Page 72 of Swim To Me

“Thanks.”

Hudson isn’t awake when I get back, my hair wet, muscles aching but mind much clearer. I’ll tell Delilah when I feel the time is right, and until then, well… I’m not that interesting anymore, nobody is bothered what I’m doing with my life and hopefully the tabloids feel the same way. It’s been a while since I was last featured anyway; papped heading inside of a coffee shop the week before Christmas last.

Sliding into bed, I ignore the urge to text Delilah, not because I don’t want to talk to her, but because I don’t want to pressure her, and instead pick up the second book in my ‘Why Choose’ series she loaned me.

I get through two chapters painfully slowly, before I’m pulling back the warm covers, heading down the corridor and opening the door to the spare room at the end, the urge to slip inside to loud to ignore.

Perching on the edge of the bed, I look up at the wall. Bronze, silver and gold glittering trophies and medals, each with my name etched onto them, wink back at me. Guilt sits heavy in my heart for the knowledge I’ve slept with Delilah without even telling her who I truly am.

But how can I…

Every droplet of my blood, of sweat, each shed tear and aching muscle, or leg cramp is tidied away in this room; kept like a rather strange shrine I’m not willing to part with.

The entire span of my swimming career is encapsulated in this one space.

At one point, it had felt like my entire life.

I glide my fingers along the rim of a gold trophy cup, the metal smooth and cool. I’d been eleven when I’d won my first gold. Ecstatic didn’t quite cut it. I can still remember the tight lock of Mum’s arms banding around my neck, the wet splat of Blake’s water slicked body colliding with mine. He’d been competing too, but he hadn’t placed. It didn’t matter to him; he was more than happy to celebrate my win with me.

My family had been there to celebrate my losses too.

The summer I turned twenty-one, young and naïve, practically high on life, I accepted an invitation to spend a week in a ski chalet in the north of France. While my other friends partied and drank, snorting messy white lines with their rolled-up paper cash, I declined each offer. I was already a pretty well-known athlete, having competed in the commonwealth games, with big dreams of the reaching the Olympics. Not even the slightest bit of temptation was going to get me to ruin my chances.

Instead, I spent most of my time on the slopes, practising jumps and twirls, the soft powdery snow flying out behind me. My adrenaline rushed much faster as I fled down a slope than it did in chalet pounding back shot after shot.

I’d ridden the ski lift a number of times, so on a bright Tuesday morning, I didn’t even question hopping on alone, readjusting my ski goggles as we began to take off from the ground.

Life as I knew it changed with that split second decision.

One second, we we’re trundling forward, the next we we’re speeding backwards at breakneck speed, crushing the other ski lift chairs behind us. Thankfully most of them we’re empty, call it luck I guess, but there was still a few of us trapped, unable to do anything but jump to avoid being squished.

I can’t remember the height I jumped from, my brain simply going into survival mode, but I recall the sudden searing back ricocheting up and down my left calf when I collided with the hard ground.

Black ice sent me spinning, one of my skis landing painfully on the top of my booted foot, the other smacking me on the head. Still slipping down the slope, disorientated and feeling sick all of a sudden, I closed my eyes.

When I reopened them, it was to a sterile hospital room. Mum sat in the chair closest to my bedside, gripping my fingers so tightly I was losing feeling in them.

“Water.” I’d apparently croaked out, taking a few sips, before slipping back under the soft cloud of welcoming sleep, my mum’s concerned face the last thing etched on my brain.

I was in and out for three days straight, sometimes lucid, sometimes not.

Eventually, when I did come too it was to the worse news of my life.

“You’ve broken most of the bones in your foot and tore the ligaments in your left calf,” the doctor explained, clipboard in hand.

“My swimming…”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to swim again,” he reassured me, “with the right physiotherapy. But I’m not sure about competing.”

My dad had gripped my shoulder, as I cried my eyes out, unable to catch a breath. He promised it would all be okay no matter what happened. But I’d been swimming since I was four, I knew no different… and my dream…

“It’s still possible, G,” Blake had repeated, his eyes red rimmed, a mirror image of my own. He knew how much I wanted this. I’d worked my fucking arse off.

I held onto that hope while I pushed through horrific sessions of physiotherapy. It was uncomfortable and painful, completely out of my comfort zone and everything I didn’t want to be doing. I wanted to be fucking swimming; it kept me sane, it kept my mind from overthinking.

For sessions after sessions I tried, constantly on the edge of tears, swallowing down a cocktail of pain medication multiple times a day.

Still, like a friendly face, the water welcomed me in once I was ready. It took my weight, it took my pain, it took my worries, soothing me in a wet hug.

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