Under Zenith (23 page)

Desperate, I shone the flashlight all over the passageway, hoping there would be some sort of
hidden compartment in the wall or a reset button I could push. The beam of my light pierced the murky water dully and though the reset button was nowhere to be found, I saw a small indent in the ceiling, where a tiny pocket of air had been trapped. Even though it seemed far-fetched, I hoped I’d be able to breathe it in. At this point I was open to any and all possibilities.

I plugged my nose with my free hand to avoid drowning myself, rolled over onto my back in the passageway, and pressed my lips to the small air pocket.
The dry brick, though rough against my skin, was a welcome sensation and I tried to maintain my cool as I slowly sucked the air into my mouth. I didn’t want to gasp suddenly and end up filling my lungs with water by accident.

The air was stale
, but it stopped my body’s trembling momentarily and it gave me the boost I needed to get to the other side of the tunnel. With the newfound motivation of fresh air in my lungs I continued my sideways journey to the next seemingly dead end.

This time, instead of a tunnel leading even fu
rther away from hope, the next open passageway was above me, leading up toward a light far away. If my air-deprived brain was working correctly, it seemed like I had swam in a giant “U” shape and would open the grate to find myself somewhere inside of the maze still. It didn’t seem like I’d swam far enough to get me completely out of the endless sprawling brick structure.

Ignoring this fact and focusing on getting to the air above me, I pushed off of the bricks, hopefully for the last time, with my hand stretched out in front of me, grasping for the distant grate.

I scrambled frantically through the passageway that seemed to get narrower and narrower the closer I got to the grate. The little flashlight slipped out of my hand in the struggle and I was instantly engulfed in a partial darkness. Luckily, the grate above me gave off enough light to lead me in the right direction, no matter how eerie the sudden darkness was.

My palms scraped against the rough bricks as I tried to fight my desire to take a breath, just like I had the time I’d sat beside my own body, wa
tching my brother Tuck trying to revive me. As I neared the grate up ahead, I had to readjust my hands. The passageway had become too narrow to keep my arms at my sides and from that point on, I’d need to raise my arms above my head in order to fit through the small space.

Like taking
my dress off over my head that was stiff and too small for me.

To say that I felt claustrophobic with the walls literally closing in on me would be an understatement.

I could feel the skin on my shoulders getting scratched up as I wiggled my body through the space, hoping it wouldn’t get any narrower before I reached the grate. My upward progression was already slow and soon enough, I’d have to come to a complete stop. That wasn’t an option I wanted to explore any time soon.

I used my fingertips to
inch myself forward until my body stopped all together, just out of reach of the grate. I was completely wedged between the four brick walls with my arms pinned over my head, waving around helplessly right beneath the grate.

My heartbeat quickened, and my eyes began rolling back into my head as my lungs screamed for air.
I could feel myself losing control over my body and I knew that I’d slip into unconsciousness any moment and drown in this terrifying space.

I tried to push myself just a few more inches with my feet.
With my bare toes dragging across the bricks, I was able to move my body a good two inches closer to the grate above me, still only one inch out of reach. The water in front of me was tinted a faint shade of pink, and I could only imagine the damage I’d done to my shoulders when I’d pushed myself further up the tunnel. I could feel the brick tearing into my skin with every attempt to push myself closer to the grate, but a few scratches were the least of my worries with my world quickly darkening around me.

Utilizing my last bit of strength, I pushed off the brick wall one last time with my toes, hoping it would get me to my Destination.

My cold fingers made contact with the grate in front of me and as I wrapped them around the metal, I could feel the open air just above me. Sadly, I was still stuck.

The irony of drowning only inches away from the surface of the water was not lost on me, though I wished I could have been enjoying it from the topside of this disaster.

Holding on to the grate as tightly as I could I tried to push it to the side.

Unfortunately
, that happened to be the exact same moment my body gave up on me and as the grate began to slide, my world went black.

Chapter 22

“I swear I saw it,” I heard Tuck say somewhere far away.

His voice was muffled and distant
, but it was distinctly his and I had to wonder if I was making things up again, or if I was allowed to hear their voices one last time before passing over for good.

I was
acutely aware of the fact that my entire body throbbed and my head ached, but I couldn’t care less about the pain in my body right at that particular moment because I could actually breathe. Somehow I’d managed to get through the grate, even though I didn’t remember doing it.

Really, based on the last thing I remembered
, I probably shouldn’t have completed the task. I was wedged between the brick walls and completely out of air. That entire scenario just reeked of a bad ending.

Yet here I was, in some fuzzy dark place hearing the voice of my brother. No matter how much my body ached, hearing his voice made going through all of the impossible tasks worth it.

“Son, I didn’t see anything,” my dad replied, sounding a bit closer than Tuck.

“I saw her eyelids
move, Dad,” Tuck insisted.

His voice was losing the fuzzy quality and become sharp and clear.

“Go get your mother,” Daddy instructed, and a second later I heard his retreating footsteps.

So this was it? I got to see my entire family before I left? Maybe passing on wouldn’t be nearly as traumatizing as I’d thought. Somewhere deep inside of me I wished Hayden would be part of my welcoming committee (or was it more like a
farewell committee?), but I’d gotten to spend a lot of time with him those past few days. I could understand if he didn’t want to see me again already.

“Isla?” my mom called, and suddenly I felt her hand brushing against my arm.

The gesture actually hurt quite a bit, which I hadn’t expected, and it made me flinch.

“Did you see that?” Tuck asked incredulously.

I lifted the corner of my mouth in the smallest hint of a smile at my brother’s antics. It was amazing that the smallest gesture on my part seemed so interesting to him.

“She’s smiling!” my mom practically shouted.

The apparently monumental task of smiling quickly wore me out and I let the expression fade from my face. If I couldn’t even smile for more than a few seconds, how was I supposed to open my eyes? I’d managed to make it through six impossible tasks with an impossible man, hardly ever breaking a sweat and now I couldn’t even smile?

“Baby, can you hear me?” she asked.

Despite the exhaustion I felt, I slowly opened my eyes, wondering what my heavenly surroundings would look like and excited to see my family one last time.

Blinding white lights directly above me made me flinch the second I opened my eyes, which in turn hurt my head so I quickly closed them again.

“She’s awake. She’s really awake,” Daddy said, sounding choked up over this revelation.

The emotion in his voice made me wish I could do something more impressive than just opening my eyes for two seconds. I wanted to sit up and give him a hug, or tell him to stop worrying because I was fine now and I'd watch over him from heaven. Instead, I settled for opening my eyes once more, determined not to close them again.

The world went in and out of focus, the lights were too bright, and the faces of my family seemed entirely too tired and worried. Each one of them looked like they hadn’t slept in years, but they were happy anyway. That was a sentiment I could relate to. Despite my exhaustion it felt amazing to finally see them again.

“Isla, can you hear me?” my mom asked
slowly, her voice much too loud for my headache.

I tried to tell her I was fine. I opened my mouth to form the words
, but no sound came out. It was just too tiring.

Still, the warmth I felt in my stomach, just being this close to them again, was overwhelming. Despite the dark circles under their eyes, they were beaming.

“Don’t tire her out, Molly,” my dad said, never taking his eyes off of me. “They said she’d tire easily when she woke up.”

I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to get rid of the blurriness. It was odd seeing my parents again when I’d thought they were gone forever, but it was even odder to have them talking about me when I was laying right there.

Since it seemed like the only thing I could do without wanting to collapse into a heap was move my eyes, I let them wander around the room that was anything but heavenly. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing and suddenly, I wasn’t so positive that I had died.

I was lying in a hospital room with machines whirring and beeping all around me. The smell was sterile, the lights were far too bright, but it definitely wasn’t heaven.

But nothing about this situation made any sense. If I hadn’t died, where had I been before this? Had I been stuck in some sort of limbo while my body decided if it was going to die or not? And what did that make Hayden? The angel of death?

My mind was completely overloaded with questions and nothing seemed to make sense. All I wanted to do was ask my parents what was going on, yet I couldn’t even form a sentence. Maybe I had died
and this was what hell was like; all sorts of questions with no way to answer them.

Trying to set aside my frustration at the lack of control I had over my voice, I tested out the rest of my body.
It took some effort, and my bones felt stiff, but I was able to wiggle my fingers and toes a bit. In fact, it seemed like I would have been able to move all of my muscles if only I wasn’t so tired.

“Tuck, go wake up the doctor,” my dad instructed.

Wake them up? I guessed if it was late at night that would explain the tired looks on my family’s faces. How long had I been unconscious? I’d crashed my truck pretty late, so really it could have been any span of time. Two hours, maybe four or five before the sun came up?

As
Tuck disappeared, I attempted to lift my arm up, remembering the horrific scene in the cab of my truck after it had crashed. There’d been so much blood, how had I survived that and what on earth did I look like now?

“Honey, just try to rest,” my mom said, glancing down at my hand that I was desperately trying to lift.

I knew she was right. I knew I needed to take it easy, but I had to see if my face was completely gone or something else equally as awful.

It took all of my strength, but I managed to bring my hand up to my face, feeling the sore skin there.
I gingerly ran my fingers over the place that gave me the most pain: the left side of my forehead, right at my hairline. My eyes widened as I felt the bristly stitches poking through my skin and my mom instantly grabbed my hand and pulled it away.

What did I look like and why couldn’t I talk? Was I forever damaged because of that stupid dog in the road?
I should have just waited until I got home to listen to my new CD. My mind instantly filled with even more questions and I suddenly felt dizzy, like my entire hospital bed had suddenly turned to one side and was about to dump me onto the floor.

“Just relax,” my mom soothed, looking over at my dad who, in turn, looked behind the curtain at the bed next to mine.

Why was he looking at the patient next to me?

“Is he awake?” Daddy asked Tuck, who suddenly reappeared.

Even my doctor was sleeping in the room with me? I must have been in pretty bad shape to warrant around the clock surveillance.

“Yeah,” he answered simply, nodding at the doctor as he approached.

“Dr. Temple, she’s moving around, but she still hasn’t said anything,” my dad informed the man on the other side of the curtain.

It didn’t escape my notice that he’d called him Dr. Temple and I involuntarily held my breath, waiting to see if he was who I thought he’d be, or if my imagination had made him up all together.

“That’s to be expected at first Mr. Edison,” the doctor told him with a thick English accent, bringing my heart rate up a few more notches, which normally wouldn’t have been embarrassing, but the beeping machine next to me sped up as well. Talk about humiliating. “It’ll take her a bit to get acclimated and we won’t know just how difficult it will be for her to recover until we test things out. Every case is different.”

A second later he was by my bed side, sporting blue scrubs and a white lab coat rather than the all black ensemble he’d worn during the tasks.
He looked exactly the same as he had when I’d kissed him only moments before that, though his eyes seemed more tired and his face was a little scruffier.