Girl Underwater (2 page)

“I'm okay,” I say.

He puts the armrest up and grasps my hand, and the panic tickling the back of my throat sinks back down. “I don't want to die.” I say it more to myself than him, but he must hear me because he squeezes my hand even harder.

“You won't.” He tightens our seat belts and hands me a pillow that he must have salvaged from the now-empty seat next to him.

“This isn't mine—”

“I know,” Colin says. “Just try and support your neck.”

The screams rise and fall with the dip of the plane; somewhere, a door slams against something else, and the drink cart tumbles down the aisle. Through all of this, Colin doesn't just keep his cool; he creates it. The hysteria surrounding us doesn't touch him.

He thinks we actually have a chance.

“Do you have a phone?” I start ransacking the seat-back pocket, tossing out magazines and life jacket instructions. My hands are shaking and everything looks blurred. “We should try to call someone—”

“We're not going to die.” He positions the pillow under my neck and places a strong, steady hand in the groove between my shoulder blades. It's a small gesture, but significant in a world that feels like it's shrinking. He's so
warm
. So steady, too, like he was built for this. Built to be here, in this moment, for reasons I will never understand.

Together, we crouch down as much as our bodies and space will allow. Time stalls, then stands still. Oxygen masks skitter over my back like confused birds. Screams turn to sobs. The plane heaves up, down, sideways. I desperately want to look out the window, to get my bearings. To see one last thing—a star, a house, or maybe just the sky—before I die. Before everything ceases to be.

Instead, I stare at my shoes. A weathered pair of old Nikes, chlorine-bleached from all those hours on the pool deck. One of the laces is untied, but I can't tie them with my arms locked around my legs. So I just sit there, gazing at the faded Nike swoosh, watching my tears stain the industrial blue carpet. What an awful thing to see right before you die. Soda stains, dust, a dead spider. But I'm too afraid to look at anything else. I'm afraid to even move until Colin says my name and that awful terror recedes again.

We're only six inches apart, our faces so close I can taste the whisper of peppermint on his breath. He must've brushed his teeth after that coffee, which I know is a weird thing to think right now, but it streaks across my mind anyway, a grain of comfort in the chaos.

I'm glad he's here—someone familiar, if only in the loosest sense of the word. He must be thinking about his actual family: his parents, his siblings if he has any. The people who raised him, their alarms set for five o'clock on Wednesday morning, waiting for him to come home.

The question comes to my lips, unbidden. “Won't you miss your family?”

He looks at me for a long moment. A pained expression colors his face, then fades. “We're going to make it, Avery.”

Something about the way he says my name makes me forget the hurtling luggage and blinking lights, even as the plane lurches forward, then dips with a violent shudder. A renewed chorus of screaming goes up. Something hits the ceiling, then drops, limply, onto the floor. I catch a glimpse of someone's head and close my eyes hard enough to hurt.

An announcement rolls over the speakers, as if it even means anything anymore: “This is your captain. Brace for impact.”

This time the view out the window shows dark pines flitting past us like an accelerated movie reel. A lake glistens in the distance, reflecting the pale light of the moon. This isn't so bad, I think. To see something so magnificent, so natural, right before we die. I always loved the water: lakes, oceans, pools. I always felt at home there.

Then, I let it all go, finding Colin's gaze instead. It's only us now, our paths converging in a spiraling nowhere. As I try to process what it means to be with this familiar stranger, a strange serenity floats over me. It's as if all the thousands of horrible moments before this one have distilled themselves into something meaningful, something almost like fate. “You have the bluest eyes,” I say.

A lone tear rolls down his cheek, the kind that comes without warning or expectation. I want to touch it. I want to make things right again.

Then, a roar. It sounds like the fingers of God scraping the belly of the plane, a gritty screech that makes my blood hum.

“Don't be afraid,” he breathes.

And then we hit.

T
he date screams at me from the hospital white-board:
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10
.

How did it get to be December tenth?

As I consider this, my nurse bustles in, tells me it's time for breakfast. She sets the tray on the table, and the stench of processed eggs fills the room. Unlike yesterday, or the days before that, there is no lunch menu this time.

No lunch menu because today I'm going home.

A pile of spare blankets sits in the corner. On the opposite wall, an electrical cord dangles from an unplugged flat-screen TV. I stare at the blank screen for hours on end, picturing the rabid faces of reporters and their sensationalist headlines. The same dated photos of those desolate mountains, recycled over and over again, like an overplayed commercial. I tried to watch different channels. Tried to read books or magazines. And even now, with the hulking thing disconnected, I hear the news and see their faces and wish it all away.

A lady with fire-red hair came by a few days ago to interview me. They brushed my hair and coated my face in makeup, covering the windburn as best they could. Someone handed me a bright red sweater to wear over my hospital gown; someone else helped me button it up.

Up until that point, everything felt almost normal, sitting in this room with my TV on and blue skies out the window and my parents perched on the foot of the bed. Nights were long and dreamless, the sleep of the sedated. Days had become a cycle of breakfast trays and lunch trays and naps. I'd been living in a haze—a warm, hollow, wonderful haze.

Then the lady with red hair started asking me questions.

What was it like when the plane was going down?

How did you make it to shore?

Were you afraid?

And, of course:
What
happened
out there?

In the end, I threw the remote clean through the open window, which her hipster cameraman caught on tape. Two nurses ushered them out of the room. The haze, though, had cleared. After that, I dreamed in biting reds and oily blues. I saw pale, frozen faces, their mouths moving soundlessly, like dead fish. I saw belts with no buckles, and flames with no source, and a lake with no bottom. I saw three little boys, all dead in my arms. And I saw Colin saving someone else.

The doctors tell me this is to be expected. They say forgetting is the brain's best defense against the psychological devastation of traumatic events, and I'll be better off if I don't remember. Maybe the media doesn't think so, but they don't have the dreams. They don't wake up in the dead of night, gripping the sheets and wondering if tonight will be the night we freeze to death. The dreams make me wish I had died in the crash along with so many others. Then there would be no media, no lady with red hair, no questions. There would only be a bleak, logical narrative. A blitz of photos and sad stories. Instead, I'm an asterisk. A question mark. And for all those who celebrate my good fortune, there are others who must be asking,
Why her?

My dad walks into the room as I'm wiggling my toes. It's become a habit, a daily check to make sure they still work.

“Sleep well?” He hands me a steaming cup of coffee. Black, a little weak. I usually take it with cream and sugar, but right now, all I want is warmth. The hot liquid courses through me, makes me feel human again.

“Not really.”

“It'll get better.” Spoken like a true physician. My dad isn't my doctor here, of course, but my being in a hospital blurs the lines between patient and daughter. He doesn't say anything to the staff, but he grumbles about my discharge planning to anyone who will listen. Except me. With me, it's a constant barrage of rehabilitation commands:
You should eat more. I want you out of that bed. Being in bed makes people feel even sicker than they are. Do five laps around the unit today. Six tomorrow.
And so on. No wonder why I'm so exhausted.

“Where's Mom?” I ask.

“Outside.”

“Outside?”

He looks me in the eye as he says, “Avery, I think it's time—”

“No.” Coffee sloshes over the cup and pricks my thighs. Dad steals it away from me, noting the little red marks on my skin with a practiced eye. When he decides it's no big deal, he crosses his arms and glares at me.

“This is your last chance to see those boys before we leave.”

“I'll see them in Boston.”

“Avery—”

“I don't want to see them.” I turn toward the window, hating the tremor in my voice. “The doctors said they don't remember much anyway.”

If I were one of the patients in his ER, he'd get up and leave. My father doesn't argue with people. If you don't give a shit, he doesn't give a shit. But I'm his daughter, and so he stands there in silence, waiting me out.

“Fine,” he says.

“Fine?”

“You don't want to deal with what happened, that's your choice. But you've got to give them
something
.”

He walks out to the nurses' station and returns a minute later with his hands full. He's alone, thank God, but he has that doctorly, no-nonsense look in his eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you options.” He lays out an assembly of items: his cell phone, a pen, several sheets of blank paper, three envelopes, car keys, and his iPad. He writes down an address and, beneath it, a phone number.

“That there is all the information you need to contact those boys.”

“Dad—”

“I don't care how you do it. I really don't. But dammit, Avery, you are not going to leave here like nothing happened. You're stronger than that.”

The truth is, I'm
not
strong. A stronger person would have answered the media's questions in details, and layers, and harsh truths; a stronger person would have found some way to cope. Instead, I told the world a story rooted in denial and self-preservation.
Survival.
What a magnificent lie.

He nudges the tray table in my direction. “I'll be back in an hour.”

•

Right on time, my parents return with my discharge papers. Dad watches me crawl out of bed, a pathetic effort that humiliates me to the core. Mom knows better than to say anything. The wheelchair disappeared days ago, never to be seen again. I suspect he may have hurled it out the window while I was asleep.

“You can walk, right?” he asks.

Not
Can you walk?
The expectation is clear. He hands me a cardigan and watches me fumble with the sleeves. He doesn't hurry me, but he doesn't help me, either.

When the ordeal of getting dressed is over, I tuck three envelopes in my back pocket. Dad gestures to the door. My mother does her best to set the pace, which is slow. Painfully, therapeutically slow. An octogenarian on oxygen passes us in the hallway.

Together, we make our way toward the elevators. I'm about to push the button when my father starts walking toward the stairwell. He just won't quit.

The stairs, as it turns out, are good therapy. My legs feel stronger with each stride, as if my muscles are finally figuring out how to work again. The cold had made everything so stiff: bones, muscles, joints. My body was starting to shut down.

“Good,” Dad says. “Looking stronger.”

I refuse to acknowledge the veiled compliment as we approach the sliding doors. It's a long walk to the parking lot, but we take our time. Dad allows breaks—just not very many. He opens the door to the backseat and helps me inside.

“You know the address,” I say.

It's a twelve-minute drive across town to Children's. Like most hospitals built for pediatric patients, this one boasts a bright and welcoming facade, with windows so sprawling they shimmer with the reflecting sun. Parents and children and babies and doctors flood the grounds, the kind of chaos that breeds hope.

Dad pulls up to the main entrance; he must have decided I've walked enough for one day.

“We'll park and meet you inside,” he says, leaving no room for an argument.

They drive off toward the lot. My first steps are almost mindless, a battle against nerves and impending doom. I shudder at the whooshing of the front doors, which sound different now that I've spent so many hours behind ones just like them.

The waiting room next to the ER pulses with the frenetic fear of the sick and injured. Babies wail. Parents wait with bated breath as the triage nurses call out names.

The letters in my back pocket rustle with each step, a constant reminder of what I'm about to do. It was never supposed to happen this way. I
promised
it would never happen this way. And yet it has, and it will.

What would Colin think of me now?

I make it to the main desk before the walls start to spin. A woman with an eighties haircut and purple glasses beams at me.

“Hello there, welcome to Children's. How may I help you?”

I
want
to say their names:
Tim. Liam. Aayu.
I can picture myself doing it; I can almost see their faces, their tiny hands, their little bodies swallowed by the duck-themed hospital gowns they put on kids.

“Ma'am?”

“I . . .”

As I stand there, fumbling with the contents of my back pocket, an alarm sounds. It is nothing like the steady patter of heart monitors. This is a shrill, desperate shriek, signaling impending doom.

“Code Blue, room 438. Code Blue, room 438.”

This is your captain. Brace for impact.

And then it's not just the low drone of a standard announcement but a cruel, suffocating embrace. I'm so cold everywhere, a chill that starts in my feet and rises up, settling at the base of my spine. It feels almost feverish, like ice in my veins.

I turn toward the door, but I'm not fast enough. My legs give out, and the vibrant lights of the hospital turn to shadow. I decide to let it happen because this is who I am now. Damaged. Traumatized. Lost.

Sometimes I wonder if I really survived anything.