I’m writing from outside the basketball gym.

I’m waiting for an ambulance to arrive. I can hear the sirens growing closer with every second, but not close enough. I want the paramedics here now. I need them now.

A dear friend of mine, a man named James, with whom I’ve played basketball twice a week for the last five years, is down. He took a jab step at the top of the key and collapsed.

That’s how fast it happened.

A second before, we were arguing over the score, which team was up, who’d made the last bucket. Then, wham, James hit the hardwoods, and without another word, two teams became one.

It’s us against death as the clock winds down.

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Time gets weird in moments like this, similar, in some ways, to how it feels when you’re running the court, making cuts at the basket. Everything happens in flashes. The CPR, that rhythmic pumping, times up with my steps, my heart, as I sprint back to the parking lot, hoping to see the ambulance.

It’s still not there. It’s just us. A bunch of sweaty guys in sneakers and basketball shorts. I call my wife, a medical professional who spent the first five years of her nursing career in an ICU.

“Is he breathing?”

That’s what she wants to know. I’m not sure. I’m still outside, listening to those distant sirens, closer now, but not close enough. I rush back in and find the answer to my wife’s question lying limp at midcourt.

I pass the phone off to a friend. I tell him, “It’s Mal. She’s a nurse. Just keep talking to her,” and then I head for the parking lot again.

I miss the moment when one of the guys administers life-saving CPR and another one goes for the defibrillator. I’m outside, running up the sidewalk, waving down the ambulance, when they stick those pads to James’s hairy chest. I don’t see the shock that jolts his heart back to life, an image I’m sure none of the others will ever forget.

When the paramedics enter the gym, James is breathing again. He hasn’t opened his eyes. He hasn’t said anything, but his heart is thumping of its own accord, following the same beat as the other guys, the ones who administered CPR and employed the defibrillator, fought so hard to keep going.

We all watch in stunned silence as James is strapped to the gurney. Then he’s in the ambulance, headed for the hospital, and we’re left standing in the parking lot, the same darkened lot where we arrive every Tuesday and Thursday morning, basketball shoes in one hand, water bottles in the other, ready to put our bodies to the test.

We will learn later, after James has made a full recovery, just what sort of test we were up against that Thursday.

A “widow maker” heart attack, caused by an 80% - 100% blockage in the Left Anterior Descending (LAD) artery, is highly fatal, with a survival rate of only 12% when occurring outside a hospital setting.

James had a 99% occlusion of his LAD.

In other words, the odds were stacked against him. They were stacked against us, too, the nine guys who each played their own part that fateful morning, the same way true teams respond to adversity both on and off the court.

We learn all of this through texts, the same group chats we use to set up the games every week. The final message comes from James’s sister, and it sums up our diehard crew, the bond we share, perfectly:

“James said thank you again, and he’ll be back to play soon.”

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