Copyright © 2007 Deborah Shlian. All rights reserved.

Humidity wraps her in a moist shroud. Chestnut wisps snaked loose from her ponytail are plastered along her brow like dead bugs flattened against a windshield. She takes a deep intake of air, then another as she anticipates the serve. Often tense during a match, but never like this. Somehow this tournament seems different, more consequential. It's as if her very life is in the balance.

She peers across the net to where her adversary stands, dressed all in black, the implacable stare transmitting a dogged determination to wear her down. How many times has her coach told her that tennis is ninety percent mental and only ten-percent talent? This struggle is sapping every ounce of psychic strength she possesses.

Sweat soaks her T-shirt. Her stomach executes frenzied somersaults as she follows the raised arm, the high ball toss and another ace served into her backhand corner.

Ordinarily she'd be inclined to say 'nice serve', but not now. Not when she's coming from so far behind.

"Deuce." The umpire announces the score from his chair.

Her opponent strides confidently from the ad court and starts another wind-up.

Focus!

A ritual mantra. Why then does it suddenly seem so foreign?

Keep your eye on the ball!

But as it sails toward her, she freezes, losing all powers of concentration and slams the serve past the baseline.

"Ad in."

Jesus, what's happening? Why is this so hard? Doesn't everyone say she has the stuff to be a tennis star? Yet here she is playing like a beginner, missing easy shots, making ridiculous mistakes. She feels paralyzed, her limbs unresponsive to pleas from her brain to move. Even her heart, which should be jumping out of her chest, seems to have stopped beating altogether. Sweat pours off her, every muscle straining against whatever is holding her down. Strange, it's as if she's outside herself, as if she's watching a slow-motion movie of all this.

"Anything happening?"

"Nada."

"I'm afraid it's a lost cause."

She's not sure who's talking, but has to admit there's some truth in the words. She's lost the first set and at three games to zip is well on her way to blowing the second and with it, the championship.

The crowd watching from the grandstand seems as stunned as she, leaving her disoriented and shaken.

This should be her match. It's not fair.

"Since when is life fair?" The voice of her coach inside her head is as resonant as if he'd been standing beside her.

That's for sure, she thinks bitterly, reliving painful memories: years and years of hard work on countless tennis courts foregoing normal adolescence, finally rewarded with a string of victories that promise instant celebrity, only to have her dream snatched away by a drunk driver hurtling at seventy miles an hour through a red light. Only seventeen - with everything ahead of her.

"That was then and this is now."

"Easy for you to say, coach."

She struggles to focus as she realizes her competitor is about to serve once more. This is finally it. Armageddon. If she loses the next point, she loses another game.

Head still, knees slightly bent, eyes ahead.

"Hey, there's some action."

"Definitely a response."

She follows the elegant arc of the yellow rubber and felt sphere, anticipating the sensuous sound of contact the way a lover relishes a partner's pleasure.

Twack!

Yes! Right on the sweet spot.

Hit through the ball.

Yes! For the first time since the match began, this feels right.

Back to deuce.

"Awesome!" A fan gives a thumbs up.

The opponent thrusts a thin lower lip out in a pout.

She inhales and lets go of one last deep breath. This time as her opponent prepares, she is in ready position, so that when the ball rushes toward her, she knows instinctively where it will arrive and how to meet it for the optimal return. Her forehand drive is low, long and accurate; her opponent goes for a backhand slice that skids into the net.

It's her ad.

She swabs the dampness dotting her brow with her wristband.

The tension is unbearable, everything riding on this game point. The nerves in her legs tingle with excitement and fatigue. She is beyond exhaustion.

Her heart beats wildly now, its relentless drumming echoing like thunder within her skull. The deafening sound dampens the roar of the grandstand crowd as she struggles to keep intense emotions in check.

She looks into the stands and locates her coach in the front row. He can't give direction, but his determined expression says: 'go for it'.

She winks and with the fluid grace of a ballerina, executes a perfect drop shot, foiling her adversary who fails to reach the net in time and loses the game.

The crowd shouts her name. It's three games to one - clearly an uphill battle, but they sense that the tide has turned.

"We're cooking with gas now!"

She experiences a giddy sense of exhilaration that she'd almost forgotten.

"I knew she could do it!"

Unexplainably calm and sure, she begins to play tennis like she has never played before. Slowly building momentum, she rallies, steadily and relentlessly gaining confidence and power, twice breaking her adversary's serve, holding service against the most violent assaults, forcing errors, slicing and chipping at the lead, never yielding an inch, snatching victory at six-three.

The crowd goes wild, then quickly becomes hushed as she tosses the ball into the air to begin the third and final set. It's just a formality: her shots are an exhibition in brilliance, impossible to defend against and the match is finally hers at six-love.

Completely spent, her knees buckle and she loses consciousness.

Someone whispers in her ear. "Wake up! You've been out long enough."

Her eyelids flutter open. Glare from overhead fluorescent lights assaults her pupils. She shuts them again.

"Welcome back."

Tentatively she opens her eyes to half-slits, glancing up into the umpire's baby blues. There is a smile of relief on his face. "You made it."

She tries to get her bearings. Instead of the tennis court, she seems to be lying in a hospital bed with IV's and tubes stuck in her. A heart monitor paces at a steady eighty beats a minute. "I guess I passed out after I won."

The umpire appears confused and starts to say something when a doctor in green surgical scrubs leans over her. "Remember me?'"

He looks familiar, but she's still a little groggy. "I…uh…"

"It's all right. You've been out for hours. It takes a while to fully wake up. I'm Dr. Mills."

"You're the doctor who helped me when I fainted?"

"You said you passed out after you won. What did you mean?"

"The tennis tournament. Three sets. I should have taken it in two, but I blew the first one. I couldn't seem to get my bearings. I was…"

"What are you talking about?" the umpire asks. "You're a forty-five year old housewife with terminal heart disease. You've never played tennis in your life!"

She panics, searching the doctor's face for answers. "No, I'm seventeen. I'm going to be a tennis star." She points to the umpire. "He was there! He knows it's true."

"Doctor, what's wrong with my wife? You said there were problems during surgery. Did she suffer brain damage?"

Your wife? Surgery? Brain damage? Was she in the middle of some horrible nightmare? The blips on the heart monitor accelerate until she feels she can't breathe.

"She's in V. tach! 100 milligrams of lidocaine, STAT!"

A nurse rushes to the bedside with a syringe filled with a clear fluid and attaches it to a three-way valve on the IV line. Slowly, the doctor delivers the medication into her vein. Within two minutes, her heart rate returns to normal.

Relieved, Mills asks his nurse to escort the husband outside. "Please," he tells him. "Your wife has suffered tremendous physical and psychic trauma. Give her a little time to absorb what's happened." As soon as they've gone, the doctor pulls a chair up close to her bed.

"Did I have some kind of surgery?"

The doctor lays his hand on hers. "You had a viral illness called myocarditis when you were a teenager that damaged your heart. Over the years it just kept getting weaker and weaker until finally, we had no choice, but to replace it."

"Replace it?"

"You just had a heart transplant. Believe it or not, it's become pretty routine surgery these days."

She tries to absorb the enormity of the information her surgeon has just handed her. Apparently she was a middle-aged housewife with a damaged heart. But she feels like a teenager. "He said…" She can't bring herself to call the umpire her husband. Not yet. It's all too new. "He said there were problems during surgery. What happened?"

The doctor hesitates.

"Please, I need to know."

"Well, for some reason, after we'd hooked up your new heart, it wouldn't start right away. But then suddenly, when it seemed as though there was no hope, it began beating - just like that. It really was a miracle.

Those voices:

"Nada."

"I'm afraid it's a lost cause."

"Hey, there's some action."

"Definitely a response."

"I knew she could do it!"

A miracle?

"You're a very lucky woman," the doctor is telling her. "You've got the heart of a…"

"Seventeen year old."

"Yes."

"And did she… did she play tennis?"

He nods. "She was a junior tennis champ, well on her way to becoming a major player."

"How did she die?"

"Her coach was driving her to a tournament. It was raining. A drunk ran a red light, slammed on the brakes too late and skidded into them. They were both killed instantly…"

She listens to the words, recalling everything as if still in that moment: the blinding rain, the steady to and fro of windshield wipers, counterpoint to excited chatter about the upcoming game, the slickness of the road, the oncoming car, too fast!, TOO FAST!, the screeching, metal against metal, the screams and then…nada.

"She never got to play that match," Mills is saying.

Memories mingle with dreams, tears with hope, miracles with fate. She turns away, feeling a change come over her, as though a soul is sliding out and moving on. For a long time she is silent, then she wipes the wetness from her cheeks. "Oh yes, she did, doctor. She did play that match. Today she had a second chance." She smiles now, understanding, knowing it is true. "And she won."