Page 53 of Let the Games Begin
Zeke was about to skip dinner and head over to Japan House to convince Haruki’s housemates to let him up the stairs to apologize in person, but then he heard a familiar voice and lost his train of thought.
“Mukoma Ezekiel, is that you?”
Zeke turned around. “Simba? Why didn’t you tell me you were here!” he said, genuinely surprised to see the man. Simba was the captain of the Zimbabwean field hockey team.
“We didn’t know we were going to qualify, did we?” Simba said with a laugh. Zeke pulled him into a hug and went around shaking hands and catching up with the rest of the team. He was so glad to see them. While the athletes on Team GB were like family to him, there was something different about hanging out with the Team Zimbabwe athletes. It felt like spending time with his cousins, or his oldest friends. They shared the same language, upbringing, and history. Every conversation with them felt effortless.
The Zimbabwean Olympic team wasn’t very big. In fact, it was one of the smallest delegations of athletes of any country that year. But what they lacked in size and funding they made up for in energy. They grabbed food from the canteen and headed outside to eat dinner at one of the big garden tables near the lake. Zeke felt a wave of comfort. Eating with them as they all told jokes in Shona felt like a brief interlude at home. Simba got his speakers out, and there was something about hearing old songs he’d grown up with, while eating Zimbabwean food and listening to them tell him exaggerated, full-gestured stories about howthey’d only just about made it to the Games, that made him feel completely at ease.
You could find the feeling of home anywhere in the world. Zeke had learned that at his very first international competition, an athletics tournament in Toronto he’d traveled to with his dad when he was twelve years old. He’d been feeling homesick on his second night until his dad started blasting his favorite Zimbabwean songs in the hotel room. When he was in London, he found the songs grating. His mother would play them at the crack of dawn every weekend to not-so-subtly announce that it was a cleaning day and she was waiting for him and his brothers to come down and help her. Back in London, the sound of the marimbas, acoustic guitars, and Shona lyrics symbolized waking up earlier than he wanted to and having his mum and dad quiz him about school while he did his chores. But when his dad played them in the hotel room on the other side of the world during his first big trip away, the songs wrapped him up in comfort.
But then the song coming out of Simba’s speakers changed.
An electric guitar started playing, a piano came in, and then the lyrics began. Zeke knew every single note and word, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to listen to it in years. It was his dad’s favorite song.
If the song had played on shuffle, Zeke would have immediately pressed skip. If it had come on at a family party, he would have gone to the bathroom. And when it started playing on Simba’s phone speaker by the landscaped lake, Zeke immediately got up to leave, trying to get as far away from the canteen and the music as he possibly could. Because Zeke knew that as soon as the chorus hit there would be no way to stop the effect the songwas going to have on him. He was already getting flashbacks to the last morning he’d ever shared with his dad. To the joy on his father’s face, and the way the sun came through the window. Zeke had spent the past ten years wishing he could step back into that moment and relive the memory one more time. But he couldn’t, and the grief was threatening to overwhelm him.
He ignored the confused and concerned looks on his friends’ faces as he promised to come along to the next Team Zimbabwe meal. He ignored the sound of Simba calling out to ask him if everything was all right, and walked away because, in that moment, Zeke’s biggest concern was checking if everyone back home was okay.
He pulled out his phone and called his brothers, but neither of them picked up. Athens was two hours ahead of the UK, so if it was five p.m. in Athens, it was only three p.m. back in London. Why weren’t they picking up?
He called his mum, and she didn’t pick up either. His mother usually spent the whole day sending Bible verses, old photos, and chain-mail conspiracy theories to the family group chat. But she hadn’t messaged once that day.
He called her again and again. Then he called his brothers again and again. He stood still in the middle of the path and texted them, the discomfort in his neck growing.
It spread into his arms and tightened his chest. He stretched and tried to shake it off, but it was getting worse. He counted to try to regulate his breathing, but it only made him feel like he couldn’t get the air in fast enough.
His first panic attack wasn’t the one he’d experienced the night after he won his first medal; that was just the first time he’d beenconscious of the fact that he was having a panic attack. His first panic attack was when he was fourteen years old, after the call that turned his whole life upside down.
As he walked through the Village, Zeke could feel the pangs and pains of what he’d been dreading ever since he was a child. The fear took hold of him, and he couldn’t disentangle himself from its ropes. It constricted his body and made it difficult for him to stay standing up. Each time he had another panic attack, he felt the exact same fear and clarity that he’d felt all those years ago. Like what happened to his dad was about to happen to him.
Zeke tried to remember all the techniques he’d learned over the years. But his mind went blank. He desperately tried to control his breathing, but he felt like he was struggling for his last gasps of air. Standing was becoming too much to bear, his legs weakened, and his body descended to the ground. But before he could fall and hurt himself, he felt someone’s hands against his back. Gently breaking his fall and helping him to sit down on the grass. She smelled like vanilla and spoke with soft words. Olivia.
“Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay,” she said gently as she helped him lower himself to the ground. Zeke tried to speak, but it came out as a strangled mumble.
“I’m not going anywhere, you don’t need to say anything,” she said as she rubbed his arm. “You’re okay. I’m here, okay?”
He mumbled something that sounded like an “okay,” and then he closed his eyes.
Zeke had been at practice when his father had the heart attack that killed him. So, Zeke didn’t know what it looked or felt like to have a heart attack. But whenever he experienced a panic attack,he felt like he was on the verge of the same thing that had taken his dad’s life that afternoon ten years ago.
His panic attacks always started slowly. He would feel the familiar sense of anxiety that he could usually manage in his day-to-day life. But then it would go from an emotional sense of anxiety to a physical one. Slowly, uncomfortably seeping through his body. Usually, if he reassured himself quickly enough, he could manage it. But every once in a while, it escalated so quickly and deeply that even his best attempts couldn’t stop the fear from taking over. And, boy, did it take over.
Zeke felt dizzy. He felt nauseous. He felt like his chest was clenching so tightly he couldn’t breathe. He felt hot. He felt cold. He felt like his heart was beating so fast that it was only a matter of time before his body would no longer be able to keep up. He was shaking, and his breathing was coming out in short, irregular, disjointed breaths. The only sensations he could hold on to were the touch of the cool hard ground he was sitting on and the warm, soft hand that was holding his.
Olivia was speaking, but Zeke couldn’t really make out all her words. He didn’t have the capacity to make them out. All he could do was try to keep on breathing. And so he did. In and out, in and out.
“I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m right here,” Olivia said. Zeke breathed in and out, in and out. Then he opened his mouth. “One hundred… ninety-nine… ninety-eight…” he said, taking deep strangled breaths as he tried to get the words out.
“You’ve got this,” she said after he struggled to catch his breath between seventy-seven and seventy-six.
“Seventy-six… seventy-five… seventy-four,” he said. Eachword felt like a battle and each breath felt like a fight for survival. But, slowly, he counted down.
“Three… two… one,” he finished, his mouth trembling as the tears rolled down his face.
“You did it, you’re doing so good,” she said reassuringly. “Tell me five things you can see?”
Zeke took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the tension, then answered her as best he could. He knew where she was going with this: it was the 5–4–3–2–1 method that Fiona had told him to try.
