by Tina Michele
“It’s not always about needing people to help. Sometimes it’s just about having someone to listen, someone who understands.”
“Yeah, well, I managed to shit on that real good, too. Which seems to be coming back to kick me in the ass something fierce.”
“I don’t know about that. She did go out of her way to rescue you today.”
“I was waiting for that,” Willa said as she looked out the window, remembering the touch of Haven’s hand on her cheek. She had been so in control, so calm. Haven had reached in through the fear to help her. There was no one else on earth who could pierce through Willa’s very being the way she did. “She was just doing her job,” Willa said.
“No. She was watching you. How else do you think she got to you so fast? Hell, she beat Scrat, and she’s a trained lifesaver.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t let me drown.”
“Maybe you should take advantage of this situation and start making some changes, Willa. If I’ve learned anything in my short and hectic twenty years, it’s that you don’t always get a second chance.”
Willa knew that Corey was being sincere in spite of the cliché. Willa pressed her forehead to the seat in front of her and looked over at Corey. “Do you honestly believe that this is something more than a coincidence?”
Corey leaned forward and stared into Willa’s eyes. “Absolutely.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
Chapter Seven
After breakfast, Willa and the rest of her small morning group made their way to the staff bunkhouse for their meeting. Mama Lu had broken up the ten-person group and the volunteers into three smaller ones. Willa was not looking forward to their first gathering and the sharing of emotions. She had already had her fill of that crap and there had only been two campfires and one bus ride with the ever-observant Corey.
As it turned out, they’d arranged for Willa and Corey to be assigned to different groups. While it should’ve made Willa relieved to have a reprieve from her, she would rather not have to add more people into her personal bubble. She needed to resign herself to the fact that it was part of the camp experience and escaping it was impossible.
As luck would have it, she got stuck with the one camper she thought was a complete tool. His nickname was Spartan, but she preferred to call him “Mr. Douche in Boots.” He wasn’t the only member of her group, but he thought he was. He’d had every job imaginable, done everything she had but better, and loved ’Merica.
In addition to Spartan, there was Survivor, Blue Ridge, and Miss Fitt, along with Wingman, and the volunteer, Diego. Willa hoped that their energy and personalities would overpower most of his douchey ignorance.
The bunkhouse was just that. It was a large open space with two sets of bunks and a mix of other bed styles and sizes squeezed into the space without design. There were bags, duffels, clothes, and equipment strewn about over all of the furniture. It was a colorful and chaotic mess, and Willa wondered just how much of it was Haven’s. She spied several mismatched socks thrown across one of the single beds in the corner of the room. It was the only bed that someone had taken the time to make before they dumped a heaping pile of clothes on top. Willa was certain that someone was Haven.
The group sat at the rustic table in the middle of the eat-in kitchen. Wingman explained the purpose behind the small morning gatherings which Willa interpreted as, “Blah, blah, blah, more therapy.” He gave them a philosophical topic with a quotation and corresponding visualization. The one for their first mini group was something about life, wind, and adjusting your own sails. There was nothing like cancer to force change upon someone’s life, and now she was going to be forced to talk about it.
Wingman told the story of his brother’s cancer journey and how it had changed more than the way his brother lived, but also those around him. When he mentioned that they were going to go around the table, Willa regretted sitting next to him as there was a fifty-fifty shot of her being selected as first to share. However, it didn’t turn out that way. Wingman wasn’t going to force anyone to talk. It was a free-flowing discussion dictated by the individual’s desire to participate and share. Willa breathed a sigh of relief. She would be glad to sit for the next thirty minutes and not say a thing about herself.
It wasn’t a surprise that Spartan chose to speak up first. As soon as he opened his mouth, Willa changed her mind about how long she’d be able to do anything in the same room with this tool. His first words were, “Cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.” Every eye around the room widened with surprise, including Willa’s. What the actual fuck? He continued for what seemed like days, droning on about how it brought him the love of his life—a woman who’d left him years earlier for someone else but who he managed to get back by using his “cancer card.” Willa felt sick to her stomach, then she felt her body start to shake with rage. When she stood, she knocked her chair back and it skittered across the floor. She closed her eyes and held up her hand.
“Wait, stop. I can’t. I had every intention of sitting here in silence until this was over, but I can’t.”
To her surprise, Wingman encouraged her outburst. “What is it, Willa?”
“Ugh. You can’t be serious. How can you sit over there and thank God for giving you cancer? Okay, it brought back your ex, but how could you use that as collateral to win her back? It’s…it’s…abhorrent. No one deserves to be stuck with you while you slowly waste away. Cleaning up your mess when you throw up on yourself or piss on your own legs before you can make it to the toilet. No one deserves that. Especially not someone you love.” Willa was disgusted and livid. Her eyes welled with tears of anger as she spoke.
“She wanted to help. She wanted to be there for me during those difficult times,” Spartan explained.
“Bullshit, Spartan. That is pure selfishness.”
“There are many types of people, Willa. Some are caregivers and find solace in taking care of others,” Wingman said.
“Nurses and doctors. Not lovers or partners. You have to let them go. You have to do what is necessary to make sure they move on and don’t stick around just to watch you die. That’s how you adjust your sails. And you make sure that no one else is on your boat when it smashes into the rocks and disappears below the surf.” Willa retrieved her chair and sat down. She cleared her throat and wiped away the tears that stained her cheeks.
The room sat in silence for several minutes until Survivor spoke. Her voice was soft and quiet. “I met my husband two weeks before I was in a crash that put me in a coma for thirty days. He came every day to see me even though I didn’t know he was there. He helped me through physical therapy and learning how to walk again. Three months after we got married, I was diagnosed with lung cancer, and again, he never left my side. I don’t know if I could’ve done it without him.”
“Sometimes it’s about more than having someone there with me,” Blue Ridge said.
It was obvious that few people agreed with Willa’s thoughts on the idea, although it didn’t change how she felt about it. “I did what I had to do. For her.”
As soon as she’d said it she regretted it. It was the very thing Willa had not wanted to do, and she didn’t want to be such an asshole either. She didn’t say another word for the remaining time they had. Instead of listening to the others discuss their life changes and sails metaphors, Willa was lost in her mind reliving the moment she chose to alter her entire life.
Willa sat in the hot truck as it idled in the parking lot of her doctor’s office. Her hands rested in her lap clutching her cell phone. She needed to call Haven, but she couldn’t. Cancer. Fucking eyeball cancer. They’d thrown so many numbers and statistics at her in the last thirty minutes that her head spun. “Two thousand five hundred cases annually. Fifty percent chance of metastasis within ten to fifteen years with a smaller percentage of twenty-five to thirty years before it spread.” She wasn’t even thirty years old yet, and they gave her a window the size of her lifetime to live or die. Ho
w was she going to tell Haven that all of their plans for life now had an expiration date? They had made it through Haven’s disease by the grace of God. There was no chemotherapy and no radiation. It wouldn’t be the same for Willa, plus there was a great chance that she would lose her vision and quite possibly her eye itself. She couldn’t expect Haven to go through that. She wouldn’t. Her decision was made.
Willa just wanted this part of the day to be over already; however, Spartan was once again speaking about some vain and asinine factoid of his life. Before Willa could care too much about whatever he was saying, an alarm chirped on Wingman’s watch. He apologized for the interruption and encouraged any additional comments from the group, but thankfully, Spartan had lost his momentum. When no one else made a move to speak, Wingman dismissed them to load up on the bus for their first day on the Colorado River.
As soon as they were on the bus, MC wasted no time getting on the road. Today the bus took them down the mountain and along the river. The cliffs shot straight up into the sky beyond what Willa could see without sticking her head out the windows, which was not recommended while traveling at seventy miles an hour through the narrow passes and tunnels, especially if she wanted to keep her head attached to her shoulders.
The water below was swift as it tumbled up and over enormous boulders hidden beneath the waves. An Amtrak train hugged the side of the mountain face on the other side of the river and sped away in the opposite direction. The entire bus squeaked and squealed when they spotted a small herd of bleach white goats balanced on a precarious ledge above the highway. Willa was beginning to feel nauseous from the constant dancing back and forth of her eyes as she tried to take it all in. She’d never seen anything as vast or diverse. It was a stark contrast to the flat lands of Central Florida, or any part of Florida, for that matter.
Willa gave her eyes a rest and turned her attention to the conversations of her fellow campers. Corey was entertaining the bus with her sing-along performance to whatever “DJ” Scrat played on the radio. At the moment it was “Brick House” by the Commodores, complete with awkward sexual dance moves. Corey’s wild childishness reminded her so much of a young Haven, who was laughing, singing, and dancing in her seat along with everyone else.
Diego leaned over and whispered something to Haven and Willa’s stomach dropped. She remembered that he was in her small group from earlier that morning and had been a front row witness for her outburst with Spartan. She had no doubt that Haven had told Diego about their relationship, and now he was probably relaying everything she’d said. That’s all she needed to turn her day into complete shit before it was even nine in the morning. The best she could hope for now was if she fell out of her boat and hit her head on a boulder. Willa was exhausted by the constant ups and downs that this week was causing, and they were just two and a half days into it.
She just wanted to get to the river and get off the bus. As if MC had read her mind, he pulled off the road into a primitive gravel parking lot on the banks of the Colorado. They unloaded the bus and gathered around the boats that had already been lined up along the shore. Scrat introduced a new river guide, Mateo, who was joining them for the rest of the week. He called names and tossed them their gear out of the back of a large box truck. Willa caught hers with a slap of cold, wet neoprene against her face. The wet suit she’d worn the day before hadn’t dried out overnight. She was disturbed by the idea of squeezing herself into something a hundred times worse than a soggy swimsuit. Willa, along with everyone else, shrieked and snarled as they forced themselves into their wet suits.
Once she was outfitted from head to toe, Willa wandered down to the water’s edge. The river stretched a hundred yards at the widest point where it split around an island just upstream. As if a line was drawn down the center, a calm area of water was separated from a swift-moving current several feet offshore. Downstream, the river turned to the left and disappeared between a massive cliff face and a gigantic boulder. Her stomach knotted with anxiety of the unknown.
MC called the group together and then separated them all into three groups. One guide and one volunteer was assigned per group. As luck would have it, both Spartan and Haven were in her group. The one plus was that Corey, Dunkin, and Shark had gotten tossed into the mix with them. Mateo directed the group to the water and launched them each into the frigid mountain flow.
The water grabbed Willa’s boat and directed it downstream. Mateo instructed them to paddle from one calm area to the next, or ferry as it was called, and then wait for the rest of their group. “Okay. I can do this,” Willa whispered to herself. The current pushed her as she struggled to paddle against the rushing water. She felt as if she’d been tossed into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim. All her confidence and everything she had learned the day before seemed to have shot clean out of her head.
She heard Mateo whistle and yell, “River right!”
“Right.” Willa glanced to the right and saw the calm eddy she needed to reach. She aimed her kayak and paddled with determined force straight toward the still waters. As she crossed over that invisible line, her boat tipped to the right, and Willa’s heart stopped. “No!” she screamed, slapping the water with her paddle and jerking herself to the left. She had never been so relieved when she grabbed onto the stable branch that hung out over the water. “This is going to be such a long day,” she said.
* * *
Haven coasted into the eddy behind the group and heard Spartan call out to Willa. “Looks like I’m the only one who doesn’t plan on swimming today!”
So far, no one had fallen out, but a couple of them, including Willa, had weebled and wobbled a bit. It was nothing out of the ordinary for a first time on flowing water. There was always one douche in the group, and she had a feeling that Spartan was going to be it. “Everybody looks great! Let’s have some fun.” Haven wasn’t going to acknowledge his comment, but Mateo would.
“Five bucks says you’re the first one in,” he said.
Everyone, including Haven, laughed. Mateo had no problem calling out the ones whose verbal skills were better than their physical ones. Haven had hoped he was right, and she found herself looking forward to it. If for no other reason than just an attitude adjustment, as she knew that there wasn’t a single camper in the bunch who’d ever done whitewater. All she had to do was wait, and her cameras would be ready.
Haven felt so good to be on the river again. It was as exhilarating as it was magical. The weather could change in an instant and they could find themselves floating downriver in a rainstorm. Next to one with crystal-clear blue skyline above the cliffs of Glenwood Canyon, that was her favorite kind of day. The levels were high, and the flow was swift. It was going to be a great day.
Mateo gathered the boats around in the calm pool at the bend of the river. They would spend no less than half an hour here learning how to enter and exit the eddies without tossing themselves into the water. Except for the actual rapids, this was the most common reason anyone went for a swim. Mateo gave them a demonstration of how to ferry across the river and pull in and out. He called for the first volunteer, and they all turned to Spartan. It was clear to Haven that he had no intention of going first, but instead of backing down he stuck his chest out and pulled out for the other side. Whether it was beginner’s luck, or actual skill, he made it to the other side without incident.
Shark was next, and he met the eddy at the worst possible angle and it knocked him out. He popped out of the water like a bobber. “Swim for shore,” Mateo hollered once Shark signaled with a helmet tap that he was all right. While Mateo took off for the kayak, Haven went for the paddle. Once they had him back in his boat, Mateo resumed the lesson.
One by one, they crossed the river, and with the exception of Shark, everyone else had made it across. They repeated the crisscrossing several more times until they were comfortable with the process. Haven was glad to see that Willa was having very little trouble with the technique, although still a little stiff
in her seat. Willa glanced over to Haven and smiled. The gesture was unexpected considering that she’d just been caught looking at her. Haven’s ears warmed, and she smiled back.
MC’s and Scrat’s groups merged before meeting up with Mateo’s and they all headed downriver together. MC called for an eddy out on river right about a hundred yards downstream so he could evaluate their new skills. He had them line up, paddle out facing upstream, then turn and eddy out at the end of the line. Each of them did just as they were instructed without anyone going overboard. They all whooped and cheered when MC gave them the all clear to press on.
Haven loved the variety of facial expressions she got as each of them paddled out and followed behind MC. Willa paused beside Haven. Her heart stalled and a butterfly danced in her gut. She cleared her throat. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“You’re doing great, Will. Loose hips.” Haven demonstrated by rocking her boat side to side.
“Okay.” Encouraged by Haven, Willa took a deep breath and paddled forward.
Willa crossed the line and joined the pack. After the rest were out, Scrat and Haven brought up the rear. Haven was surprised that Willa had opted to push toward the front of the group with MC, Spartan, and Diego. It wasn’t because they were all men; she just thought that maybe Willa would’ve tried to hang back instead. She hadn’t realized that was something she’d have wanted until it didn’t happen. “Great. That’s exactly what I don’t need right now,” she mumbled and slapped her paddle onto the surface of the water.
“Did I miss that part of the lesson?” Corey asked as she drifted up next to Haven.
“What? Oh, no. Just working out the kinks is all.”
“Kinks, huh? More like a big giant knot named Willa, I’d bet.”
Haven didn’t know anything about Corey save for her diagnosis, her sparkling personality, and that she was Willa’s roommate. It seemed very doubtful that she would’ve told Corey anything about them, yet here she was making statements like she was in the know. “Uh, no. I don’t even know Wi—”