impossible to discern whether or not the things I thought I knew were worthy of validation.
Whatever the case, after several ventures with nothing gained, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort anymore. I knew he wasn’t there to answer, and none of these people knew we had a relationship other than coach and athlete. I’d thought it was important to keep it that way, and as was my nature, when I willed something, I settled for nothing else.
That was why I was here in the first place, competing in my third Olympics and largely ignoring the ailing cries of my overworked body. I didn’t know when to say Uncle, and now, with the feeling in my legs eerily absent, my body was screaming it for me like a plane on fire with both wings broken off.
I could, however, feel my arms, and, having just rolled me up in order to carefully place a backboard beneath me, they were strapping them tightly to each side of my body with thick velcro straps. I figured if there was ever a time to cry, this would have been it.
Instead, I focused on a single, floating particle of chalk, the brilliance of its perfect white shining starkly against the obscurity of a faceless, silent crowd. It fluttered and flipped aimlessly, waiting for something to catch it or get in its way.