“I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t know what you are trying to tell me.” Stephen raised the palms of his hands up in a state of confusion but his voice revealed the irritation he felt towards his father’s exhausting disability.
Tom lifted the keys in his hand and slammed them into Stephen’s open palm. Then he clumsily turned to walk away.
Stephen watched his father slowly make it to the top of their steps when the awareness of his father’s actions hit him.
“Dad! Wait.”
Tom paused and with greater effort than it took to climb the stairs, he turned and faced Stephen.
“Dad, is this? Are you telling me?” He stumbled for words as if he was trying to find a playing card after having just dropped the entire deck. “Are you giving me the keys to your house?”
Stephen stared at his father with expectancy of some sort of verbal explanation or confirmation. The persistent blank look on Tom’s face showed no signs of an impending response.
“Are you giving me the keys to your house for us to move in to?” Stephen asked unconfidently?
Tom’s unmoving body told Stephen to continue.
“You’re giving me the keys to your house for us to sell it?
A raise of Tom’s head confirmed Stephen’s question.
“Dad,” his voice becoming overwhelmed with gratitude and sadness, “but your house? That’s your house. I don’t want to make you sell your house because of me.”
Tom descended the stairs and walked to face his son. Locking into Stephen’s eyes, Tom raised his one functional arm and used it to survey the expanse of Stephen’s yard and home.
Catching on, Stephen hesitantly assured his father, “This is your home now?”
Tom’s arm returned and gripped Stephen’s shoulder with a soft squeeze.
“You’re saving our house. You do know that, right? I can’t tell you how much this helps. How much it means…” Stephen paused to steady his voice.
In the moment’s pause, Tom raised his arm and waived his hand as if shaking off the gratitude. He returned to the stairs; negotiating them much more quickly than he had previously.
Stephen gripped the keys and watched his ailing father reenter his family’s home; all of his family’s home. His lungs released and a faint whisper emerged from his lips, “Thanks, Dad.”
The white sign on the floor ahead was barely noticeable but its presence caught Stephen’s eye. Sometime in the minute after he ran past the sign, his mind registered that he had read “Mile 21.”
Over five more miles to go still?
The singular thought of running nearly another hour was enough to make him collapse on the spot. His body was aching and tender touches were evolving into painful points. Stephen wasn’t doing well and he knew it. An imaginary vice wrapped around his back and continued to tighten. Rising stomach contractions were an overwhelming suggestion that drinking the entire bottle of that blue sports drink must have been another rookie mistake.
Stephen decided to do a “systems check” if for no other reason than to take his mind off the grueling pavement he labored along. Working his way up from the ground, he stole a glance at his shoes. Despite seeing they were stained, scuffed, and sweaty and would likely have to be burned to avoid a hazardous material team’s intervention, they seemed to be holding up well. He saw no real problems so far, other than the fact they didn’t have wheels on them. He would have to remember that one.
He considered the state of his feet: certainly not the best of conditions. He looked down at the road but to his surprise he was not actually running along a bed of nails. Nevertheless, every step painfully drove the hard cotton material of his shoe into a deep blister growing along the outer callus on the innermost toe of his left foot. He was pretty sure there was one on his right foot as well but that whole area had gone completely numb. He decided the right blister had already popped and was now exposing his toe to some infectious bacteria growing in a blood-soaked sock. Or perhaps he couldn’t feel it because the toe had simply fallen off. He reasoned that would probably be better than the bacteria. Regardless, the right side would be getting table scraps worth of attention in comparison to Mount St. Helen’s eruption on the left foot.
Knees? How you guys doing down there? Shot to hell; okay then.
Each leg threatened to buckle under the failing he felt in his knees. He felt pain with every step of his stride as it crashed into the unforgiving slab of titanium people had apparently mistaken for asphalt. Stephen thought about the width of Hailey’s old wheelchair and wondered if she’d mind sharing with her soon-to-be crippled father.
What the heck is going on with my hips? Why do they hurt so much?
Everything about Stephen’s hips just seemed to ache. He didn’t know if it was the lower back reverberations firing pulses through the bones, but his entire pelvis had nearly gone numb. He could barely feel his hip-flexor muscles. For that matter, he couldn’t even feel his shorts chaffing against his legs anymore. If there was a high note to the screams of his body it was the loss of that inner-thigh burn caused by his overly sweat-saturated running shorts. He dwelt on the feeling, or lack of feeling, of his running shorts. He questioned whether it was entirely possible to have lost the shorts somewhere in the last few miles; the thought gave him a humorous pause but it evolved into a concerned curiosity which no sensible man would bother entertaining. But Stephen was well past sensibility. He tried to resist the unreasonable thought that he might have actually lost his shorts, but it was futile. As ridiculous as it was, Stephen looked down just to make sure there was something still providing coverage to his waist.
“Alright,” he lectured to himself. “Keep going. No police escorts to the finish line today.”
With only a slight twinge of relief, he continued the inspection of his worn and wearing body. He had no idea why his shoulders were so exhausted. They were fatigued and he felt invisible sandbags resting upon each shoulder pressing him further down. The arms swung so low that his fingers were ready to overcome skeletal limitations and begin drooping into the rugged pavement. Stephen looked at the tense hands and released his tight grip on the air. It relieved some of the pressure on his shoulders and he wondered just how long he had been running with clenched fists. Regardless, the damage was done and the stiffness of his shoulders quickly returned.
“Come on, Mr. Stephen! You got this.”
The voice startled his drift from aimless thoughts. Incapable of responding to his mind’s curiosity, lethargic reflexes contributed barely enough muscular activity for him to lean his head backwards towards the voice’s source. Entering his eye’s corner with a steady plodding, Stephen saw the young lady from the starting line steadily approaching him.
Her pace dragged from an apparent, yet undecided conflict between determination and exhaustion. Previously brushed and attentively braided hair had become matted and it recoiled with every graceless step of her embattled stride.
With a high pitched, heavily labored voice she slowed her step alongside to match his pace, “We can do it Stephen. Just don’t stop. We can do this.”
The familiar voice in the midst of hostile territory gave an instant lift to his to demeanor and Stephen responded with a pained smile. “Hey Carrie. It’s good to see you again.”
He could see her cheeks were flush but, undeterred by the harsh journey, her smile remained ever-present.
“You’re doing great, Carrie. Keep it up.”
Carrie let out a pent-up burst of expression mixed with a healthy dose of sensationalized drama, “Oh my gosh, I am about to die! Seriously, Stephen- I’m pretty sure there’s not a crime I wouldn’t up and commit right now for just five minutes in a Krispy Kreme bakery.”