by Mila Gray
And there’s more screaming, loud, piercing my eardrums. I block that out too. Focus. Breathe. Pump. Breathe.
Nothing. Sanchez is turning a ghostly shade of blue. Water trickles out the side of his mouth in between my breaths.
‘Come on,’ I yell, putting all my weight onto his chest. ‘Breathe!’ I yell at him.
‘Jesús!’
It’s Valentina. She’s clawing at him. And there’s someone trying to drag her back. How long has it been? How long were we under? How long have I been doing this? I’m vaguely aware that I’m beginning to tire, that my muscles are starting to shake, from the cold, from the swim, but I can’t give up now.
The colour has drained entirely from Sanchez’s face. There’s no pulse. No heartbeat.
Someone pulls me by the shoulder, tries to haul me back, but I shove them hard and keep forcing air into Sanchez’s lungs, keep pounding on his chest, massaging his heart. He can’t be dead. I won’t let him fucking die. Not after all this.
‘Walker.’ It’s José’s voice. He drags me back again, this time using all his strength, and I must be weaker than I thought, more spent, because I tumble backwards onto my haunches.
‘Let them take over,’ José tells me, wrapping his arm around my chest to stop me throwing myself forwards again towards Sanchez.
I finally notice the men in green overalls who’ve bent down beside Sanchez. Paramedics. They’ve already taken over from where I left off – they’re pumping his chest, fixing an oxygen mask over his face.
I stare in horror as Valentina sobs over him, rocking back and forth. The crowd has fallen silent. The only sounds are one paramedic counting breaths and barking orders to the other, and the waves slapping the shore.
And then another couple of paramedics appear with a stretcher, and without breaking count, without letting up on the heart massage, they heft Sanchez onto the stretcher and start to carry him at a jog up the beach towards the flashing lights of an ambulance. Everyone follows, José with his arm around a wailing Valentina.
‘Walker.’
I glance up. There’s a girl in front of me. Dark-haired, full-mouthed. I know her. I’d know her anywhere.
Didi collapses in front of me, her jeans soaking through in the waves.
‘Walker,’ she says again, her hand against my cheek.
I blink, fall forwards, and she catches me.
Didi
Walker sits slumped on the plastic hospital seat, leaning forwards, elbows on his knees. He’s wearing his wetsuit still, but it’s peeled to his waist and someone’s given him one of those foil blankets to keep him warm. It’s wrapped loosely around his bare shoulders. I stop in front of him and rest my hand on his back. He looks up. Our eyes connect and my breath leaves my body like I’ve been punched in the stomach. He can see me. I can’t get used to the fact.
I sink to my knees in front of him. There are around thirty people in the waiting room and Valentina’s quiet crying has silenced us all. I take Walker’s hands – they’re still freezing – and squeeze them tight, trying to warm them. His gaze has dropped to the ground. I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking that he failed to save Sanchez, that it’s his fault. Again. I can see it in his eyes – shuttered and dark – in the lock of his jaw.
And I can’t let him go there. I won’t. Not again.
I take his face in my hands and force him to look up at me. He scans my face as though looking for something there, as though he’s still trying to reconcile my voice and my touch – which are so familiar – to the stranger he’s now seeing in front of him. Am I what he expected? What he pictured? What does it matter right now.
‘Stay with me,’ I whisper to him.
He bites his bottom lip hard, a shadow darkening his face. I want to brush it away but I know there’s no way of doing so. If Sanchez dies, I don’t know how there will be any saving Walker.
I put my arms around his neck and pull him close. His body tenses. He doesn’t respond, but all of a sudden he grabs for me, his arms locking around my waist, his head burrowing into my neck, and he clings to me like I’m the life raft keeping him afloat.
We stay like that for minutes on end, maybe half an hour, and with every passing second I know that the chances of Sanchez making it are fading. We should have heard something by now. And I start to wonder what will happen when they bring the news, how I’ll keep Walker afloat. And what about Valentina?
A commotion by the door makes me raise my head. I prise myself out of Walker’s tight embrace and glance over.
A doctor in scrubs is standing there. ‘Mrs Sanchez?’ he asks, looking around the crowded waiting area.
Valentina makes a sound, a sobbing hiccup, and steps forward, her face tear-stained and swollen. José is with her and she clutches his arm. And there’s Dodds too, in his wheelchair, sitting over by the door. Everyone is staring at the doctor, fearful and desperate, poised on the knife-edge.
The doctor steps towards her and puts his hand on Valentina’s arm. Her face crumples.
‘He’s alive.’
There’s a collective inhalation of air. Valentina’s face blanks. ‘What?’ she chokes.
‘He’s alive,’ the doctor repeats with a smile.
She shakes her head. Tears go flying. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You can see him if you’d like.’
She clutches onto the doctor’s arm and then covers her face with her hands and starts sobbing as all around her people begin to pull out phones and laugh and slap each other on the back.
‘Did you hear that?’ I say to Walker.
He’s staring after the doctor, his mouth open. He turns back to me slowly and nods.
‘You saved him,’ I say.
Walker’s shoulders heave. His eyes are filled with tears.
‘And you can see,’ I say, wiping at my own eyes because I’m now crying too.
Walker smiles. ‘I can see you,’ he says.
I laugh through a film of tears and he pulls me towards him and kisses me.
Walker
Didi drives us back to the base. I sit beside her, my hand on her leg, drinking in the view through the open window: ocean, sky, trees. Were colours always this bright? Did I ever notice before the way light splashes diamonds on water or the way the sky is a pixellated mass of a million different blues? I feel drunk taking it all in. This must be what religious people feel when they talk about a spiritual awakening, this feeling of absolute wonder as I study the world as if it’s the very first time I’m seeing it, which in a way it is. How, why, did I take it for granted before?
But even with everything there is to absorb outside the car, it isn’t long before my gaze lands back on Didi.
I can’t stop staring at her, can’t believe that this girl – who’s more stunning than I could ever have imagined – wants to be with me, chose me, a fucked-up, moody, disabled soldier who did his utmost to push her out of his life. What was I thinking? A dark mass of curls tumbles to her shoulders, and I reach over and run my hand through them, tucking a strand behind her ear so I can see her face better.
Those lips, the strong dark line of her eyebrows, the narrow point of her chin. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what she looked like from having traced her face and body with my hands so thoroughly, but what I didn’t, couldn’t possibly have known was how luminous she is, how flawless.
She looks across at me now, a tiny frown forming between her eyes – which are chlorine blue – and chews on her bottom lip. She’s worried that I’m going to change my mind now I’ve seen her, that I’m disappointed.
I grin. Can’t help myself.
‘What?’ she says, her eyes returning to the road.
‘Nothing,’ I say.
‘Am I what you imagined?’ she asks, tentative, nervous.
‘Didi, my imagination needs a reboot.’
She laughs, the sound lighting me up inside like it always has done, but this time even more, because now there’s no lead weight on my chest cru
shing it out of existence. There’s not a single chance of this light being snuffed out. Ever.
‘I still can’t believe Sanchez almost died,’ Didi says, a hitch in her voice.
My throat is still rasped dry from the salt water. A vivid memory of the cold, like needles being stabbed into my eyes and ears, the feeling of being dragged into the depths, down into the obliterating darkness, fills my senses and I have to suppress a shudder. Didi reaches over and puts her hand on my leg. It’s jumping up and down. Her touch stills me.
‘If you hadn’t been tied together . . .’ she says.
I nod. She doesn’t need to finish that sentence. The doc said that the shock of the cold water and a pre-existing heart condition no one knew about sent Sanchez into cardiac arrhythmia and then into full-on cardiac arrest. He basically had a heart attack in the water. And if we’d been further out to sea, if we hadn’t dragged him to shore and started CPR when we did, he’d be dead. I did save him. For a second time. And that has to be significant.
Didi
Dodds and José make it back to the centre at the same time as us. We all cram into the elevator. Dodds is silent, but José is talking about Sanchez having more lives than a cat and telling Walker that he deserves a second silver star, something that makes a frown stalk across Walker’s face.
When we step out of the elevator, José dashes off to do something and Dodds trundles his way to his room. He stops halfway down the hallway and looks back at us. ‘Hey, Walker – you got a second?’
Walker looks at Dodds and then at me. ‘Can it wait until the morning?’ he asks.
Dodds nods. ‘Sure.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ I call.
He wheels off and I turn to Walker, twining my fingers through his. ‘So,’ I say. ‘I guess I should go home?’
As soon as I say it I realize that home isn’t where my parents are any longer. It’s right here. With Walker.
Walker leans against the door jamb and stares at me. I can’t get over the way he looks at me, or the smile that plays on his lips when he does. He hasn’t taken his eyes off me since we got in the car, and even though he’s barely touched me I feel like he’s been stroking me all over with his hands. My body is vibrating.
He considers me for a moment, and I realize that he hasn’t, that I’ve noticed, looked anywhere but at my face.
‘Or,’ he murmurs, his voice low, his eyes glimmering, ‘you could stay.’
I swallow, my heart rate starting to accelerate.
‘Because now I can finally see you, I’m not sure I’m ready to let you out of my sight for a while.’ He pauses. ‘Possibly not ever, in fact.’
I bite back the smile.
The centre is quiet. It’s past ten at night. I could stay.
‘I can live with that,’ I say, stepping closer so there’s less than a breath of space between us.
Walker catches my hand and pulls me into his room, kicking the door shut with his heel. Now he can see, I’m meeting a whole new side to Walker – a more confident, self-assured side, a lighter side. Without taking his eyes off me, he pulls me near, his hands falling to my hips. He holds my gaze as he lifts my arms and then peels off my shirt.
I start to protest, think about asking him to turn off the light, but the look in his eyes, the pure, red-hot desire, silences me.
He strips me slowly naked, and I stand there, not saying a word as he steps back and finally lets his gaze run up and down the length of me. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head as though in wonder. I feel self-conscious, but then . . . not. When he looks at me I feel like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever seen.
He lifts his head and looks me straight in the eyes, and then he reaches for me and I’m already moving towards him.
Walker
I’m inside her, staring into her eyes as I move, slowly, carefully, enjoying every sensation. Her eyes are dilated, wide, unfocused. Her other hand is clenched in mine, squeezing hard.
Finally, I realize that all those other times I thought I was making love were just sex. This is what they mean by making love. It’s a revelation as startling as sight. Last night when we slept together, it was hungry, desperate, amazing, but this is something else altogether.
Because I’ve memorized every inch of her body with my fingers, I know exactly where to touch her, exactly how to touch her, to make her moan, to make her fingernails score tracks down my back.
I can sense now that she’s close, and just the thought of that takes me to the brink as well. But I want to play it out, I want to make this last. I don’t want this to be over, so I pull out, smiling to myself as she lets out a cry of frustration.
I kiss her neck, nudging her chin aside, and start kissing down her body, eyes open, watching the goosebumps spread across her skin. I taste her, sliding my fingers into the warmth of her, and she cries out again. I could keep on like this, but I’m not sure I can hold on. I want her too much. I want to be inside her again. I push her legs wider apart and listen to her breathing start to speed up. Her fingers knit into my hair, and when she opens her eyes and looks at me I push into her again.
I pull out and push in again, harder. She cries out again. I stop and wait for her to open her eyes and look into mine. I push into her one more time, and this time she comes, and I feel it surge through her in a wave that stretches out and floods over me and I come too, still staring into her eyes.
My arms shake. My whole body starts to shake. Unable to hold myself up any longer, I collapse down on top of her.
Didi
The door flies open just as Walker collapses down on top of me.
‘What the hell?’
Oh my God. Walker is off me in a flash and I’m left scrabbling for the sheet.
‘I can explain,’ Walker says.
I scramble to sit up, pulling the sheet around me. Walker’s naked, standing in front of me, blocking me from view, but my dad sees me anyway.
‘Didi?’ he says, shaking his head in utter shock and dismay.
I can’t speak. He looks at me, disgusted. And then I realize that there’s something beyond disgust on his face, there’s grief. As if he’s witnessed a tragedy.
‘Get up,’ he says wearily. ‘Get dressed.’
I glance at Walker. He looks at me. There’s apology and more on his face. Everything is crashing down around me – my job, my career. I’m in so much trouble. But then I become aware of people stampeding past in the corridor – orderlies – and I see José leaning against the wall outside, pale and shaking.
‘What’s going on?’ I hear myself ask. ‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s Dodds,’ my dad says, walking out the room.
My heart palpitating, Walker and I exit his room twenty seconds later, still pulling on our clothes. Gathered around us are centre staff talking in low whispers. We barely get a sideways glance despite our half-naked, tousled appearance.
I grab José, who is still leaning against the wall.
‘What’s happened? Is Dodds OK?’ I ask.
He shakes his head, unable to look me in the eye.
I turn to look towards Dodds’ room. What’s going on? I glance at Walker, but he’s looking as bewildered as me, blinking at the people gathered around the door.
And then Walker moves off, towards the room. I follow him. José calls after us, but we don’t listen. At the doorway Walker stops abruptly. I run into the back of him. He spins around, catches me, encloses me in his arms and tries to push me backwards and out the way.
‘Don’t look,’ he says, but it’s too late. I’ve already caught a glimpse of Dodds. But it’s not Dodds. It can’t be. It’s some sick wax replica. It can’t possibly be anything human. Walker hauls me backwards, carries me out of the way, my head buried in his shoulder. It was a half-body, a bloated, purple face, a black tongue protruding between blue lips.
The floor disappears beneath my feet. It’s there one moment and gone the next. My knees buckle. Walker catches me.
Walker
It’s nearly time. I need to get dressed. Shave. Pack. Moving, though, is like dragging myself through wet mud. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Dodds is dead. I keep listening out for the whir of his wheelchair, expecting at any moment to hear it banging into my door. His face keeps flashing like a broken neon sign onto the back of my eyelids, bursting like a firework – and it’s the last image of him, not him alive but dead, his face a grotesque fright mask. That’s not how I want to remember him, but no matter what I do, I can’t seem to replace that image with another.
I could have stopped him. If I hadn’t been so self-absorbed, so focused on Didi, I would have seen something was up, I would have given him some time, we would have talked things through, maybe played some poker. He would have won, gone to bed smiling. He wouldn’t have shut his door on us, tied his belt to the handle and hanged himself.
Someone knocks on my door. I turn around.
‘Are you nearly ready, Lieutenant?’ asks the overweight, hassled-looking woman that’s replaced José.
I nod and go back to staring out the window at the calm expanse of lake. José is on administrative leave. He should have been on post when it happened, but he wasn’t. I think he was giving Didi and me space, which only serves to double my feelings of guilt.
And then there’s Didi. She’s been told to stay away. I can’t get any details beyond that as there’s no José to ask and Doctor Monroe has been busy, wrapped up in the paperwork that erupts when a patient, your patient no less, commits suicide.
I’ve tried calling her, but her phone isn’t switched on and I don’t have an email address for her. I tried Facebook, but she won’t accept my friend request. Does she blame herself? Or me? Is that why she hasn’t called me? I don’t know what’s going on. Nothing makes sense. The world has turned inside out.
Finally I force my legs to move towards the bathroom. The funeral is in an hour. I need to be there. Ashamed as I am, it’s the very least I can do. I step into the shower, letting the hot water needle my eyes.