This story about Orlando Antigua appears in ESPN The Magazine’s Nov. 11 College Basketball preview.
DON’T CLOSE your eyes.
Halloween night, 1988. He was 15 years old, on a gurney in the back of an ambulance as it sped down Fordham Road in the Bronx, sirens stacking atop one another like pages in a book.
Fifteen, with a bullet in his head, listening to the paramedics radio ahead to the emergency room. The language of panic: “GSW near left eye. Entry, no exit.”
Don’t close your eyes.
He repeated those same four words to himself, over and over, like a prayer. A child’s logic: If you can see, you can’t die. A child’s fear: If you close your eyes, darkness wins.
Simple solution.
Don’t close your eyes.