Page 104 of Roan

I might be.

I hit the radio button again. “What?” I look down at my bike, wondering if they saw something on the monitors I hadn’t yet noticed. A flat tire? Overheating? Low fuel already? “What are you talking about?”

Parker’s voice comes on the radio, muffled, and if I had to guess, panicked. “You need to go back to the last check point.”

“Why?” I must have let off the throttle, the guy behind me bumps my back tire.

“It’s… Ophelia.”

My stomach drops to my knees. Immediately, my thoughts are on her, then the baby. Remember when I said a blink of an eye? I meant this.

Ordinarily, I doubt any other mechanic would have told me that. They would have kept it from me. But he knows her name will be the only reason for me dropping out of the race. Something’s wrong with her.

Wheeling out of the rock pits, I race back to the last check point and to the chase truck.

My heart drops to my knees when I see Ophelia. She’s doubled over holding her stomach with medics surrounding her. I rush toward them. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Her eyes find mine, both relieve and fear in them. “Don’t let the baby die!” she begs, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Roan, please. Whatever happens next, save the baby.” Wrapping my arms around, I hold her close. She fists my jersey in her hands. “Please!”

I want to tell her I will, but just like in Peru, I have no control of what happens next. I motioned around me to the security and medics. “Do something!” I roar in frustration. “Get her to the hospital.”

Carl appears by my side, scooping Ophelia up in his arms. “There’s a hospital twenty miles from here.”

I can’t accurately describe the next hour—Ophelia gripping my jersey, screaming in pain, the helicopter ride to the nearest hospital. It’s a blur. But my life, and everything in it, changes in the blink of an eye.

Do you see that man on his knees? The one screaming at the top of his lungs for someone to do something, anything? That’s a man who has nothing left to lose. His world begins and ends with the two people on that hospital bed.

By the time we land at the hospital, my wife’s face is blank, unconscious to the world around her.

“Do something!” I scream, only no one responds to me. No one speaks fucking English around me. I stare at the dirty floor of the hospital, a reminder that we’re far from home, on foreign land, and I can’t control anything around me.

“Placenta ea nyamela!” one of the doctors says. I rack my brain, trying to remember what little I know of the language here. Under the pressure, nothing comes to mind. Even the words I’d perfected over the years.

Doctors shout around me, working frantically on her, and I remain covered in the very same dirt on the floor, my body beaten from twelve hours on a bike only to be brought to my knees by the idea that my life may never be the same after this.

God, if you’re real, do something. Please. I’m fucking begging you.

Parker, who knows bits and pieces of the language they speak in Lesotho, grabs my shoulders. “Her placenta is detaching. They’re going to take her for an emergency C-section.”

I stare at the doctor in front of me. “Do you have a degree?”

“Degree?” he looks at Parker, and then me again.

“Awesome,” I groan, ready to drive my fist into this guy’s face. What the fuck kind of hospital is this? Not one I want my wife and baby at. No fucking way. I press my fingers into my temples and squeeze my eyes shit. “This isn’t going to work for me. I’ll pay whatever it takes. Just get a flight out of here for them.”

“There’s no time,” Parker tells me, his voice sounding worn. “Like it or not, this is it.”

I panic. “I don’t know, man.” Frantically, I pace the dingy floor around me. I can’t breathe let alone think of what to say or do. “This place. This fucking place. They don’t even speak goddamn English. How can I trust that they’re not going to fuck this up?”

Carl’s beside me, his hand on my shoulder, worry embedded deep in his eyes.

“It’s her only chance.” His voice has a hard edge. “If they don’t do something now, both of them are going to die.”

This brings me back to reality. It grounds me. I shake my head trying to reassemble rational thoughts. I pant, my breaths coming faster and faster. I gasp, shake, reality crashing down around me. I flash back to how helpless I was during her miscarriage. There’s absolutely nothing I can do for her but pray.

Do you see that guy? The one still covered in mud, his riding boots and pants on, shirt missing because it’s too fucking hot in this room? That’s a man who realizes that trophies, wins, they’re meaningless if you have no one to share it with.

Minutes pass, my eyes on the uneven floor, the stagnant humid air clawing at my skin. I’m surrounded by hundreds of people, all there for a reason, some dying, some near death, but I’m completely alone. Scared and distraught with the idea this might end in either of them dying in this place, maybe both.

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