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Dana Lee
CHARLOTTE VINSON IS dying from toxic shock syndrome when she sees her grandma.
It’s May 2024. Charlotte is 16 years old and playing the best volleyball of her life until chills give way to a fever. Her organs shut down. She is in Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis on life support.
Her grandmother appears. The woman who adored tulips. Who taught Charlotte how to bake. Who loved watching her play volleyball. When her grandmother’s breast cancer returned, she vowed to live long enough to see where Charlotte would play in college. She died in July 2023, four days after her granddaughter committed to Indiana. But she’s with Charlotte now.
«I was moving through lights,» Charlotte says, sitting in the Indiana film room an hour before a November practice. «I was thinking I was going to die and accepting that fate.»
PHIL VINSON HEARS the muted whir of a helicopter flying over the family’s Muncie, Indiana, home. In his heart, he knows it’s Charlotte. Somewhere overhead, his daughter is fighting for her life.
He quickly stuffs a suitcase with shirts, pants and toiletries before heading to Riley, an hour-and-20-minute drive away in Indianapolis. Charlotte’s mom, Erin, is already on the road ahead of him.
It had been just three days since Charlotte started to feel sick. The Vinsons had gone to church that morning, Mother’s Day, and then brunch. A few hours later, Charlotte couldn’t stop shivering. Her fever spiked. By Wednesday, she was struggling to get out of bed, and she threw up when she did. Phil took Charlotte to see a doctor around 10 a.m. In the waiting room, she said something that terrified him.
«Dad, I can’t see.»
They rushed to the emergency room at IU Health Ball Memorial, where Erin, a family physician, met them. Charlotte’s blood pressure was low, her heart rate high, her organs were shutting down. She was diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome, a rare and sometimes fatal condition most associated with tampon use. In Charlotte’s case, the infection was caused by strep bacteria and unrelated to tampons. Paramedics loaded her onto a stretcher and boarded her onto the lifeline helicopter.
Hovering over the landing pad at Riley, the helicopter is loud, but Charlotte doesn’t hear a thing. The sky above the hospital roof is bruised gray and overcast as Charlotte is wheeled in.
«From there,» Charlotte says, «it’s just bits and pieces.»
Erin is still on her way to Riley when the attending physician, Dr. Courtney Rowan, calls. She wants permission to intubate Charlotte right away; there’s no time to wait.
Charlotte’s body has stopped sending blood to vital organs like her kidneys and liver and brain. Depleted of oxygen, her cells are dying and releasing lactic acid. Doctors do their best to stabilize her. They pump rounds of antibiotics and medication into her body to fight the infection and lessen the strain on her overworked heart.
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But 24 hours later, on Thursday, Charlotte’s condition worsens. She codes that night, and Erin scrambles to make sure Phil is in the room. Get Phil, she pleads. She knows he will never forgive himself if Charlotte dies and he’s not there.
Dr. Rowan explains to Erin and Phil that Charlotte’s best shot is to go on ECMO, a machine that will function as her heart and lungs, because her body is too weak to pump blood.
«Will she die?» Phil asks.
Dr. Rowan is compassionate but blunt. Charlotte could die on ECMO, but she will definitely die without it. The Riley doctors perform the surgery to insert the tubes that night in Charlotte’s hospital room — she’s too sick to move into an operating room.
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With Charlotte, Aird balanced conflicting desires. Charlotte wanted to play. He didn’t want her collapsing midgame. Charlotte wanted to play now. He saw her as part of a long-term plan for the program. They discussed the idea of redshirting, which Charlotte rejected. Aird preached patience.
«I want to do what I love now,» Charlotte says. «Going through that big change in my life, not every day is promised. I don’t know what can happen in three, four years from now.»
But Charlotte tried her best to reconcile her plans for freshman year with her coach’s long-term vision. Doctors cleared Charlotte 10 games into the season. Six matches after that, on Oct. 12 against Michigan State, Charlotte played in her first collegiate match. She had two attack errors and a service error. Phil and Erin sat in the stands and cheered.
CHARLOTTE TWIRLS THE BALL twice in her right hand before lofting it impossibly high, 8 to 10 feet into the air. Her right arm rears back like a loaded bow and, at the very top of her jump, slingshots the ball over the net in a beautifully violent motion. It’s a Thursday in November, the day before Indiana’s game against Oregon. The team has split onto either side of the net, balls slinging cross-court that student managers wrangle onto carts.
Charlotte grabs another ball. She’s practicing the same topspin serve that two Oregon players favor so her teammates will be familiar with their opponents’ serve on Friday. Charlotte’s float serve is more consistent, but her jump topspin serve is nasty. Most of her playing time right now comes when Aird subs her in to serve.
«She’ll hit it with a lot of spin and then it cuts one way or the other,» assistant coach Matt Kearns says. «Eventually, that serve is going to be a real weapon for her.»
In addition to serving, Charlotte has been working with Kearns since August on the timing of her hits. Making contact with the ball at the peak of her ascension to optimize her power instead of swinging on the way down. The Indiana coaching staff is excited for the offseason, when Charlotte can start adding the muscle and physicality needed to make the technique she’s learning really pop. They envision moving her to opposite hitter next season.
Near the end of practice, Aird runs the Hoosiers through one last drill. It’s 6 vs. 6. He throws the ball at the net or spikes it at the back row, unpredictable actions that are supposed to simulate the middle of a play. It’s fast and chaotic and it’s supposed to be.
«I’m trying to make you lose this,» Aird says, tapping at his temple. «All of my best teams stay calm.»
A student manager dials up the scoreboard: Oregon vs. Indiana. Charlotte is playing for Oregon. The gym explodes in a cacophony of noise, exclamations of mine! and short! and set! staccato the air.
It’s 3-2 Indiana. Charlotte rears up and gets blocked, the ball ricocheting high and into the hands of «Oregon’s» setter. Undaunted, Charlotte loads once more, scrambling back before taking three big lunges toward the net and yelling. «Again! Again!» This time, she beats the block. Sitting at the scorer’s table, the student manager updates the scoreboard for Indiana. Charlotte notices, and looks incredulously at the lit-up board.
«You just gave them a point!»
She’s smiling, but her point is clear. Fix the score.
«You just play hard,» assistant coach Kevin Hodge laughs. «Don’t worry about how the points get distributed.»
The score stays 4-2 Indiana.
Aird gathers his team at midcourt at the end of practice. A white gym towel is slung over his shoulder. He tells the players to take care of each other. Check in on each other. An Indiana tennis player was hospitalized just a few days ago after an e-scooter accident. As a parent, he says, the idea of a scooter accident scares the bejesus out of him. As a coach … he implores his players to ask for a ride from teammates or staff if they need one.
«What we do today,» he tells them, «matters tomorrow.» He reminds them to soak in the energy of the home crowd tomorrow night — «We’ve earned that!» — and then closes out practice.
CHARLOTTE DOESN’T PLAY against Oregon, but Indiana wins in four sets to get its first victory over Oregon in program history. Charlotte finds her family waiting courtside after the game.
She hugs Kate, Erin, Phil, and her grandpa. Kate and Erin tease her. She smells fresh, like her elbow and shin pads are finally, thankfully being laundered, likely by a diligent Indiana staffer. In high school, Charlotte infamously neglected to wash her gear. Opening her gym bag felt dangerous, and when Charlotte stashed the offending bag into the car, Kate refused to ride with her. Charlotte scrunches up her nose. Sniffs the red and white sleeves she had slipped off after the game and crumpled into her fists.
«It’s not bad!» she says, and together they laugh.
Charlotte committed to Indiana for the chance to build something new, yes, but this, with her family, is what she had pictured too.
Erin and Phil have made it to almost every game. Her younger brother Andrew comes. Kate, who lives 10 minutes from campus, is a regular in the stands. One of the nurses from Riley attended a game earlier this season. Bloom made it to one, too. Indiana earned a spot in the NCAA tournament for the first time in 15 years and will host the first two rounds in Bloomington. The fourth-seeded Hoosiers play Toledo on Thursday.
Charlotte almost died when she was 16 years old, before her friends and family could ever watch her play for Indiana. She remembers very little of those critical days at Riley. They can’t forget. Kate still cries, somber and grateful, talking about those first 48 hours at Riley. Erin, too, describes herself as more emotional these days.
«I mean, I’m crying at TikTok videos and stuff!» She laughs at herself. «Why am I crying at the kid who got a dog for Christmas?»
Erin keeps a tote bag in the basement filled with cards, photos and signs that friends and family and strangers sent to the hospital. There’s a banner with Charlotte’s name on it that people in Yorktown signed. Praying for Charlotte.
«I figure we’ll keep it if she wants it,» Erin says. «I don’t know if she wants to see it or not. She wants to move forward. Her focus was, ‘I want to get stronger.'»
Erin pauses and sighs. «I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if she — can you ever fully process what happened? … You don’t have to think about all the things you went through because you’re moving forward. Maybe it’s self-preservation.»
Charlotte has her own reminders of what she endured and what she survived.
Back in the Indiana film room, she sweeps her dark straight hair aside and brushes her fingers over a quarter-sized scar on her neck from where the ECMO tube connected into her body. She has a matching scar near her upper thigh. A simple plastic surgery procedure can reduce the scarring, doctors told her, but Charlotte chose to keep them.
«It’s a part of me now,» she says.
During her rehab, Charlotte decided she wanted a tattoo, but waited until she turned 18. When she arrived on campus for her freshman year, she got two. She has a line of four hearts, drawn by each family member, on her right wrist. The second tattoo is hidden on her rib cage. A tulip, for her grandma. Vinson written in cursive, curls up the stem.
«She was there for me,» Charlotte says. Her voice drifts off. «I think …» She pauses and starts again. «I think she pushed me back down and it’s like, ‘OK, you’re going to keep living.'»
