Francesca Gaskell:I never expected—I mean, he was coughing upblood.
Ellis Dean:The mood shifted from triumph to Greek tragedyrealquick.
Katarina sinks to her knees, cradling Heath as he’s wracked with heaving coughs.
Garrett Lin:I put my arms around my sister, and we just…sat there, frozen in horror.
Kirk Lockwood:For the first time in my career, I had no idea what to say.
The shot cuts to the crowd in the Iceberg Skating Palace—first a wide view, then focusing on individual spectators. A bewildered-looking little boy cries, smearing his red, white, and blue face paint. A woman in a Team Russia sweater holds her hand over her mouth, like she might be sick. A young couple stands slack-jawed, an American flag hanging limp between them.
Garrett Lin:We were thousands of miles away. There was nothing we could do.
Heath spits out a mouthful of blood, right onto the Olympic rings. Tears slip down Katarina’s cheeks, and she clings tighter to him. He falls still, staring into her eyes.
Ellis Dean:There was nothing anyone could have done.
Chapter 84
When he dropped to his knees like a horrible echo of the night he proposed to me five years earlier on the ice in Cleveland, once again all I could think was,No, please no.
We’d won, I was sure of it. This should have been the happiest moment of our lives. We should have been smiling and waving and skating to the kiss and cry, not sprawled across the ice. I should have been holding Heath’s hand, not clutching him to my chest as he coughed and spattered blood across the gleaming gold trim of my borrowed costume.
Not like this.
People rushed in around us—medics, officials, media, who knew. In all the chaos, Heath’s eyes never left me, like he wanted to make sure my face was the last thing he saw.
I refused to let go, even as hands emerged from the swarm around us to pry my fingers loose. I refused to believe this was really happening.
There was so much I hadn’t told him. I hadn’t told him how much I loved him, even when I hated him. I hadn’t told him that no matter how many changes I made to that old stone house where we grew up, where we fell apart, where we fell in love—I could never bring myself to touch the headboard where we’d carved our names.
We couldn’t end like this.
Katarina Shaw sits on the bloodstained ice in Sochi with Heath Rocha in her arms.
Ellis Dean:We all feared the worst.
Medics rush onto the rink and load Heath’s limp form onto a stretcher.
Inez Acton:We thought we’d just watched an Olympian drop dead on live TV.
The other ice dancers stand behind the boards, bewildered. Yelena and Dmitri look shell-shocked, while Francesca openly weeps on her partner Evan’s shoulder.
Francesca Gaskell:It was awful. Nothing at all like I’d imagined it.
Producer(Offscreen): What do you mean? Imagined what?
Francesca Gaskell:(She blinks, then smiles.)My first Olympics, of course.(Her smile falters.)Why, what did you think I was talking about?
Kirk Lockwood:By the time Shaw and Rocha’s winning marks appeared, they were in an ambulance speeding up Triumfalnaya Street to Sochi’s closest emergency room.
U.S. team physician Dr. Kenneth Archer holds a press conference outside the hospital in Sochi.
“Mr. Rocha suffered a cardiac event with pulmonary distress, including significant bleeding in the lungs. Tests indicated the presence of an unidentified substance in his bloodstream.”
A whirlwind of questions from the reporters in attendance. Dr. Archer calls on one, who asks, “Is it possible this ‘unidentified substance’ was some sort of performance-enhancing drug?”
“I’d prefer not to speculate,” he replies. “Mr. Rocha is far from out of the woods yet.”
