This week, we’re sharing a very special bonus episode while we’re between series! This episode is titled “Champions,” because our storytellers today are just that. Our first storyteller, Kimberly Chao, was the winner of our Super Collider science story slam in December, and our second storyteller, marine biologist Catherine Macdonald, told our most popular story of 2020.

Part 1: Kimberly Chao’s blind date suddenly and inexplicably loses his vision.

Kimberly Chao is a walrus. Or rather, she is known to play with her food and make a walrus face. Professionally, she manages investment portfolios and teaches financial literacy.

Part 2: As a 21-year-old, Catherine Macdonald is hired as a “shark expert” at an aquarium, and soon becomes concerned about one of her charges.

Dr. Catherine Macdonald is co-founder and Director of Field School, a marine science training and education company dedicated to constantly improving field research practices while teaching students to perform hands-on research with sharks. She is also a lecturer and MPS marine conservation track coordinator at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Story Transcripts

Story 1: Kimberly Chao

I'm married. To a hedge fund. I work stupid hours. I miss all your birthdays and any day that means something special. If I leave the office for more than 30 minutes, I have to give them a written explanation. They own me. I begin to cry every night and I don't even know why. I hit a breaking point, and so I quit. I take two years off to wallow and basically try and find myself again, and towards the end I make two more big moves. One, I start my own business, which means that I give up a very comfortable salary. Two, I start online dating. I now have the time to actually meet people. And as much as I don't like the idea of a blind date, I like the idea of finding love. So that's when I meet Marco.

Marco is a former professional snowboarder. He is an investment banker now. He's hot. And he takes me out. We have a great date, we hit it off, and by the end of the night we head back to his place. I'm asleep in Marco's apartment and he wakes me up. We have an emergency. He fell asleep in his contacts, he got them out, but now he can't see. He can't even open his eyes. It's like his eyes are on fire and they seem to be getting worse. It's 1:00 a.m. and so all I can think of is "Let's go to the E.R."

I also tend to ramble when I try to make myself feel comfortable, and so I start rambling to him. "Hey, Marco, I'm going to go through your wallet and make sure you have I.D. I grabbed your green shoes. I think, like... we'll put the left foot on first and give me a second, I need to put on my high heels again because I need to walk in something. But by the way, just, for good measure, just so you know, I still look just as hot as when you met me earlier tonight." And we head over to the E.R., which is no small feat with someone who is blind.

We're waiting in the E.R. and he's in a lot of pain. I can't describe to you what it's like to see somebody and to not be able to do anything for them. He's sweating profusely like he's just run a marathon. And at the same time, he's shaking like he's freezing. And all I can think is to put on a coat and hold him while he does that. And as I watch, I see that his breath starts changing and it changes in a way that I can't describe to you, but -- and I'm not a doctor -- but these are the last breaths of someone who's about to die. Like I flip out. I fling off my shoes. I run out that hall, I start running and asking for help and I finally come up on a nurse and her eyes go wide, even before I mention how much pain Marco is in, and she tells me immediately, "You cannot walk here without shoes on." And I don't understand because she seems to think that Marco's situation is not a big deal, but my feet obviously are.

I realize that I have no power here. She just keeps telling me that we need to wait, and maybe Marco will die, I guess, I don't know. So as I walk back, I'm thinking, gee, blind dates really are a bad idea. But I sit there watching him. I'm in pain because he's in pain. I'm watching this and it's 5:00 a.m. before someone finally comes in. This doctor swoops in.

He's very calm and seems to be in a pretty good mood. He pulls back Marco's eyelids like pulling back fresh bedsheets. Only Marco flinches and screams and I just cringe on the inside. He says the cornea is the fastest self-repairing part of the body. Marco probably just scratched his eye while removing his contacts. You have to suck it up and it'll get better.

I'm pretty skeptical about this, but I mean, this guy seems confident and he told me what I want to hear, that Marco is going to be fine, so I go ahead and take a deep breath in and say, "OK, maybe things are going to be OK." That same nurse from before comes to guide us out, and Marco leans on me and just sighs. He says to me, "So much for our first date, right?" And that nurse, oh my God, she spins around and immediately, I know what's on her mind, so I have to tell her like, "Yeah, we just met tonight at 8:00 p.m." and she immediately turns to Marko and says, "Marry this woman," in all seriousness. And I can only laugh, right? Like, this is our first date. It's not even over. And actually, his pain only gets worse from here.

By 8:00 a.m., we're back in the E.R. By 1:00 p.m., we're at an eye clinic on the other side of town. It turns out Marco used expired contact solution, so his eyeballs were basically bathing in a dilute acid all night and slowly burning off. He burned up both of his corneas entirely. I ask Marco if he wants a friend to be here, but he tells me all of them are bankers. I remember those days. It was unacceptable to leave the office even for an emergency.

So when he says they're all bankers, what he really means is I'm all he has. So he gives me all of his passwords, which is totally against HR policy, and I proceed to email his bosses, his co-workers, his parents, and yes, I can definitely put on my old work hat again. But it's a little uncomfortable because I'm meeting everybody in Marco's life within twenty-four hours of meeting Marco himself.

He's legally blind for three days. And so we're inseparable for a while. By the end of the week, he does regain 90 percent vision. It was the fastest self-repairing part of the body. But to fix that last 10 percent, he schedules surgery to get rid of the scar tissue. Right after surgery, Marco calls me. He's back in the office already and so relieved that they didn't fire him for missing work. By this point, I'm also seeing more clearly.

I let Marco down gently. “Your job is you like mine used to, and I can't be part of that life. It matters to me that I got to be there for you when it mattered.”

He gets it.

You see, I was terrified of leaving that job at the hedge fund. It could have been a big mistake. But right then I knew I made the right choice by leaving my career. This was my best blind date ever.

Story 2: Catherine Macdonald

I was 21 years old, and it was my first paying job as a shark expert working at a roadside aquarium that was right next to the ocean. I wasn't really an expert, not at sharks, not at anything. I was 21. But it was my dream coming true, and at the time, it felt like my first, maybe my only chance to really work with sharks. I did anything there that needed doing, I worked the cash register, I emptied trash cans, I scrubbed the smaller aquariums weekly with a toothbrush, including the aquarium, with the malfunctioning light that would randomly electric shock you.

The park was right next to the ocean and they had scraped out this shallow, muddy pond to fill with seawater to keep the sharks in. The inhabitants were mostly lemon sharks who were lazy. They like to sleep in a pile on the bottom all day, every day, as far away from people as they could. And you couldn't get them to do anything without feeding them. It was coming up on a school holiday, and just before I started this job, the owner had caught a subadult tiger shark that he was counting on to drive business during the vacation. She was about six feet long, but she seemed smaller, mostly just this huge wide mouth and a long skinny tail. It was part of my job to take care of her.

That tiger shark hated that murky, shallow pond. She hated those lemon sharks so much, she had nothing but contempt for them. She spent all day, every day swimming intense circles at the surface. It seemed to me like she was looking for a way out. And as the days passed, the tough skin on her back started to turn this darker, angrier shade of red. The cartilaginous fin rays that make up her dorsal fin started to unravel at the back.

As I watched my boss's prize attraction was literally fraying at the edges. And this animal that I cared about was suffering. I knew I had to find a way to help her.

I tried bribing her to stay on the bottom with treats, but she'd gulp them down and go right back to the surface. I asked if we could string shade covers over parts of the pond, but my boss said it wasn't practical. One day, I found myself hanging off the pedestrian bridge over the shark pond after closing time, holding a paint roller dipped in sunscreen, trying to paint her back as she swam underneath me.

It didn't work. Of course it didn't work. But nothing worked.

It was clear to me that it was completely outside my power to make this shark do anything she didn't want to do.

I went to my boss and I told him that she wasn't doing well and that I was out of ideas. She was miserable and with her sunburn, she didn't even look good on display. I told him I couldn't see anything we could do other than release her. "Absolutely not," he said. "That's impossible until after the holidays are over." A few days later, he and his girlfriend took a day off away from the park and my little tiger shark stopped swimming.

This is back before cell phones were everywhere, so when you left, you were actually gone with no quick calls just to check in. She was still breathing. I could see her buccal pumping, using her muscles to move water over her gills, but she just laid there on the bottom. If you bothered her, she'd swim a few feet to get away from you, but then settle back down.

Visitors kept asking if she was dead. "No, just resting!" the tour guides chirped as I stared at her and worried.

I don't think of myself as brave and I've never been a confrontational person. I really wanted to do a good job for my boss and I wanted to do right by that shark. For the first time in my life, I was backed into a corner. I could only figure out how to do one of those things. I'd never even gotten a really bad grade. The possibility of getting fired seemed like the end of the world. But I decided, unwillingly, that we would let her go.

Because I couldn't stand the thought of a crowd watching her die, if she was dying. I barely even had to ask everyone else to help. They all said yes before I finished stammering out the question. I closed the park for a half hour at lunchtime and we put her on a stretcher.

Carrying her down the hill, she started sliding out the front. So I ran around and I planted my hands on her snout to push her back up into the stretcher as we carried her downhill. She didn't try to bite me, she didn't even struggle. She just lay quietly in the stretcher as we cross the beach. We put her in the water. And released her. And I grabbed a nearby kayak and shouted at everyone that I'd be back, and I followed her.

I told myself it was to make sure she was OK, but looking back, I think I just wanted to share her freedom with her, at least for a minute. It was one of those days where the sea is as clear and smooth as glass and you could count the blades of sea grass on the bottom. She could easily have disappeared in a second. Sharks can really move when they want to, and I am not a skillful kayaker. But she stayed alongside the kayak, brushing against it occasionally, just keeping company with me for almost half an hour. In a way no other shark ever has before or since. With her swimming next to me, steady and undaunted, moving out to sea, I decided that if I did get fired, I would be OK. I decided that she and I could both figure out where we didn't want to be, turn tail, and never look back. Thank you.