of the therapies, that’s fine. But he might be able to massage any soreness or at least give you a space to lie down quietly for a while. I don’t want you to cool down all the way, so wear your coat over there. You need to rest up somehow, and there isn’t time for you to go back to your room. But you gotta do something to get some of your strength back if you’re weak or hurting.”
Isaac toweled off and shrugged into his coat. He could feel the fatigue in his muscles. He knew he should have spent more time sleeping last night instead of fooling around with Tim—that his lack of sleep was affecting him now—but he couldn’t say he regretted it that much. Or at all. He just hated that he was paying for it now, especially since four years ago, he could have partied a lot harder and still coasted to a win. He couldn’t tell if it was good or bad that he had to fight harder for it now.
When Isaac walked into the little curtained-off area where the American medical staff worked with the athletes, Bill was putting the cups on Conor, whose face lit up as Isaac approached. “You here for therapy?”
“No,” Isaac said. “Look, I’m tired, but I have one more race tonight. Adam made me come back here. I don’t want anything weird to happen to me, I’m just following Coach’s orders.”
Bill pointed to a massage table. “Take off the coat and lie on that facedown.”
“Fine.” Isaac climbed on the table.
“Which muscles are sore?” asked Bill, turning on a space heater.
“Arms,” Isaac said. “Shoulders.”
Bill nodded. “Conor, sit tight for a sec.”
Isaac turned his head and watched as Conor sat there with the cups on his shoulders, making those weird circular hickeys like big polka dots across his skin. Isaac was willing to do a lot for his sport, but he was too vain to allow that.
“Does that really help?” Isaac asked.
“Yeah, it helps with blood flow,” said Conor. “It eases some of the muscular tension.”
“Okay,” said Isaac. But Bill would put cups on Isaac over his dead body.
Bill said, “Put your head in the hole.”
Isaac moved his head. “No cups,” he said as he settled onto the table.
He was rewarded by Bill massaging his back and arms. It felt so good on his tired muscles that Isaac possibly moaned and definitely fell asleep. Bill had to wake him up a half hour before his race so that he could go warm up again.
Isaac dragged himself back to the warm-up pool, but the massage had definitely helped. He was still tired, but he had less soreness, and he thought he had enough gas left in the tank to swim another race.
Less than four minutes of swimming. Isaac could do it.
Thirty minutes later he stood up on the block to race the 400-meter freestyle final. Tim wasn’t in the audience this time because he’d promised his diving teammates he’d watch whichever diving event was happening that day—women’s springboard prelims, if Isaac was not mistaken. Isaac was kind of glad, because he would have hated to embarrass himself in front of Tim. And this race could very well be an embarrassment.
Luke was a few lanes away, swinging his arms, doing the prerace ritual. But Isaac didn’t care about Luke. He bent down and moved into starting position, focused only on his own race.
Deep breath. Set. Go.
The water felt good, at least, and it buoyed Isaac a little, both literally and figuratively. His arms didn’t start to burn until about halfway through, but he knew he was at least ahead of the swimmers in the lanes on either side of him. So he wouldn’t finish dead last.
For whatever crazy reason, he decided to all-out sprint the last length of the pool. His body screamed. His muscles were on fire. But he pushed through the fatigue and the pain, swimming with everything he had. By the twenty-five-meter mark, he thought he might throw up right there in the middle of the pool, but he kept pushing. He wanted to give this his all, to know that if he lost, it was because he was outperformed, not that he didn’t try.
No regrets. To live each day as if it was his last.
He reached out and touched the side of the pool but stayed underwater for a second, not quite ready to face it yet. Then he popped up and looked at the screen.