Page 39 of Haunt Me

“Isaiah?” her voice finds me. “Hey, come here.”

She gets up. This is so not good. Usually she doesn’t even acknowledge my arrival, and now she’s standing up? How horrible do I look?

“You look horrible,” she observes helpfully.

I wish I could laugh. I wish I could breathe.

“You’re making that wheezing noise as if you’re choking.” Her face goes white and she runs towards me.

I am, I think at her, but I can’t say it.

“Breathe,” she tells me. She places a slender hand on my chest, pushes. Nothing happens. No air gets in. “Breathe, Isaiah.”

Her name on my lips is the only thing anchoring me to reality.

“Breathe, come on.”

I can’t. I can’t take in air, that’s the problem.

My knees buckle, and her hand comes around my back as I fold to the ground, supporting me.

“I was such an idiot to call you a genius the other day,” she murmurs somewhere above my head.

I sputter and cough.

“Isaiah,” she calls and I can only hear her voice now, I have blacked out. I’m about to lose consciousness. “I thought you were so smart, and here you are, forgetting how to breathe. Come on, you know how to do this. In, out. In, out. Come on. Come on.”

There is an urgency to her voice, and her hand is pressing down on my chest, which helps. But not enough.

“Come on, Isaiah,” she repeats, and something begins to loosen inside of me. “I’m here. You’ll be ok. Breathe, come on. Breathe. Breathe.”

She keeps talking like that until I take a whistling breath, the air struggling to get through my clenched teeth. Great. That sounded like super normal breathing.

“It’s ok.” Eden keeps going. I keep fighting. “It’s ok. It wasn’t the best breath anyone has ever taken in the history of breathing, but it was better than wheezing, don’t you think?”

I wheeze some more in response.

“You do what you can, as long as you can get some air in those lungs. Come on, one more.”

Ok, this is embarrassing.

But it is happening.

She keeps helping save my life one breath at a time, and I keep fighting and being embarrassed at the same time. After a few minutes of this, I stop being embarrassed and just concentrate onbreathing. It feels like I’m losing the fight, and I’m too tired to continue, but according to her, I’m doing good.

I don’t think I am, but my chest stops hurting so much. I still want to throw up, and I’m too dizzy to stand up. This lasts for about an hour.

Afterwards, I’m left weak. I just lean back, relishing the grounding feeling of the tree’s cold bark digging into my skin. I fill my lungs with freezing-cold air, my cheeks burning with cold and shame.

“I’m…” I cough, my voice hoarse. “I thought I was addicted to saving you, and here you are… saving me.”

“You’re being a drama queen again,” she says.

“Always.”

She settles next to me, our knees brushing. “Did something happen to make you sad?”

I half-smile. What a way to put it.

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