Push- A World Cup 2014 short short

PUSH
This is it. They had been battling for hours. Carlos hears the words in his head: “PUSH. PUSH.” He does and manages a break away. His legs hammer down on the lush emerald carpet as he propels the ball. The goalie seeing him matches his speed. In his hast he builds momentum that is about to be used against him. Without warning Carlos stops still commanding the ball, but the goalie lurches forward unable to stop. The net is now vulnerable and Carlos’ heart wallops. The stadium, once a deafening thunderstorm, is now ominously silent and empty sits the seat meant for his wife.
Across the city another heart beat is fluttering as it battles to stay alive. The delivery room of the hospital is awash in organized chaos. Monitors echo the heart of an unborn son. Mother struggling as the doctor calmly demands “PUSH. PUSH.” She does even though she has been battling for hours. Instinctively she knows that something is wrong. She knows the way that she always knows things. Like this morning when her water broke that Carlos could not be with her. He would be on the grass with the world watching, and she would be in the delivery room possibly losing their son. It is the very reason she refused to let him come.
She persuaded him, “Go! Your team needs you. Your son and I will be waiting after you win the game.”
She was adamant and he knew there was no way he could change her mind. With a pang of agony she is snapped back into the present and can see it in the doctor’s eyes that they are losing him, but she fights anyway. The doctor tells her staff to ready the OR but looks at her and this time she is less calm.
“He has one shot but we have to go now.”
Somewhere else Carlos knows this is his shot. He finds it strange that he has a heightened sense of things. He simultaneously feels the emptiness in his wife’s seat and the electricity searing in his leg as it snaps down. The ball spins like a rifle fired bullet and sails past desperate defenders. A stadium roars to life with primal thunder, and he is enveloped in the arms of his team. All he longs for are the arms of his wife and son.
Sometime later Carlos has made it to the hospital. He couldn’t escape the world bearing down on him in his victory, despite his every fiber pulling in him to be with his family. He finally finds his wife who is wearied from her own battles. He rushes to her and she is in his arms. She cries as he asks where their son is.
“I was wrong. I was so wrong,” she laments with eyes looking past Carlos. “And I couldn’t be happier.”
The nurse wheels into the room with a healthy baby boy as a spent mother and father smile.