Breathless (2 page)

As if he’s made something of himself. Mom’s
got the job and brings home the paycheck. Dad sits in his home office and writes books that don’t sell—which of course is the fault of “stupid editors who can’t recognize real talent.”

I want to be an actress—Darla Gibson, star. Sure, lots of girls say that. They want the fame and fortune, want to see themselves on the big screen with people falling down worshiping them. Nice perks, but I want more than that. I want my work respected. The acting bug bit me in first grade when my teacher cast me as a tomato in a little play she wrote about healthy eating. Mom came to watch me, but Dad couldn’t be bothered. He said, “A tomato? It’s because you’re fat.” I cried about that one.

I’ve learned to tune him out. Mostly. Lately he says I’ve gotten “lippy” and that gets me slapped more often, but better that he hits me than Mom. He wails on her sometimes.

In middle school, I went kind of wild and got a reputation that followed me to high school, where I met Travis. Miraculously, he’s the first guy who likes me for me and not because of my body. A girl knows when a guy’s using her. I’ve had enough experience with that kind of boy. But
Travis isn’t that way. We talk about everything. Sometimes all we do is sit and hold hands and talk. I love Travis with all my heart.

He tells me I’ll be a great actress too. I tell him he’ll medal in the Olympics someday. We believe in each other. Our lives are perfect when we’re together. I had no clue our lives would change until the day at the lake.

I
should have been born a fish. For me, H
₂
O is the perfect compound. When I was little I might have been the only kid on the planet who liked to take baths! But it’s underwater where I feel most at home. The world is quiet in the deep, cool water; a little mysterious. Aquaman is my favorite superhero because he can breathe underwater. I used to think, Wow. If I had gills, I’d never come up.

But I’m not a competitive swimmer. I’m a diver. People don’t understand that swimmers and divers are different kinds of people. Swimmers like the surface of water. Divers like going deep.

The springboard used to be my specialty. In high school meets, athletes can only compete on
the springboard. In club and college competition, it’s different. The first time I climbed onto the ten-meter platform, I knew I’d found my place in the sport. And I’m good at it. College coaches are calling me from Florida, California, and even the Ivy League schools. They all want to talk to the boy who “leaps fearlessly while executing dazzling tucks, twists, pikes, and somersaults before his ripped entry,” according to a local reporter. I have to admit, the guy got it right. (Humility is overrated.) I practice for hours to be the best.

So on the first day of summer vacation, me; my friend Cooper; my girl, Darla; and my kid sister, Emily, head out to Alabama’s Lake Martin, where we can cruise around the small islands in Dad’s boat with its bad-ass oversized outboard motor.

I cut the motor as we near Chimney Rock, the tallest and most awesome of the natural island cliffs. The water is a hundred and fifty feet deep at its base. I aim the nose of the boat at the pebble beach nearest the rock.

“What are you doing?” Emily asks. “I thought we were going to ski and have a picnic.”

“And we are. What’s wrong with eating here?”

She looks up at Chimney Rock. Darla and Cooper follow her line of sight.

“Tell me you’re not going up there to jump,” Coop says.

“I’m not jumping.” I leap into waist-high water and drag the boat by its anchor rope toward the empty beach.

Emily says, “Travis …,” in her “I’m warning you” voice.

“I’m going to dive.”

Darla squeals.

“You are not,” Emily shouts. “Kids have died jumping off that rock!” She looks at Cooper. “Stop him.”

“When have I ever been able to stop your brother from doing anything?”

“Dad will kill you!” Emily says. Her face is all panic-stricken.

“If the fall doesn’t,” Coop adds.

“Who’ll tell him?” I ask.

Darla scrambles over the side and grabs my arm. “Are you sure, Travis? It’s a long way down.”

“That’s why I’m leaving you three here on the beach with the food while I make the climb.” I look at Emily. “You can close your eyes.”

Emily crosses her arms and shoots daggers at me with her eyes.

“Divers do this all the time off the cliffs in Mexico. Even higher,” I remind her. “And besides, I’ve done it before.”

“When?”

“Last summer. Just me and Coop.”

Cooper throws up his hands. “I just watched.”

“You two are so stupid!” Emily shouts. I laugh, but her words cut Cooper. I think he likes my sister. The doofus.

By now, our boat is beached and the others are scrambling onto the shore. Cooper swings the cooler onto dry land. Darla looks worried, but she trusts me. I kiss her. “It’ll be all right. The hard part is the climb. The trip down is over in a flash. Just save me some food.”

I take off toward the back side of the cliff, knowing I’ve got a steep climb. But I’m pumped. I’m sweating by the time I get to the top, and my right leg hurts. It’s hurt a lot lately, but I ignore it like I always do. Coach Davis doesn’t like hearing his athletes piss and moan.

I limp to the edge, where I wave to my watchers below. They look pretty small from so high up.
On top of the great rock, I stare toward the horizon where the lake meets the sky, and I watch boats buzzing around looking like windup toys.

The day is perfect, hot and clear. All sun and sky and blue water. My heart is racing, and something like an electrical current is rushing through me. I plan my strategy for the dive, decide not to get fancy. I’ll execute the pike position once, hit the water vertical and clean.

I jump, and I hear my leg bone crack before I feel the pain that follows me all the way down into the deep, dark water.

W
e hear Travis scream the minute he bobs up in the lake. He thrashes and I think he’s drowning. Cooper hits the water at a dead run, swims like a torpedo out to where Travis is floundering, and grabs him under the arms. My brain kicks in and I run after him. Darla and I meet them halfway to the beach, but Cooper shoos us away. “Let me get him on shore.”

“No,” Travis says through clenched teeth. “My leg. I can’t stand. It hurts. Oh man, it hurts.”

“Get the boat,” Cooper says, and Darla and I scramble backward, grab the hull, and push it away from the island toward the deeper water.

Cooper gets a kickboard under Travis’s leg for support and uses rope that he cuts from the anchor
line to secure it. We keep Travis afloat while he works.

Darla can’t stop crying. I’m crying too, and when I find my voice, I ask, “What happened? Did you hit something? A rock?”

“Don’t know.” Travis’s words are moans. “Happened when I jumped. My thigh.”

I can see a hump under his skin near his hip, where the skin is turning dark purple, and I feel queasy. “Looks broken. There’s some aspirin—”

“Not a fix, little sister.” He’s pale as milk.

I’m shivering and shaking and Darla’s scrambled into the boat to help, but she’s clueless and keeps begging Cooper to tell her what to do. We’ve left our cell phones in the car back at the marina, because they wouldn’t have worked out here on the lake. Cooper says we can’t leave Travis and go for help either. We need to get him into the boat and back to shore.

Cooper slides his arms beneath Travis’s body in the water. He warns, “This is going to hurt.” He tells me to get into the boat and for me and Darla to use our weight to pitch it as far to one side as we can without taking on water. We do, and the small boat dips sideways even with the deadweight
motor. With amazing strength Cooper lifts Travis and the board out of the water and over the railing. Travis stifles a scream as the board slides inside and onto the bottom. Cooper shoves the boat farther out, leaps inside, and starts the motor.

Darla wedges her lap between Travis’s head and the hard fiberglass floor of the boat, and while my brother cries with pain, we smash across the water toward the shore.

I call and tell Mom about the accident, and she says to meet her and Dad at the hospital ER. Cooper gets Travis on the backseat of Cooper’s old car, and Darla sits on the floor by Travis’s head. I jump into the front. Cooper breaks every speed limit getting Travis to the hospital.

Having a nurse for a mother is a huge benefit, and Travis moves quickly into triage with Mom and Dad. The rest of us are banished to the waiting room.

In the aftermath, I feel my knees wobble.

Cooper takes my arm to steady me. “You all right?”

“No.”

He leads me to a chair. The room is cold and
our swimsuits are still damp. Fortunately, we had shirts in the car, or Darla would be standing around in her bikini and every eye in the place would be on her big boobs. I hug the shirt—an old one of my brother’s—close to my skin, wishing I had something to cover my legs.

Darla asks, “Would you like a Coke? There’s a machine down the hall. I’ll go get you one. If you want one.”

“A Coke’s fine.”

“What do you think happened?” Cooper asks.

I shake my head.

“And how long does it take before we know something?”

“I don’t know.” I look up, suddenly conscience-stricken. “We should pray.”

“What?”

“We should pray and ask God to heal him.”

Cooper’s black eyes stare hard at me. He says, “Sorry, I don’t believe in God.”

I’ve never heard anyone say this out loud. When you grow up in the Deep South, belief in God is embedded in your DNA We pray before football games, before school starts, when anything happens that’s out of our control. Travis and
I have church enrollment cards from nursery school through high school. I still attend youth group and Sunday school, so Cooper’s announcement shocks me. “But God’s real,” I say.

“Not for me.”

Darla’s back with my Coke. “What’s wrong?”

“Emily wants to pray for Travis and I don’t believe in God.”

Darla says, “I believe in God.”

“Well, good,” Cooper says. “Then you two pray.”

Before I can say a word, Cooper adds, “Wait. Here come your parents.”

I throw myself into Mom’s arms. “How is he?”

“His leg’s broken—his femur—thigh bone, up high near his pelvis.”

“Can they fix it?” This from Darla.

“They want to check him in.”

“Can’t they just set it and send him home?” I ask.

Dad says, “Can’t set the bone until the swelling goes down.”

Cautiously Mom says, “They want to run some tests.”

“What kind of tests?”

“We can talk at home. Right now, we want to get him settled upstairs.”

“What do you want us to do, Miz Morrison?” Cooper speaks up.

“Go home. Take Emily—”

“Please let me stay,” I say quickly. “I—I want to see Travis.”

“You’re half naked,” Mom reminds me.

Dad steps between us. “I’ll run her home to change, then we’ll come right back.”

I don’t want to leave, but Mom’s making the rules.

“I want to see him too,” Darla says, looking frightened.

“Tomorrow.” Mom pats Darla’s hand.

“We’ll go take care of the boat,” Cooper says.

For the first time I think about our boat, which we’ve abandoned on the shore near the marina. Our cooler is back at Chimney Rock too.

“I’d appreciate that,” Dad says.

Cooper is halfway to the door when Darla bolts after him. “Wait for me!”

Once they’re gone, Mom walks to the elevators.

“Let’s go, honey.” Dad puts his arm around my shoulders.

A hundred questions are banging around inside my head. I ask none of them. Whatever happened to Travis is more than a broken bone. I’ve been the child of a nurse too long to not know better.

“Y
ou could have drowned.” Mom tells me that one too many times.

“But I didn’t.” After three days trapped in this hospital bed with nothing but medical tests and daytime TV game shows and soap operas for entertainment, drowning doesn’t sound all that bad. “When will they finish with me? I don’t want to spend all summer in the hospital.”

Mom crosses her arms. “Not until Dr. Madison figures it out.”

“They’ve taken a gallon of blood. What’s with that? Just tell him to set my leg and send me home.”

“He has the medical degree, not you,” Mom says.

I’ve had accidents before—stitches, a concussion, a broken arm once when I was five—and I was never checked into the hospital. “That doesn’t mean the guy knows what he’s doing.”

Mom’s mouth makes a straight line that tells me to back off. I grumble, “If I’m stuck here, I need some decent food. I’m starving.”

“I get you double helpings.” She leans down, kisses my cheek. “I’ve got to go on duty. Your dad and Emily will be here shortly.”

“Can they bring some ice cream?”

She doesn’t answer. I pick up the TV remote and surf for old
Star Trek
episodes. Beam me up, Scotty.

Once we’re alone in my room that afternoon, Emily chews me out about my dive. Her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail, her face is sunburned. “It was totally stupid!” She looks about twelve, with an angry grown-up expression, but I let her vent.

“Hey … it’s a broken leg. It’ll heal.”

“And you’ll jump again.”

“Probably.”

“That’s not funny.”

I take her hand. “Look, sis, we are who we are.
You’re a thinker, and you figure all the angles before you do something. Not me. I like the adrenaline high, and that’s never going to change.”

She grumbles, “I would have figured out I’d get hurt if I jumped from the top of Chimney Rock.”

“It never crossed my mind,” I tell her honestly.

“It should have. You’re not Superman.”

“You’ve never flown. You don’t know how it feels.” I yawn. I’m getting sleepy because of the drugs they’re giving me.

“Should I leave?” she asks. Her anger’s gone and she looks worried.

“Your call. Can’t be much fun to hear me snore.”

“I’ll wait.” She settles in a nearby chair and doesn’t let go of my hand.