The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

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If the shooter makes the first shot, they get a chance at a second. With this, there is more at stake: adding more
points to their own score, or the possibility of a turnover, losing the ball to the offending opponent.
I met Dad in the emergency room. His face was bloody; his body wired. He wanted to go home. We waited
for test results and I talked to him about my day when his monitor alarmed—his heart rate tripled. A
rattling exhale. I ran out, screaming for help.
Winter weeds out the weak, but Dad was not weak. He was the strongest man I knew, six-foot-eight and
over two hundred seventy pounds, able to lift a soaked sheepdog from the lake while treading water, able
to lift me high enough to believe in my own dreams.
The nurses whisked him away. One knelt above him, her braid swinging with each compression as the bed
rolled around the corners to save him. I dropped to my knees. Through the wall, each charge and thump of
the AED left me curled on the floor.
Nurses ushered me into a waiting room where the lights flickered with my hope as I cried and prayed. The
surgery was successful: the blockage removed; a stent placed through his wrist. I took the elevator to
critical care with Dad, who was sedated and intubated in his hospital bed. All I could think was there might
not be any more bonus days.
Sometimes, in one-and-one, a player will intentionally miss the second shot to give their team the chance to
rebound, to score an extra two points on a field goal to the free throw’s one.
Dad was cleared with no restrictions. Because of the immediacy with which it stopped, his heart wasn’t
damaged. Still, I struggled with the suddenness: would it happen again? Would it happen to me?
On a fifty-degree Sunday after Thanksgiving, almost a year later, Dad and I drove through town. He
glanced at the lake from the driver’s seat. Sailboats floated in the still water, just enough breath of a
breeze to give them life. “Those guys are probably happy to be out there,” he said. “These are bonus days.”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing at the boats, focusing back on him.
ISSUE 4 | SUMMER 2021