I need every prayer anyone can spare

It’s Monday night.  I’m playing team trivia at Brown’s Brewing, and doing quite well.  My teammates Jeremy and Alexis are running late.  As I bring up one of the slips to trivia host Steven Murray, Wayne from the Blue Mooned trivia team asks me how my daughter Cassaundra is doing.

In other words, he reads my blog.

“Chuck, I gotta hand it to you,” he said to me, “you’re a good father for calling that many times until your daughter picks up the phone, and then talking to her until she feels better.  If I don’t pick up the phone the first time when my mother calls, she’ll call three or four or five times until I do.  That’s cause she cares.”

“Thanks, Wayne,” I replied.  “I think Cassaundra’s doing better.  She had a bad breakup and that can throw anybody for a loop.”

Jeremy and Alexis arrived later in the game.  We chatted for a while, and then the final question came around – in a category that has developed a reputation among the local trivia teams as a “murder” category, one with an answer so obscure that it could reduce every team’s score to zero in an instant.  The category – “Before They Were Stars.”

Alexis suggested we bet one point. “We never get these right,” she said.

I agreed.  We bet one point.

The question involved the name of a group whose original names were Pectoralz, and then later Starfish.  We had no clue.  Alexis and Jeremy thought it might be Oasis, but since we were only betting one point and hoping everyone else fell off the map, I decided to put down a goof answer.  And I remembered that when Cassaundra was growing up, one of her favorite musical acts was the Spice Girls.  How much did Cassaundra love the Spice Girls?  She had THREE copies of the Spiceworld movie on VHS.  So we wrote down “Spice Girls” and handed it in.

The answer – which nobody got – was Coldplay.  In fact, I understand that Wayne’s girlfriend Tara actually suggested Coldplay and Wayne didn’t listen.  Oh well.  His loss, our gain.  $30 gift card in Street Academy’s pocket.

I went home, did some freelance work for the National Basketball League of Canada, watched the evening news, and went to bed.

It’s Tuesday morning, 1:58 a.m.  My cell phone starts buzzing.

I open one eye and look.  It’s a text from someone I know.  “Are u up?”

I grab the cell phone and type back, “is everything okay?”

The response back – “call me.”

I press the cell phone “call” button.

“Have you spoken to Cassaundra recently?”

“Over the weekend,” I replied.  “Why?”

I was then told to check Cassaundra’s Facebook page.  Apparently there was a ton of activity on it – people asking if she was all right, if she was in danger, if she was in trouble.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, went into my living room, turned on my computer and logged into Facebook – and checked her page.

And yes, her FB page had exploded with posts.  Posts from her friends, asking if she’s all right.  Asking if someone’s gone over to her place.  People asking if 911 has been called.

And then I see this message from her on her FB page.

Dad, you taught me to be a good person. You taught me to love unconditionally no matter what. I love you so much. You have taught me to be a good kid. Sometimes good kids mess up …

There were similar messages addressed to her mother and to her stepmother.  These are not the kind of messages I want to see.  No no no no no. Please God, no.

The messages are getting more cryptic by the glance.  Cassaundra boasts about chugging three beers in 20 minutes.  This from a girl who’s been a friend of Bill W. for the past eight months.  This isn’t just a cry for help.  It’s a howl that would make Allen Ginsburg cover his ears.

More messages from friends and family.  I kept reading, as helpless as a goldfish before the toilet flush.  The FB messages are coming in with the speed of attacking hornets – people calling 911, people begging Cassaundra to stay on FB and keep talking and not do anything rash – the police and firefighters are at her house – and that Cassaundra was taken to a medical facility in Seattle.

I coordinate with as many people as I possibly can.  Cassaundra’s mother Cathi lives in Aberdeen, which is about two hours south of Seattle.  I contact her.  Due to HIPAA requirements, the hospital can’t give out any information.  Cathi and I agree to keep in touch and find out what we can.

I’m making phone calls left and right.  Contacting Cassaundra’s roommates.  Contacting the social worker at the hospital.  Contacting everybody.  And all the time, I’m in a panic.  I try to take my mind off the pressure.  It doesn’t work.  I try to go back to sleep.  It doesn’t work.

In the morning, I start calling around again.  Between Cassaundra’s friends on Facebook and her military comrades half a world away in Kuwait – oh, by the way, her unit’s deployment for 2012 was cancelled, that’s at least some solace – I was able to piece together more information.  Information which I’m not going to share on this blog, but that I am going to say that Cassaundra came very close to leaving us.

I put a message on Facebook, asking for all my FB friends and all her FB friends to send prayers and well wishes.  The response and support was tremendous.  Some of my friends even posted on their own FB walls, asking for support from their friends for the daughter of a person they might never have met.  That’s a wonderful act that I won’t ever forget.

Maybe – just maybe – every one of those messages were heard.  By Tuesday afternoon, I received a call from the doctor.  Cassaundra has made it through the worst.  She’s on the road to recovery.  And for that I am grateful.

And then I received a call from her commanding officer at the National Guard.  Her CO, as well as the rest of the 66th Tactical Air Command, went into high alert to take care of her.  They’re not letting one of their own go down, not for any reason.  I found out that one of Cassaundra’s friends – who was also in the military and who was stationed at that moment in Kuwait – monitored Cassaundra’s Facebook page, and it was that soldier who, on the other side of the planet, called 911.  I will be the first person to request that that soldier receive a medal.

And then I received a call from one of Cassaundra’s roommates.  She promised to pass along any information that she could.  And then I received a call from Cassaundra’s mother, who was on her way from Southern Washington as fast as the speed limits would allow, to go and see her.

I am extremely grateful for everyone who kept Cassaundra in their prayers.  At this point, Cassaundra needs every amount of emotional support that her family and friends can provide.  Forget Team Edward or Team Jacob.  At this point in time, I’d rather be a member of Team Cassie.

And believe it or not, I’m also grateful to Micheal Ray Richardson.

Yes, the former Albany Patroons  basketball coach, who is currently patrolling the sidelines for the NBL Canada’s London Lightning.  Inbetween all the craziness and concerns on Tuesday, Coach Richardson called me, in his half-exacerbated, half-cheezed-off-at-the-world voice…

“Chuck! Chuck! Why does this transaction report show that we have only nine transactions left, I thought we had twenty-two transactions for the season!”

And as I explained over the phone to Micheal Ray that the twenty-two transactions included the twelve men signed for the Lightning’s Opening Day roster, I realized that, whether or not he realized it, he actually helped me to take a short break from worrying about my daughter.

In other words, I had to keep working and doing my personal routines and obligations.  I couldn’t stop.  I had to remain strong through all this, even as my heart was bargaining with God, offering anything of mine in exchange for her life.  No crisis in this world, however insurmountable, is worth the cost of what she went through.  Life is too precious to let go.

Cassaundra’s recovering from this horrible ordeal.  But she’s not out of the woods yet.  There’s a lot of healing – physical and emotional – that she must complete.  It’s a new journey in her life.  A new quest, a new challenge.

But she doesn’t have to do it alone.

Not when she has Team Cassie, with members from around the world, offering a thousand shoulders to lean upon, and two thousand ears to listen.