A Step of Faith Read Online Free PDF

carried my pack to the guest room. “I think you should stay here,” he said. “It’s bigger than your old room. And it’s got the connected bathroom. This way I’ll be close if you need anything.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “Can I get you anything now?”
    “Dad, I’m home. I can take care of myself.”
    “Right. Sorry.” He carried his hamburger into the front room. “I’m going to watch some TV. They’re re-airing the’74 Ali and Foreman title fight. The Rumble in the Jungle. You’re welcome to join me.”
    Out of habit, I stopped in the kitchen and lifted the lid of the cookie jar, but there was nothing inside. Probably hadn’t been for a decade. “The Rumble in the Jungle?”
    “You haven’t seen it?”
    “Nineteen seventy-four? I wasn’t born yet.”
    “Great. You can bet on Foreman. I’ll give you a million-to-one odds.”
    “That’s very generous,” I said. “Let me put some laundry in first.”
    “Let me—”
    I raised my hand. “I got it, Dad.”
    “I was just going to say I need to empty the dryer.”
    “I’ll take care of it. Eat your burger and watch your fight.”

    I retrieved my pack, dumped the contents on the laundry room floor, then put my whites in the washing machine and went to the front room. A crescent of a hamburger was lying on its wrapper on the end table next to my father’s La-Z-Boy chair and he was eating a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. In spite of all the internal turmoil I felt, or perhaps because of it, the scene made me smile. My father was a man of habit. He had the same routine when I was a boy—TV and a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
    I got myself a bowl of ice cream, then sat down on the sofa. The fight was in its third round. Truthfully, watching two guys pound each other when your own head is aching isn’t terribly amusing. During the sixth round the washing machine’s timer buzzed and I got up.
    “I’m going to finish my laundry,” I said. “Then go to bed.”
    My father didn’t look up. “We need to leave tomorrow a little before nine. We’re going to hit traffic.”
    “I’ll be ready.”
    I moved my wet clothes to the dryer, put my darks into the washing machine, then went to my room. I didn’t sleep well and got up the next morning around 5 A.M . I went down the hall to my childhood bedroom, which looked exactly the way I had left it fifteen years earlier, with my Jurassic Park, U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers posters still on the wall.
    On top of my dresser was a sizable cluster of prom pictures of McKale and me. With the exception of one girls’-preference dance during my junior year, McKale was the only one I had gone with to the school proms.
    I sat down on the avocado-colored shag carpeted floor in front of my bookshelf, and pulled out my high school yearbooks and began leafing through the pages. In my senior yearbook there was a picture of McKale and me eating lunch together in the school cafeteria with a caption underneath that read “Most Likely to Marry,” which, like the “Most Likely to Succeed” nod, is usually a harbinger of future disaster, but in our case was prophetic.

    My father got up an hour later. He went out for his daily two-mile jog, then did calisthenics in the garage. When he’d finished exercising, he showered and dressed, then came out to the kitchen and made oatmeal. The doctor hadn’t said whether or not I should eat anything, so I skipped breakfast.
    We left for the hospital at a quarter of nine. Theregistration process was interminable, and it was an hour and a half before I met my neurosurgeon, Dr. Schlozman, a bald, skinny man wearing a bright red bow tie. He greeted us warmly as he walked into the room.
    “Sorry for the wait. You’d think that foursome in front of us had never golfed before.” He reached out his hand. “I’m Dr. Schlozman.”
    I smiled. “I’m Alan.”
    “I’m Alan’s father,” my dad said.
    “Nice to meet you both—let’s jump into this.” He