FURY: A Rio Games Romance (4 page)

S
pring Break 1994 arrived
, and Jack O’Connor touched down in Fiji accompanied by his parents, Thomas and Leslie. Nobody but Jack knew about the diamond in his carry-on, but everyone knew that a new baby was due, a baby that had waited until its daddy and grandparents were there to witness the birth.

Karalaini had remained active, surfing up until the last few weeks, and she took Jack’s breath away when they met at the airport. Her glow was unmistakable, even just seeing her face. Her hair was thicker than ever, black waves pouring down her back. Any discomfort she felt was buried deep within the joy of seeing Jack again and meeting his parents. Her uncle, Peter, had brought her over to the big island, and he embraced Jack’s family warmly.

Hugs, kisses, and greetings were exchanged, and once baggage was retrieved, the quintet made for the docks to get home. A squall made the water choppy, but Peter assured the group that the storm would get no worse. He offered to wait it out for a bit, but Karalaini was too excited to have the O’Connors home, and she trusted Peter’s experience and judgement.

What a pregnant woman wants, she gets.

They boarded the small craft and got underway.

Within ten minutes, all aboard realized their mistake. The water swirled and churned wildly about them, and although they attempted to remain brave, panic spread throughout the small group. As the first waves swamped the small vessel, Peter instructed Karalaini to get vests for the passengers as he tried to navigate the tempest, and break through into calmer waters and get to land, any land.

As she made for the life jackets, the first contraction hit, sending her back to her seat, breathing hard.

“I just felt something weird… that was really strong. Oh my God.” Karalaini suddenly panicked. This couldn’t be happening. Not now.

Jack knelt beside her, trying to comfort her, as his father began pulling out the life vests, attempting to secure one on Jack’s mother, when disaster struck.

Off the port bow, a monster wave ripped through, out of nowhere, and suddenly chaos erupted as Peter’s boat rolled onto its side, then seemed ready to right itself, but then was hopelessly flipped as its hull was battered by another angry blow from the storm.

Water poured into the cabin, rain from above and ocean below, or vice versa, it was impossible to determine up, down, left or right. Jack caught a glimpse of his father being flung backward away from his mother, and he saw a shoe, which he thought must be Peter’s, whip past him. He heard Karalaini scream and then their world went topsy-turvy again as the boat was tossed above the waves and began to come apart.

Thomas and Leslie, Jack’s beloved parents, were past their physical primes and unaccustomed to the power of the ocean’s open water. They succumbed first, putting up very little struggle. Their bodies were never found.

A search vessel fished Peter’s remains from the water hours later. He’d managed to locate a life jacket, but he swallowed too much water and drowned.

Jack and Karalaini somehow wound up within arm’s length of each other and struggled to hang onto a chunk of the hull together. Jack was in a bad way, having suffered a head wound as the boat was hastily disassembled by the storm, but enough of his faculties remained to finish what he’d set out to do in Fiji, storm or no storm, ring or no ring.

“Laini, hold on! Hold on and don’t let go!”

“Your head! Jack, your parents! We have to do something we have to…” Karalaini was losing her strength.

“I haven’t seen anyone. I don’t know what to do… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Jack struggled to get the words out, both of them screaming to be heard over the pounding rain and wind, despite being close enough to touch.

“The baby! Our baby, Jack!”

“Look in my eyes,” Jack implored. “You don’t let go, no matter what. Do you understand me? You hold on! I love you, Laini. I came here to marry you. I…” Jack’s voice trembled and he pressed a hand to his head, feeling faint as their handhold in a world of angry water was buffeted to and fro.

“Jack! Jack!” Karalaini heard the father of her unborn child groan in anguish before he put both hands on his head and disappeared from sight.

As her contractions grew in intensity and the duration between them shrank, Karalaini tried to find a place to go in her head, a peaceful beach, a place of refuge. Jack’s arms enveloped her, and she heard the soft cooing of a baby in her mind.

She battled gallantly, timing breaths between waves, praying every prayer she knew, searching for a glimpse of land, somewhere, anywhere, something solid. She’d get her baby to safety or die trying. No matter how long it took, no matter how exhausted she was, how cold, or how scared.

* * *

A
s the storm
began to wane, a fishing vessel came upon the wreckage of Peter’s boat as it floated in the general direction of Vanuatu. As they searched for something by which to identify the craft, someone spotted Karalaini’s desperate form bobbing in the water, still clinging, but unmoving.

“Holy shit, there’s somebody out there!”

Solomon Sharma dove headfirst into the water, awaiting no command from his captain. He swam furiously for the lifeless girl, reaching her as a rowboat was lowered into the water behind him. He found her unresponsive, but thought he felt a pulse in her neck. Weak, but he’d felt it. She was somehow, against all odds and reason, still alive. He waved his arm furiously in the air, summoning his fellow fishermen to make haste. It wasn’t until they pulled her up and into the boat that they realized that not only was she pregnant, she was
very
pregnant. There was no telling how long she’d been in the water or if the baby stood a chance, but they meant to pour everything they had into saving mother and child.

They radioed for help, a desperate plea as no man aboard had the experience or knowledge to deliver a baby, regardless of the mother’s well-being. As they lay Karalaini on a table, she managed to sputter a plea of her own, regaining consciousness briefly –

“Save my baby. That’s all that matters. Do what it takes.”

With that desperate request, she coughed, a choking that sounded as though she were underwater, and she was gone.

Six fishermen stood around the table, each looking to the next man for guidance, a brave word, a plan.

Again, it was Solomon Sharma who sprang into action. “Get me a knife. The sharpest we have. We’ve got to get this baby out if it’s to have a chance. Now!”

One man fainted as the blade entered Karalaini’s lower abdomen. Solomon’s wife had undergone a C-section, so he knew the approximate location and direction of her scar, and he attempted to duplicate it. He feared most of all injuring the baby, if by some miracle it had survived the mother’s ordeal, but he also knew he need make no allowance for vanity. His incision didn’t need to be perfect, it just had to allow for the removal of… a baby boy.

Solomon cut and tentatively reached a hand inside, where sure enough, he felt movement. As carefully as he could, he explored with his fingers until he felt he had enough to grab onto, and he pulled.

Gray and slippery, covered in placenta and blood, crying a pitiful little cry, Karalaini and Jack’s baby entered the world. On a fishing trawler in the Koro Sea, weighing seven pounds and four ounces, although no one had the presence of mind to weigh him at the moment of his birth, Solomon (named for the man who delivered him) Jack Kano, who’d use the Fijian version of his surname, O’Connor, was born.

“
M
om
, I can unpack my own clothes.”

Logan and her parents were in her dorm room at Xavier University. It was move-in day for college athletes and her parents were doing what they did best; hovering.

“But I know you,” her mother smiled as she hung up a dress in Logan’s wardrobe. “You’ll just ball everything up and throw it in drawers.”

Logan opened her mouth to protest but instead just laughed. “Okay, maybe you have a point. Which is why you shouldn’t waste time going all Martha Stewart on my dorm room. By the end of this week your hard work will have been undone.”

“End of this week?” her father interjected. “That’s way too generous. You mean end of this day!”

All three of them laughed. It was true. Logan could be a mess at times. But who had time to clean their room when there was so much to do?

She supposed it was time to change her cluttered ways now that she’d be living with someone else who may not appreciate what her father fondly referred to as her “floor-drobe.”

Logan loved her parents more than anything, but she was eager for them to leave. Out her window she could see her fellow freshmen gathered in the quad, socializing and getting friendly with one another. She didn’t want to miss out on a single thing.

“Guys,” Logan said, gently taking a pair of folded jeans from her mother’s hands. “I know you mean well. And I am so grateful for all you’ve done for me. But…”

“You want us to go,” Chuck said.

Logan smiled, throwing her arms around his shoulders. “I mean, I didn’t want to say it like that but… Yes. It’s time to let this baby bird fly on her own.”

Her father squeezed her shoulder and suddenly fell into a bit of a coughing fit. Logan and her mother stared at him, worried.

“Daddy, are you okay?” Logan said, patting his back.

Chuck’s eyes were slightly bloodshot. He leaned on his knees with his hands.

“I’m okay,” he finally said. “Just can’t seem to get rid of this damn cough. Nothing worse than a summer cold.”

Logan nodded. “I know. You should get home and rest. Take some cough medicine, read a book, enjoy your retirement and your nice, quiet home.” She winked at him.

He laughed. “It’s just hard to let go, Logan. You’ve been our whole world for 18 years.”

Tracy Lowery, with tears in her eyes, grabbed onto her husband and her only daughter.

“This is harder than we expected, sweetheart,” Tracy cried. “I knew one day this time would come, but it really seems to have come so fast. The days are long but the years are way too short.”

Logan could feel her own heart breaking a bit at the sight of her mother crying.

“I’m not far away,” Logan reminded her. “At least I didn’t accept that offer at UCLA.”

Her mother laughed. “Yes, thank God for that. Because then I’d have to move to California.”

* * *

I
t was
the week before her debut game with Xavier when her mother called her to tell her about her father.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” her mother had said, her voice wobbly on the other end of Logan’s iPhone. “But he went in after having this cough that couldn’t go away… And they think there might be an issue. They’re running some tests. He told me not to tell you, but I know you’d want to know. Let’s just keep him in our prayers, okay? I am sure it’s nothing and even if it’s something, Chuck Lowery isn’t going to be defeated so easily.”

There were times in Logan’s life where memory would be either her best friend or her worst enemy.

In this case, memory became the friend who stabbed her in the back when she wasn’t expecting it.

For the rest of her life she would remember this phone call from her mother. She’d remember that she’d just gotten out of the shower at her dorm. A terry cloth towel had been wrapped around her body that was still sore from soccer practice. She’d been laughing with her roommate about a YouTube video when she’d heard her cell buzzing on her desk.

And she’d envy the girl she once was. The one who didn’t know her father was dying.

G
avin O’Connor never visited Fiji
. The cursed water surrounding those islands claimed the lives of his parents, his younger brother, future sister-in-law, and niece or nephew. If he woke up one day and read that a tsunami or volcano had sent Fiji the way of Atlantis, he wouldn’t have minded. It represented nothing but pain to him. No remains of his family members were ever recovered.

Gavin tried to keep busy to distract himself from his loss. He poured himself first into his career at the bank and then into his time at the gym. Working out twice a week prior to the loss of his family turned into four and five times and then to twice a day, five or six days every week. He drifted away from friends and his remaining extended family. He poured his fury into the gym.

When lifting weights and running were no longer adequate outlets for the swirling emotions he couldn’t deal with, he turned to combat sports. First boxing, then karate, and from there he moved on to judo. It was through judo, nine years after the darkness descended over him, that the clouds began to let sunshine filter through.

After taking judo for three years under an older Japanese teacher, Sensei Shinji, Gavin started teaching the younger students. He found that working with children brought him the closest thing to happiness that he’d felt since he got the awful news from Fiji so many years ago. Watching their frustration turn to joy when they mastered a new technique, or when they used the tools he gave them to beat a bigger or more experienced opponent, warmed places in his heart that had been frozen solid.

He still worked with Sensei Shinji on his own, and was on the fast track to his black belt. His work at the dojo was pro bono, as he made plenty of money through his day job, and he requested that Shinji use what he’d pay him to instead fund classes for kids who couldn’t afford to attend or take a martial art otherwise.

Gavin had moved on from the tragedy to build something resembling a life, and he even joined the fledgling social media world in order to better connect with his students and their families as they moved up in the judo world and began attending tournaments.

It was in his hotel room at a tournament in Chicago in the summer of 2007 that he flipped open his laptop to find a mysterious Facebook message awaiting him:

Gavin O’Connor’s heart about burst out of his chest. Tears stung his eyes. How was this possible?

He clicked on the picture attached to the message and saw a boy, maybe a teenager, with long, dark hair and a square jaw, tan skin and blue eyes, which seemed out of place. There was fire in those eyes, an intensity that belied his years. He recognized it. The same flame he once saw in Jack’s eyes.

It couldn’t be
. Gavin was assured that there were no survivors of the accident that claimed his brother, including his fiancée. Had he been lied to? He had to know. But at the same time, it could all be some sort of sick joke. Or an attempt to extort money. As much as he wanted to reply, he couldn’t be sure.

He looked over the profile, which listed “Solomon” as 18, although his pictures were clearly of someone younger.

Solomon rarely smiled, although he seemed to be leading an active, busy life. There were images of him swimming and surfing, playing rugby, hanging out with friends, all the normal things Gavin imagined a boy growing up in the islands might do.

Gavin slept fitfully that night and when he gave up trying to get any decent rest, at just before five in the morning, he fired off a reply to the surprise message he’d received the night before.

The tournament went well for Gavin’s students, despite his distracted coaching. He checked his e-mail that evening at the hotel and was disappointed to have heard nothing back from Fiji. The team returned home and several days passed with nothing new. He began to forget the Facebook exchanges and assume they were some sort of hoax.

One morning before work, he checked his e-mail and found a new message from
[email protected]
.

Gavin clicked on the link at the bottom of the e-mail and a grainy black and white picture emerged. It was two people in a hospital room, a man lying in bed and a woman sitting next to him. They were both smiling. She was beautiful, and her part of the picture slightly more clear than the man in bed, but he had a bandaged, elevated leg and what looked like an Ohio State tank top on. The article described a shark attack and although the caption was nearly illegible, he could make out “-erican” and “Jac- “.

The picture was Jack. And, he guessed, Karalaini. Seeing his brother again twisted Gavin’s face into an ugly, sobbing mask, but it proved nothing. Anybody could print that picture. He read on.

Gavin had to get up and walk away for a moment. He had a lump in his throat the size of a grapefruit. Could any of this be true? He chugged a bottle of water and paced in his living room.

He noticed the screensaver flickering on his laptop, so he sat back down and continued reading.

Gavin sat, dumbstruck, and read the entire message twice more. Could a baby really have survived the storm?

The father of one of his students, Rebecca Wright, was an attorney. He’d call Scott Wright that afternoon and run the entire story by him, see if it rang true or threw up any red flags, before replying to Solomon.

The conversation with Scott Wright did little to illuminate the situation, as his specialty was real estate law, but he did assure Gavin that he didn’t think he could possibly be on the hook legally for any money. He encouraged him to follow his heart, to proceed with caution, but that there was no reason not to pursue some sort of a relationship with his “nephew.”

It took Gavin several hours after class that evening to compose his response to Solomon. He had a million stories to tell, about Jack, about Solomon’s late American grandparents, about life in America. He had a few pictures of his brother that he scanned and attached to the message, both from when he was a young boy and a more recent one taken at the last Christmas they shared.

* * *

G
avin tracked
Wyatt down through his parents, and when he shared the story of Solomon with him, Wyatt offered to get on the next flight to Fiji to scoop him up and bring him to Ohio. Gavin didn’t think an international kidnapping was the way to go, but he did tell Wyatt that he was going to try to arrange for Solomon to visit him and that Wyatt was more than welcome to come home for a visit whenever the details could be worked out.

That’s how Wyatt and Gavin came to be waiting in international arrivals three weeks later for a flight to land at the Greater Cincinnati Airport from Nadi, Fiji, by way of Auckland, New Zealand, and Houston, Texas.

With layovers, the trip had taken the better part of thirty hours, and Solomon and his aunt, Ruth, staggered off the plane completely spent from their journey.

Gavin and Solomon knew each other from pictures, and their embrace was a tearful one as Wyatt and Ruth shook hands and introduced themselves. Once Gavin finally let go of his nephew, Ruth took the brother of her sister’s fiancé’s face in her hands and stared into his eyes, blinking away tears of her own.

“Gavin, I’m so sorry this reunion is so belated. Our entire family apologizes. Without your brother, without your family, we wouldn’t have Solomon. He has been such a joy, such a blessing to me, to my husband, to all of us. We only wanted to make the most normal life we could for Solomon. Please understand.”

Gavin nodded his head. “The past is the past, Ruth. That baby needed a family. He needed what only you could give him. I don’t blame you a bit. I’m so glad you’re here!”

As tired as Solomon and his aunt were, typical of a thirteen-year-old boy, he was starving.