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Or at least a cookie. It’s three o’clock, and I’ve finished okaying a round of expenditures for the New York race coming up. That’s the way it is for team owners, always planning for the next race, barely able to concentrate on what’s at hand.
This kind of work I can handle, though. I stretch, and feel a little sleepy, probably because all the adrenaline from earlier has ebbed from my body. Time for a coffee and that cookie. Probably I can go down the hall to the lobby of our headquarters and grab something from the espresso bar.
As I grab my purse, several things happen at once. My cell rings, the desk phone rings, and someone shouts my name. The door flings open, and it’s Tanya.
“You need to come, now,” she shouts. The sounds of other people yelling echo through the flimsy offices.
My immediate thought is that there’s an attack of some sort, a person with a gun, a bomb, a knife. But, no, this is Canada, not America.
“What’s going on?” I ask Tanya, whose face is pale. Her eyes are wide and wild, and even her normally sleek bob is disheveled.
“It’s Max. He crashed during practice. It’s bad.”
There are moments in life when you’ll always remember where you were. You remember the internal tingles, the sudden coldness that hits your core, the disorientation that something has suddenly rocked your world, and not in a good way.
Unfortunately, those are usually the worst times, the ones you’d rather forget. A couple of weeks ago, it was news of my father’s heart attack.
Today, it’s this. Max.
My hand flies to my throat. “How bad?”
“The medics are taking him off the track now. On a stretcher.” She wrings her hands. “Come with me to the control room.”
I tighten my grip on my purse strap. “Let’s go.”
We march in silence, past people who are murmuring in clusters in the coffee lounge. Outside, there are a handful of press people, and they jump on us the minute we push open the door. It’s raining again, really pouring now. Was that why Max crashed? The thought cuts through the haze in my brain.
“Lily, Lily, over here,” one reporter shouts. “Is Max Becker in critical condition?
The questions come in rapid fire.What happened to Max? Did you see the crash? Where’s he going?
Tanya plows through while bellowing “No comment,” but I take a deep breath and stop.
“I’m going to find out more information now. We’ll let you know about his condition as soon as we know. Thank you.”
Tanya grabs my arm and pulls me through the scrum. While photographers click away, we dash through the rain to the garage. It’s not easy because I’m wearing a long skirt and flats, and every time my legs brush against the fabric, they itch anew. But I don’t care because Max is hurt and I need to find out what’s going on.
My gorgeous, loving Max. Just when we found each other again.
By the time I get to the Team Onassis control center my glasses are streaked with raindrops, and I have to pause to wipe them off with the hem of my blouse. When I slide them back on my face, Jack’s at Tanya’s side.
“Practice has been stopped for all the teams,” Jack says.
I don’t care about all the teams, I care about Max. “How is he? Where is he?” I demand.
“He’s been taken to the track ER. Come.”
That’s not good, not good at all. If it was merely a small crash, he’d climb out of the car and walk back to the pits for evaluation. The track emergency center is a temporary triage unit, staffed with more than a hundred healthcare workers. They can do everything from X-rays to IVs in there.
I follow Jack through the control center, which is thick with the heavy hush of tragedy. I know this silence, felt it once when I was a teen and hanging out with my father’s team when one of his drivers crashed. I’ve never forgotten the driver’s girlfriend, stunned and shell-shocked in her glamorous outfit.
Now it’s my turn to look shell-shocked. These are the moments no one in racing publicly acknowledges. It’s as if speaking aloud the potential danger will court it, somehow. It’s easier to dwell on the technical, the competition, the winning.
We make our way over to a bank of monitors, and I gasp when I see that every one is tuned to an image of an ambulance, with flashing lights, near a mangled, wrecked Formula World car. Lucas is standing before the monitors, open mouthed and stunned.
“Max was in that?” I whisper in horror.
“Yeah,” mutters Lucas. “Christ, it looks awful.”
