Bonus Days

In basketball, a team goes into the bonus when their opponent reaches a foul limit. They are awarded a free throw for each foul that follows: a reward for weathering physicality, a chance to improve their odds.

“These are bonus days,” my dad said on every nice day past November in our hometown in metro Detroit. The sky clear and sunny, the temperature above fifty, the days were just that: bonuses. Sailboats dotted the lake, dashing past fishermen on the piers who in any other weather would’ve been swamped by crashing, freezing waves. Those days, we went outside like our lives depended on it. Like if we didn’t, the sun might not come up again. 

A former college basketball player, Dad drilled me on the half-court in our backyard. Our shoes crunched on acorns that sent the ball bouncing erratically with each dribble. Dad never played easy against me, even when I was a child. When I decided to focus on softball, he learned everything about the sport—the nuance of pitching, the mechanics of power hitting, daily workout regimens. Bonus days on the court changed to bonus days of Dad sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket, glove outstretched. I pitched until my chest burned with cold air and effort. He coached me to a college scholarship of my own.  

But it was more than sports to us: during those days, we talked about my classmates, my goals, which subjects I struggled with, which electives I loved. We made up goofy songs on the way to the field. Through bonus days, my dad became my best friend.

The referee holds up an index finger on each hand: one-and-one. The crowd goes silent. The shooter tiptoes the foul line for the first shot, reaching toward the rim as if clinging to possibility.

On a Friday night in January, after my athletic career was over, Dad kept score at the high school basketball team’s rivalry game. With seconds left in halftime, he crossed the court with concessions and collapsed. Cardiac arrest. 

He had no symptoms; his heart simply stopped. After rounds of CPR, an athletic trainer, an AED, and an ambulance saved his life for the first time.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.

AMY ZARANEK is an award-winning writer and the managing editor of The Black Fork Review. Her writing has appeared in Yemassee Journal, matchbook, Stymie Magazine, and elsewhere, and her essays have been anthologized in collections such as Our Best War Stories and Tales from Six Feet Apart. Amy holds an MFA from Ashland University and lives and writes in northern Michigan. Visit her online at www.amyzaranek.com.