by Cassy Roop
“Uh, thank you,” I said meekly, accepting the flyer from him. He stared at me for a really uncomfortably long period of time as I pretended to be interested in the sales on the piece of paper.
“Are you okay, Miss?” He asked as he shifted from foot to foot.
“Mrs.”
“Huh?”
“Mrs. I’m a Mrs. Not a Miss,” I scolded him. He didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of my anger, but nothing and no one was immune to my hate of the world at the moment. There was tightness in my eyes and I felt my face redden from the sun.
“I’m sorry, I was just trying to be polite.”
“Well, the answer to your question…” I paused gesturing for his name.
“Sebastian, but my friends call me Baz.”
“Well, Sebastian, no. I am not all right. See that out there?” I pointed directly in front of me.
“The ocean?” He asked as he pulled off his sunglasses and revealed whiter skin around his eyes that hinted that he did this job every day.
“Yep,” I replied sarcastically. “That is why I’m not okay.”
“Can’t swim? There are some awesome instructors I know over at Surf Shack, they would be more than happy to help…”
“I know how to swim,” I interrupted him. “The ocean killed my husband. Ripped him right away from me without relenting. It was our honeymoon. He wasn’t supposed to die.”
I looked away from the guy, not wanting him to see the tears in my eyes or the sadness on my face. I didn’t want to be sad. I wanted to be angry. Anger was the only thing that I could deal with. Anger is what kept me from thinking about Jeremy’s death being my entire fault. If I could put the blame on someone or something else, then maybe I wouldn’t hurt so badly. Anger I was good at.
“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“Know? How could you? You don’t know me. You didn’t know the ocean was Satan in beautiful disguise. You see it for how fun it is or how beautiful it is. I see it for what it really is.”
“They don’t teach you how to deal with situations like this in orientation,” he sighed. If I felt any kind of amusement, I would have laughed, but my smiles and laughter all died the day Jeremy did.
“Just go. Leave me alone,” I insisted. Then added, “Thank you for the flyer.” He hesitated only briefly then went about his way down the beach talking to other patrons.
When he was out a distance, I looked down to the flyer withering away in my hands from the spray of the ocean. Suddenly a brilliant, yet terrifying idea came to me and I jumped up from the sand, not bothering to brush it off my legs as I began walking down the beach with determination.
***
FUCK THE DAMN HOSPITAL. Fuck the administration. Fuck everyone and everything I thought as I reached down and threw a seashell out into the ocean. The beach was crowded like it normally always was, but today I wished that there wasn’t anyone there so that I could be left to wallow in my own anger and self pity. I felt irritable. I didn’t want to listen to anyone or anything. My mind constantly jumped to conclusions and I had a hard time separating what was fantasy and what was real.
Fantasy would have been Lilly holding my hand as we walked along the beach. Fantasy would be us going to our very first doctor’s appointment and getting to hear my baby’s heartbeat for the first time. Reality was that Lilly was dead, and with her the life of our unborn child. I had been so lost inside of myself since I watched the angry waves sweep my wife off to sea, that I didn’t recollect the fact that not only had I lost my wife, but I had also lost my child. An innocent that didn’t deserve to have its life ripped away from it before it even began.
How was it even possible to love someone that you had never even met, so much? My muscles jumped under my skin and I begged for any kind of emotional release. Feeling trapped inside the darkest place I’ve ever been, I was terrified that I may never come up for air again.
Anxiety began to take over me and I could feel my breathing start to escalate. I’ve never had a panic attack in my life, but I felt like I could have been on the verge of one from having to witness all of the happy couples and families on the beach. I knew it was the last place I needed to come to, but Lilly and I had met on the beach when I was still in medical school. It was the place we always came to when we felt like we needed to re-connect. It held nothing but wonderful memories for both of us, and now it held the darkest memory of my life.
I continued to walk up the beach to get away from the crowd. Walking past some marinas where beautiful large sailboats were waiting as their masts flapped in the wind. A beautiful memory came to mind of the first time that Lilly and I went sailing.
“You look pretty cute in that life jacket, Sailor,” Lilly said to me as she sauntered over in her white bikini that accented each one of her beautiful curves. Watching her approach as the sun shone from behind her, casting her in an angelic halo of light, she was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. Her long, dark hair was loose as it danced around her face from the wind and sent the tiniest of hints of her floral shampoo into the air. I inhaled deeply, getting a mixture of sea, sand, and air with her sweet scent and quickly closed the distance between us.
“Looking good yourself, wench,” I teased as I wrapped her in my arms and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.
“It’s so beautiful out here, Evan. Thank you for bringing me.”
“It is very beautiful out here, but it is nothing compared to you.”
“Now you’re just being cheesy,” she laughed and it was the most beautiful sound.
“Cheesy or not, it’s true.”
“Well, you aren’t such an ugly duckling yourself.”
I smiled and leaned my forehead against hers. I was nervous. I felt restless and my breathing began coming in quicker pants. I could feel my hands go clammy and I hoped she couldn’t feel them sweat as I held onto her.
She made me feel things no other person had ever felt. There were different kinds of love. The kind of love you felt when you genuinely cared for someone and their well-being. The warm feeling you got based upon knowing and accepting someone. The kind of maternal/paternal love between a child and its parents. There was infatuation, a feeling of love toward someone mainly based off fantasy or idealization.
There was also puppy love. The kind of love that was new in a relationship. A child-like, innocent and temporary crush for someone you don’t know that well. There was romantic love, an abiding love for someone whom you feel attraction, passion, caring and respect.
Then, there was unconditional love. A type of caring and affection so strong, that you felt it constantly.
Unconditional love. That is what I felt for Lilly. She was my soul mate. Someone that I felt like I had spent several lifetimes with before. We just clicked like that. We were two separate people made better by being together.
“Lilly,” I breathed as I removed one hand from her and raked it through the side of my windblown hair.
“What’s wrong, Evan?” She asked, concern marring her beautiful features. I opened my eyes so that I could get lost in hers, the same gorgeous color of the ocean. Her cheeks had gone pink from the windburn and her hair matted around her shoulders in a beautiful, tangled mess.
“I—I need to tell you something.”
“Just tell me. You are kind of scaring me,” She breathed as her fingers found their way under my life jacket to grip the shirt on my back.
“I love you.”
She looked at me puzzled, a serious and nearly deadpan look on her face before tilting her head back and erupting in full out laughter.
“Oh my God!” She yelled out as she clutched her belly and tears streamed down her cheeks from the giggle fit.
“Okay, not the reaction I was expecting,” I said arching my brows at her and wondering if I had made a fatal mistake in our still relatively new relationship.
“I thought you were going to say the hospital was transferring you, or that you were breaking up with me, or hell you had c
ancer or something.” She walked back up to me and shoved me hard in the chest.
“Don’t ever do that to me again, you hear me? You’re lucky I love you back or I’d kick you in the nuts!”
I smiled a wide, toothy grin. My face was beaming and my heart rate sped up.
“It’s not funny, Taylor!” She said faking being mad and folding her arms across her chest, throwing out her hip and tapping her foot.
“That’s not while I’m smiling,” I said reaching for her and pulling her into me as I crashed my mouth to hers. She relented, all fake anger long gone as we got lost into the passion of our kiss.
“You love me too?” I asked, needing the reassurance that what I heard her say was true.
“More than anything.”
Fucking sailboats. I thought as I was brought out from one of my best memories of Lilly. If my heart weren’t hurting already, it would have exploded in my chest. The pain was almost too much to bear. It felt like I was standing away in the distance, a part of the background of my life while everyone else got to live in the foreground. It probably would have hurt less to have a bullet strike me straight in the heart.
I continued to walk along the beach edge with my hands shoved in my pocket, lost in my own thoughts as the tears flowed down my cheeks. I barely had enough energy to put one foot in front of the other, much less lift my hands to wipe them away.
“Hey! What do you think you are doing?” I heard someone yell a few seconds after the rumble of a small outboard motor hit my ears.
“Lady! Lady! Come back!” I saw a young kid yell toward a woman who was on a Sea-Doo quickly speeding out into open waters. She didn’t have on a life jacket and looked like she barely hung on to control as the waves pounded against the tiny watercraft.
Jogging over to where the kid stood at the end of the dock yelling at the woman, I kept my eyes locked onto the woman, who when I squinted my eyes looked eerily familiar.
“What’s going on?” I asked, out of breath, as I approached the kid.
“That woman. She was asking about the Jet Ski and I was showing them to her. She asked if she could start one and then next thing I know, she was taking off on it.”
“She stole it? Why don’t you go after her?”
“Dude, if I leave the marina unattended, my boss will have my ass.”
“He’s probably going to have your ass anyway. Where’s a spare life jacket?” I asked as I pulled my white cotton tee over my head and threw it down on the dock.
“Right here, why?”
“That woman is heading out to open waters without a life jacket on a stolen Jet Ski. I’m going after her. She’ll get herself killed. Give me the keys to the other craft.”
He looked at me as if I had grown two heads and took a few steps away from me.
“I’m not stealing it. Look,” I said as I reached into my wallet and produced my medical ID card. “I’m a surgeon in Miami at the University Hospital. You can trust me, but if I don’t get out there to her she could die.”
Still hesitant, he finally relented and handed me the keys. I jumped onto the Jet Ski he pointed to and cranked it up before speeding off in the direction the woman went.
The waves were increasingly choppier the further I got out and I struggled to hang on as they tried to toss the Jet Ski around like a ragdoll. I was barely hanging on, so for the life of me I didn’t see how the woman was still on hers and not already in the water.
God, don’t let her fall off. I thought as I opened the throttle and sped faster. The only good thing about the waves was that they seemed to slow her down, allowing me ample time to catch up with her.
“Hey!” I yelled over and over when I was close enough to her, but with the sound of the motor and the water, there was no way she could hear me. Fighting through the seawater spraying in my eyes, I closed more distance just as a huge wave knocked her right off the Jet Ski. Immediately, I killed the engine and dove straight into the water. Adrenaline fueled me as I fought against both the ocean and flashbacks of the night Lilly was taken from me. It was these same waters that took her from me and I was bound and determined to not let this woman suffer the same fate.
My muscles burned and my chest was tight when I finally reached her below the surface. Clasping onto her wrist, I pulled with all my might until we broke the surface and I sucked in air, thankful to get to breathe again. She coughed loudly and water came spewing out of her nose and mouth.
I froze.
Right there in the middle of the ocean as we floated in between the waves. My stomach lurched and I felt like I was going to throw up. My heart had to have skipped a few hundred beats in the span of only a few seconds as I looked at what or should I say who was responsible for me losing Lilly. It was the woman I tried to save the night I let go of her.
“No! Let me go! Let me go! I have to get to him! I have to get to my husband!” She yelled, frantic as she tried to remove herself from my grasp.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed,” I asked as I shook her by the shoulders while still trying to tread water.
“I said let go of me you asshole!” She yelled, but I didn’t let her go, instead swimming back to where my jet ski was floating in the water.
“If I would have let you go that night then maybe my wife would be here and not you,” I yelled back. She went dead in my hands, no longer fighting against me. I turned around to look at her and her gasp of shock should have surprised me. Her already porcelain skin was even whiter as the blood drained from her face. In the distance I could hear sirens but pulled for her to keep swimming until we finally reached the Jet Ski.
“You’re…” she said in the faintest of whispers, her voice meek and barely audible.
“Yeah,” was all I could say as I struggled to catch my breath. Not only was I winded from swimming back to the Jet Ski, but also I was winded from the sucker punch to the gut when I saw just who it was I was rescuing. A newfound anger bubbled up inside of me. Coming face to face with the reason why my wife was no longer with me was not something I wanted to do now, or in my entire lifetime.
The sirens were right up on us now, sending an ear piercing shrill echoing off of the back of my already throbbing skull.
“This is the coast guard,” a voice echoed through a loudspeaker as a large boat approached us.
“Put your hands up on the motor craft where they can be seen.”
I did what was said and then was pulled by one of the officers into the boat. Wrapping a towel around both of us, they placed a set of handcuffs on both of our wrists and instructed us to have a seat while they retrieved both of the jet-skis from the water.
BARGAINING
IF ONLY WE HADN’T gotten on that boat.
If only we would have chosen another location to go on our honeymoon.
If only I could have convinced him to stay in the hotel room and make love to me all night instead of going on that damn boat.
If only…
If only…
If only…
I sat on the hard bench across from several others thinking about all the things that could have happened if Jeremy and I hadn’t gone on the dinner cruise that night. I certainly wouldn’t be sitting in this jail cell, feeling the eyes of the man who on the very same night, lost his wife.
All because he let her go to stop me from going back inside after Jeremy.
My stomach felt sick as I hugged it, my shoulders curving in towards my chest and my posture crumbling. Not only was I responsible for the death of my husband, but for another person losing the love of their life too.
I stared down at the floor where my legs shook beneath me uncontrollably. I couldn’t bear looking up to see him stare at me. And he was staring at me. I could feel the hatred of his eyes without actually having to see them aimed at me. There was no doubt in my mind that he held me responsible. He was only a Good Samaritan trying to keep me from killing myself and chose to try and save me. And not only did he do it once, but twice.
Why the hell did I take off on that Sea-Do? What purpose would it have achieved? Some would say that I had lost my mind; others would say that I was desperate.
Maybe it was both.
I just felt like if I could only go back out there, I could find him. I could bring his body home with me and maybe I would feel more secure knowing that he was close to me.
If only…
If only…
“I’m sorry,” I spoke out into the cell, aimed at no one in particular. I didn’t know if I was saying it to myself, to Jeremy, or to the man who was probably wishing it were me dead instead of his lovely wife.
And lovely she was. I had only spoken to her for a couple of hours while on the boat cruise, but she was beautiful, sweet, and his eyes would light up just from watching her.
“You’re sorry?” He growled as he stood up, hands still bound in the front from handcuffs. Saltwater had stiffened the clothes I was wearing to the point they were uncomfortably hard, and I shifted in my seat to try and gain relief.
“Was it your thoughts to try and die twice in the matter of a few weeks? What the fuck were you thinking going out there like that?”
I turned my face away from his, not wanting him to see the tears falling down my face.
“I wanted to find my husband.”
His pacing stopped and I risked a glance up at him. His face was hard, his hair a mess of golden brown and blond highlights. About a weeks’ worth of scruff graced his jaw and his blue eyes seemed as cold as ice.
“You realize your husband is dead.”
It couldn’t have hurt anymore if he had shoved a knife into my heart.
I hardened my own gaze as I narrowed my eyes at him while my blood heated to astronomical proportions.
“You don’t think I know that? At least they found your wife! Jeremy is still out there somewhere.” I said nodding my head towards the tiny square on the wall that didn’t qualify as a window.