The Lost Run

Warning: This story deals with sensitive topics and subjects of loss and grief.

I had to stop running. 

Most people stop running because they can’t find the motivation anymore, or maybe because their life gets so busy that they couldn’t fit a simple run into their schedule. That wasn't the case with me.

I glanced over at the alarm clock on my bedside table, the constant “tick-tock” blending into the simple lines of meaningful nothingness. The even knots of the mahogany seemed to sing along with the tick, tick, tock of the clock. I picked it up and hurled it across the room, feeling some satisfaction in the crash that came as it smashed against the bright, whitewashed wall and slid to the ground. 

            The door flung open a moment later as I knew it would, and that head full of red hair stuck through the open space. “Jim, what happened?” 

Nothing. Nothing happened. I slipped. I got up to move my alarm clock across the room because the light reflecting off the top was bothering my eyes. It slipped out of my hand and fell to the ground. 

            The green eyes that met mine narrowed. He didn’t believe me, that much was obvious, but he pulled his head back and shut the door without spewing any more of his rhetoric and mumbo jumbo. 

            I jerked back the cover on my bed after a few moments of heartrending silence. I didn’t even have the ticking of the clock to keep me company now. 

            Grief is normal. Grief is common. What you’re feeling is normal. Tons of people have been through this before. 

            The counselor told me about these things over and over to help me “come to terms” with my accident, and “accept” my injury. The counselor was a quack. 

            I remembered sitting there and glaring at him. Demanding what he would do in my situation, and what he would feel if the very things that gave him life were cut off? 

            As I expected, the rotund face of the man who made his living by listening to sob stories fell. He may have studied books and people for years, but he had never been through what I went through, and he knew it as well as I did. 

            I glanced down at the bedcovers that I had thrown back and gritted my teeth. Before I could move, or even try to move, the door flung open again. I didn’t see anything but a sweatshirt-covered arm shoot into my space and toss a telephone at me. I winced as it smacked me in the chest and cursed at the door. “What is this?” 

            The voice came from around the corner. “Call for you.” 

            I pressed the phone to my ear. “Jim Wilson. What can I do for you?” 

“By the bark of your voice, I’d say quite a lot.” The voice that came through the phone was soft, feminine. 

I growled, literally this time. “What do you want? And who is this?” 

“My name is Rose Marie Hollis, and I am meeting you for coffee this afternoon.” 

Great. A wise guy. Er – gal. “Is that so?” 

“That’s so. Get up and meet me in an hour.” 

I heard a dial tone and I cursed again. Get up and meet her? This was ridiculous. I gripped the sheets in my left hand and shouted so loud it shook the house. “Stanley, get in here and help me get ready.” 

A few moments later, I was humiliated, but dressed, and in the car on the way to the tiny coffee shop. Stanley unceremoniously parked, dumped me into my wheelchair, and rolled me inside to a tiny table. A girl sat on the other side of the table, her small frame engulfed in a large sweater. Her hair and eyes were brown like the brown of wood and moss -- shot with green and yellow flecks in her eyes, but lighter brown in her hair. She gave me an even stare, with barely the hint of a smile. “Mr. Wilson. I’m glad you could make it.” 

I grunted. “I really didn’t have much of a choice.”

She smiled, and it reached all the way to her eyes, and they crinkled with the motion. “I’m glad you came just the same.” 

“What’s this all about?” I wasn’t one to waste time on decorum. I had a room to get back to. 

“Your counselor recommended I talk to you. I’m a writer.” She said, by way of introduction. 

“Well, I’m not entirely sure that I appreciate the recommendation by my counselor, Mr. Quack. Or what I can do to help you.” 

She shook her head, and the brown hair swung in sequence. “No, Mr. Wilson. It’s what I can do to help you.” 

I blinked. “How can a cute little thing like you help me? I was a star marathon runner, second to none, and with fifteen gold medals under my belt. I ran like I slept; I ran like I breathed. I was the best in my craft until a –” I paused, tempering my words. She was a lady after all. “-- stupid idiot took the very best thing that I had to offer. “ I gestured down at my legs. “I have nothing because of him. The very thing that gave me life was stolen away from me because one man had too much to drink.” I was shouting now, but I didn’t care. “Do you know what that feels like? Can you or your stupid ability to write help me out? What on earth is that going to do for me? A cripple?” 

Her brown eyes were gleaming as she locked her gaze onto mine. I was breathing hard by now, but she didn’t move a muscle. She simply jerked one shoulder and then the other, moving her sweater sleeves to the top of the table. My gaze slowly traveled down until I saw the edge of the knit sweater and the sleeves. They were blue, soft, and… empty. 

I tore my gaze back up to her face. I searched for sympathy and found none. Anger, white-hot rage bled out from every pore on her young face. She gritted her teeth and when she spoke, her tone was low and hard. “Listen to me carefully, Mr. Wilson. I am not here to stroke your ego. I am not here to listen to what could have been or what would have been. I am here to help you face the reality of what did happen, and that you are not the last person nor the first person that tragedy has stolen away their dreams. “ 

I opened my mouth to speak, but she continued, never raising her voice. “I was a writer. An Academy award winning writer. I wrote screenplays, I wrote books, I wrote so many things. I had my books placed on the New York Times list of bestsellers, and then my body was wracked with disease. I lost my hands. I lost my arms, all the way above the elbow. I lost my ability to write unless I want to let the thoughts from my very soul be written out by an assistant, or be spoken into a device --- so I can struggle with technology to get out of my soul the very thing that gives me life – words, literature, stories, articles. “ 

She leaned closer. “I have chosen to move on. I have chosen to pick up, allow others to help me, and survive.” 

Those brown eyes turned into flames, staring at me so intensely that I couldn’t look away. “Are you willing to do that, Mr. Wilson? Are you willing to forgive the drunk that rots in his grave now and move on with your life? Are you going to let them give you the prosthetics they can? So that you can run still, you can live again? You can use your testimony to help other amputees and other struggling people?” 

The girl got up, her empty sweater sleeves swinging listlessly by her side. “Or are you going to feel sorry for yourself and wallow in self-pity until you’re rotting in a grave beside that drunk that stole your ability to live?”

And then she walked away. 

I thought about what she said, long and hard. Her words rolled over and over in my mind through the coming months. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep for days. Until I finally came to a conclusion. 

Excerpt from The Washington Star

By: Rose Marie Hollis 

Transcribed by G. Hollis 

Jim Wilson was in rare form today as he ran his sixteenth marathon. The new RSF legs that he wore propelled him to the finish line. Jim Wilson is back in the races, and while did not win a gold this time, he won so much more. You could see it in his eyes and in his smile as he broke across the finish line. Run on, Jim Wilson, and run well.