Page 9 of Through the Water

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Ariana

“I’m jus’ pain covered with skin.”

-John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I was dreaming of the boy again.

Over the years, the details had faded to little more than a shadowy figure with blue-gray eyes and sun-kissed skin, but I knew it was him.

The moment I went into the water, I broke the rules and found goodness where none should have existed. Coincidentally, it was also when I discovered there was truth in the old adage, ‘no good deed goes unpunished.’

My father hadn’t believed for one second I’d simply fallen into the fishing hole. Especially not after Brother Bradley—or Brad, as he’d insisted I call him—had informed him I’d been missing for hours. In the end, I accepted defeat and took my punishment in stoic silence.

I’d saved a life, and though the boy had never answered me, I wholeheartedly believed he was good. Perhaps if he hadn’t been, things might have played out differently.

Maybe then I would have been able to do as my father commanded and set my mind on things above, and not the things of earth.

But even ten years later, the boy with blue-gray eyes was still the one fantasy that hadn’t been tempered with a harsh dose of reality. Night after night, he haunted my dreams, leaving me aching for a life I could never have.

I was dreaming of him again, only this time we didn’t reach the shore. Angry waves battered our bodies and dragged us down into icy depths. The pressure was like a band around my chest, increasing until I was sure my ribs were going to snap. I inhaled the frigid water, desperate for relief from the ever-increasing pain.

Relief that was just out of my reach.

Instead of waking with a pounding heart and sheets soaked in sweat, I found myself in a living nightmare where my body remained suspended in a dream-like state.

Consciousness came to me in waves, piercing the surrounding darkness with flashes of color and the soft sounds of whispered conversations before dragging me back into the abyss.

I’d resigned myself to a life spent caught between two worlds when I discovered I could make my eyelids flutter by directing all of my attention to them. It took every ounce of focus, but I did it over and over again until, at last, my eyes opened. The sensation of drowning didn’t disappear entirely, but it was more bearable now that I was awake.

“Ariana, squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” a disembodied voice encouraged from somewhere above. “You’re okay, you’re safe. Right now, you’re at St. Michael’s Hospital in Houston.”

Fatigue weighed on me like a heavy wool blanket, but I managed to squeeze the hand wrapped around mine in response. The rest was harder to process, and I blinked slowly as if doing so might bring the words and the room into focus. A doctor was paged from somewhere nearby, but in here, it was quiet, allowing me to think.

Hospital.

I stiffened when the word permeated the fog surrounding my brain. Only sick people went to the hospital.

Was I sick?

The pounding in my skull gave a resounding yes, as did the persistent waves of dizziness and nausea. Even the scent of illness hung over the room like an unwelcome house guest, dragging long-forgotten memories of Mama to the forefront of my mind.

From somewhere nearby, machines began to beep loudly, each high-pitched tone a solemn reminder of how life could change in an instant.

During the holidays, the church held a toy drive for the local children’s hospitals. Minus a routine tonsillectomy, I couldn’t recall ever being a patient in one.

“Ariana, you are safe.” Each word was slowly enunciated as if I were hard of hearing. I wondered if they were trained to repeat things like that.

Were there patients who actually believed it was perfectly normal to wake up in a hospital?

Maybe I was the only one who rationalized that if I was bound to a hospital bed with a splitting headache, then the odds were probably pretty good I was about as far from safe as one could be.

The woman’s face finally came into view. I parted my lips to say something, only to be overtaken by a sudden coughing fit. The hoarse, soupy cough rattled my aching ribs and triggered my gag reflex. I blinked away the tears and swallowed until the urge to vomit passed, wondering where they kept the trashcans.

Just in case.

Incidentally, I also began to wonder why I’d fought against unconsciousness.

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