A shadow moves in the bushes to my left. I scream. My heart threatens to erupt from my chest and drop on the ground, an offering to a rattler I’m sure wants me dead. The shadow disappears, replaced by orange rays from the sunset. In the brightness, I only see the swaying leaves of a buttonbush.
No snake.
No movement.
I’m safe. But I’m still panicking, heart racing. I’m bitten and alone.
My duffel lays to the right. I unzip it and tear through the contents, looking for my cell phone. I don’t know how quickly snake venom acts. Could I die in minutes? Hours? Should I trek back to my car? Would I even make it? The ripping pain in my leg assures me I wouldn’t. I locate my phone in the bottom of the bag, and with trembling fingers, I try to dial nine-one-one. I keep punching the wrong damn numbers.
“I should have jumped in the water.” If I’d had a split second longer before the snake struck, I would have, but that’s no consolation now.
My hands shake uncontrollably. Tears spill over my cheeks, making it impossible to see my keypad. I try to calm down by telling myself it could be a dry bite. I’ve heard of a snake not releasing venom. I want to believe it so badly, but I was bitten by a nonvenomous Texas rat snake when I was ten. It had stung like hell, but it hadn’t burned. The searing pain coursing up my leg has to be from more than fangs.
I fumble the numbers again. Work, stupid fingers! Work!
“Cassie?” a man calls.
I whip my head up, searching through the oncoming darkness. Tyler? Is the venom making me hallucinate?
“Cassie?” The voice is closer this time.
Footfalls pound closer, and there he is, brows drawn tight, frowning at me. He’s breathing hard as though he’s been running. He followed me. Oh, my God. He came!
“I heard you scream,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow. “What happened?”
“I should have jumped into the water.” My voice shakes with hysteria. “I should have jumped.”
My stupid fingers fumble over the keypad for the third time. Tyler may be here, but I still need an ambulance.
He dips to his knees and cups my face, forcing me to look at him. “Tell me what happened.”
“Rattlesnake,” I whimper.
I point at the angry, red bite, oozing blood. The swelling skin around the punctures and the burning agony spreading up my calf leaves no room to doubt that venom’s blazing through my leg. What happens when it reaches my heart? He drops his hands from my face. Even in the waning light, I can’t miss his suddenly white complexion, as if he’s been drained dry of blood.
His face goes blank while his eyes widen. “What the fuck, Cassie?” He stares at the bite marks and blinks hard, seeming to will the punctures to disappear. When they don’t, he presses his palms against his eyes. “Fuck.” He balls his hands into fists and presses so hard, I’m not sure how his eyeballs survive the assault. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
The last curse echoes through the meadow like a wrathful malediction. When he lowers his fists, all the fear I’m feeling is mirrored in his eyes, only magnified by a hundred times.
I can’t even dial for help. If he’s freaking out as much as me, I’m as good as dead. I hold his gaze. “Help me, Tyler.”
He swallows several lungfuls of air, his Adam’s apple bobbing from clavicle to chin. After a last deep breath, he nods. “Give me the phone.”
I hand it to him. His fingers shake worse than mine, but he somehow manages to dial.
“My girlfriend’s been bitten by a rattlesnake.” His voice is raspy. I wouldn’t be surprised if the operator can’t understand him, but he nods and says, “Positive. We’re at Pete Lake, west side, a half mile from the West Maple campground.” He goes silent for a moment then raises his gaze to mine. “Do you have a snakebite kit?”
Oh, my God. “I do!” How could I have forgotten? Wyatt bought it when we first started coming out here. “It’s in my car.”
“Where?”
“Glove compartment,” I reply, rummaging through my bag for car keys.
“She has one, but it’s a ten-minute hike away… okay… I’ll call on my cell.” He hands the phone to me, shaking harder now than when he first took the call. “She has questions for you.” His voice quakes as he speaks.
I hand him the keys. He jumps to his feet and dashes into the forest. For the next few minutes, I answer as many questions as I can.
How big was the snake? Was I sure it was a rattlesnake? How many times did it bite? What does the bite mark look like? All the while, pain shoots up my thigh, pummeling my breath away until I can barely speak. A buzzing, like a hundred bees, resonates beneath my skin, and I swear my teeth have been replaced with copper pennies. Their metallic taste is strong in my mouth.
Tears stream down my face. The operator tells me to stay calm, panicking will spread the venom faster, but I can’t stop my racing heart. I don’t want to die like this. I’m supposed to have a long life ahead of me. I want to graduate. Experience my first job. Own my first house. Fall in love again. Have children.
This can’t be it for me.
Tyler plows through the trees with his cell phone pressed to his ear and sprints toward me. He skids to a stop a foot away, drops to his knees, and grabs my chin, tilting my face toward his. “Everything’s going to be fine.” He moves the pads of his thumbs to wipe away my tears.
He sounds so sure of himself, I can’t help but draw strength from his words. I nod. “Yes. It’s going to be okay.” It has to be.
He sits next to me and opens a small yellow box. His hands are steady, his focus absolute. I don’t know what happened to the fearful man who left for the snakebite kit, but the man who returned is calm and in control. He gives me hope that, with his help, I might make it through this.
He throws the instructions on the ground and asks the operator on his line, “What first?” He places my leg on his lap and inspects it, running a gentle finger across the bite. He then throws the kit’s shaving razor aside. “Don’t need it.”
Sorting through the yellow box, he grabs the largest suction cup and snaps it onto what looks like the head of a syringe. “Done. Okay… yeah... got it.”
He pulls the syringe plunger all the way up, places the suction cup over my bite, and pushes the plunger down. I whimper in pain, but he keeps applying pressure. The vacuum he’s creating draws the swollen, angry skin into the cup. I want to scream from the pain, but instead I twist the blanket in my hands and bite my bottom lip.
“It’s engaged. Now what?” he asks the operator. Sweat blooms above his upper lip. “Yeah. I see blood seeping out… How will I know when it’s done? Okay… yeah…”
“Tyler?” I whimper, wanting to know what’s going on.
His eyes lock with mine, and I can see panic in their depths; it’s just covered with a stoic façade. “We have to wait for the venom to drain out. I’ll take it off when the cup stops filling.”
I peer down at the clear plastic. Blood and clear fluid oozes from the bite.
“Don’t look, Cassie. I’ll take care of it. Just focus on staying calm.”
“Can I lie down?” I ask the operator on my phone. I think she’s been talking the whole time Tyler’s been working on my leg, but I’ve missed every word. I feel as if an industrial vise is squeezing the air from my lungs.
“You can as long as you keep the bite below the level of your heart,” she says.
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to do that. I try by laying back while staying propped up on one elbow, my bitten leg in Tyler’s lap. An eternity of burning pain passes before Tyler releases the suction cup. Warm liquid gushes down my leg. I squeeze my eyes shut when nausea turns my stomach inside out.
He lowers my leg to the blanket. The metal latch on my telescope case makes a clicking noise. I open my eyes in time to see Tyler take out the tripod. He grabs my flashlight from the duffel and jogs toward the lake. I don’t bother asking what he’s doing as he sets up the tripod and balances the flashlight
on top. He flicks the light on, and a beam fans out over the lake. I hear him talking on the phone, but concentrating on what he’s saying is hard. I’m starting to shake from chills.
It’s completely dark when he returns to my side. I’m in too much pain to stay propped up any longer, so I lay my head on Tyler’s lap. My teeth clack together as he rubs my forehead.
“Park ranger is on his way by boat. They should be here any minute. An ambulance will be waiting by the dock when we arrive.”
I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. “I don’t want to die.”
Tyler brushes my bangs from my eyes. “You aren’t going to die.” He presses his palm against my breastbone and goes still for a moment. I know he can feel my heart pounding against my chest. “You need to calm down.”
“I don’t know how.” I’m slurring. I can’t feel my tongue anymore, as if it doesn’t exist.
“Let’s think about something else.” He brushes his hands down my arms then back up as though he’s trying to warm me. “How about the first time we met?” His mouth twists up into a forced smile.
I grab his forearm with both hands, clenching hard against the pain. “Not… a good… memory… Tyler.”
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“You drew me… having…” My teeth chatter too much to finish the sentence, but at least my tongue’s back.
“Sex,” he finishes. “But that wasn’t the first time, cupcake. We met two weeks before Christmas at the Dallas Children’s Hospital. I was seventeen.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he has my full attention now—as much as I can spare. The searing sensation’s now at my knee and spreading higher.
“You must have been fifteen,” he continues. “I was sitting at a table in the lounge room on the fourth floor. You and three other girls came in to get a Coke. You were all giggling and talking about a friend’s sweet sixteen party or something inappropriate. We were on the ICU floor. Kids were dying left and right. I mean, who talks about that shit in a children’s hospital? Some of those kids would never see their sixteenth birthday.”
“I… don’t… remember.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday. You looked at me when you walked in then down at the homework in front of me. I’d barely slept the night before, so I must have looked like hell. Anyway, the girls all left, but you stayed and bought an extra Coke. You gave it to me, and I thought, ‘How nice. The hottest girl in the bunch is giving me a soda. Maybe she’s not so bad after all.’”
“That… wasn’t… me.”
“I may have been living on Coke and adrenaline, but I’m positive it was you. Hard to forget a rack like yours.”
Despite the pain, I bristle. I’d punch him, but moving hurts too much.
“You did something I’ll never forget. You said I looked like I needed help, and you took my homework. I thought you were bat-shit crazy, especially when you started erasing my answers and filling in new ones.”
“What… class?”
“Trigonometry.” He smiles again, and this time, the curve of his lips seems less forced. “I got an A on the assignment.”
“Why… were you… at the hospital?” I nearly bite off my tongue, my teeth clack so hard.
He hesitates until I’m not sure he’s going to answer. Then he licks his lips and says, “Sick girlfriend.”
Even with my hazy brain, the scene comes together. The Honor Society had raised money to buy toys for the kids at the local hospital. We’d delivered them a few weeks before Christmas. I was only there for an hour, and I was more affected by the sick children than anything else that day, including Tyler. I vaguely remember getting a Coke with a few friends, but I don’t remember Tyler at all.
“I never forgot you,” he says.
There’s an emotion in his voice that I should be able to place, but I can’t. “Tyler?”
“Yeah?”
I close my eyes tight, trying to breathe. “I think… I’m going… to be sick.”
He helps me roll over on my side, and I heave as I go. I’ve barely eaten all day, so only water spews onto the grass. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand and lie back down. Everything’s going blurry around the edges. I take as deep a breath as I can. The vise on my chest constricts my lungs so tight, I can’t draw in enough air. My head spins. The sky revolves like a merry-go-round.
“Cassie,” Tyler says, panicky, “stay with me.”
I wasn’t aware I’d gone anywhere until my gut twists. The earth below spins faster than the sky above. I try to grab onto the blanket, but my fingers won’t cooperate. I think I hear Tyler calling my name. His voice sounds distant, as if I’m beneath water. I try to answer but can’t. My lips won’t move. Nothing will move. Not my fingers. Not my eyes. Not my arms. All I feel is pain spreading up my knee toward my thigh. I’d cry out, but my tongue’s gone again. I don’t want to die.
The roar of an engine pierces through the thick, swirling fog. Shouting. Something moves my leg, and fire lances up my calf through my entire body. I scream once, but I don’t think the noise makes it past my lips. And then the pain’s blessedly gone. Everything’s gone.
Chapter 22
I drift in a sea. Alone. The water’s warm, a constant temperature that soothes the panic boiling beneath my wet skin. I’m in danger from something. I can’t remember what. If I don’t figure it out soon, I’m afraid I’ll be stuck in this ocean forever.
The ocean’s calm and ripples serenely around my shoulders. I’ve been treading forever, but strangely, I’m not tired, just bored. To pass the time, I hum a song I haven’t heard since I was a child. It entertains me while I wait.
I think this might be a dream, but it’s so real, I can’t be sure. The sky is bright blue with no clouds, just a warm sun beaming down. If it is real, I wonder if I’ll get sunburned. I turn my head to check my shoulders. Still olive, not pink. I hum louder; my voice carries across the water.
How long will I have to stay here? Where is here? Will it get dark? I don’t like the idea of being in the ocean at night. Alone. Scary things could lurk beneath the water. I guess they could lurk now, but for some reason, I don’t have the sense to be afraid.
I hum and wait and tread. The sun sinks lower toward the horizon. The panic that has been bubbling beneath my skin begins to escape. My stomach tightens and my fingers tremble, but I keep humming. It soothes me.
“Nice song,” a man says.
I startle and turn in a circle, looking for the owner of the voice. An arm slips around my waist, and I gasp.
“‘Rainbow Connection’?” he asks.
I nod, twisting to see him.
“I always liked that song.” His eyes match the color of the sea.
“Where am I?” I lean into him. He smells familiar. Musky and sexy.
His feet kick next to mine. “Somewhere I don’t want you to be.” His warm breath shudders against my damp skin.
A pleasurable tremble creeps up my spine. I wonder what this man would do if I kissed him. Turning in his arms, I lock my hands around his neck and tip my head back. His lips are only an inch above mine, and his Caribbean blue eyes glow.
“Kiss me,” I say quietly.
One corner of his mouth curves up in a smile that’s so familiar, I know I’ve seen it a hundred times before.
“I will,” he promises. “Over and over, but not until you come back to me.”
I pull away slightly, putting enough room between us that I can take in his whole face. Tears wet his eyes. They trail down his cheeks until they reach his chin. One by one, they splash into the ocean, but they don’t seem to mix. The tiny droplets swirl gently around us, a darker color than the blue water they swim in.
“Don’t cry.” I press my forehead against his. Our breaths mingle.
“Come back to me, Cassie.”
Hearing my name jars me in a way that makes my body quake. “This is just a dream. I’m with you. I’m touching you. Kiss me.”
He shakes his head, and his lips move temptingly near mine. So much sadness surrounds him, I don’t dare press mine to his without permission.
“This isn’t real,” he says.
The sadness in his voice makes my heart break. I squeeze him tight. “I can feel you. I can see you. I can smell you. That’s real enough for me.”
“Not for me, Cassie. Come back.”
I peer around the vast expanse of water. There’s no boat to whisk us away or land to swim toward. “If I’m dreaming, how do I wake up?”
He presses a kiss to my forehead. The warmth of his lips seems to last forever. Finally, he pulls back and unwraps his arms from my waist. “Swim toward the sun. Don’t stop until you hear my voice.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Okay. I can do that. I can swim forever in this place. I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
“You don’t have forever,” he says, his voice breaking.
“What do you mean?”
He fades, his body dimming to ghostly. I reach for him, but my hands go right through him. I see the ocean through him, and it terrifies me.
He smiles sadly at me. “Don’t let the sun set, cupcake.”
He fades away, and I’m alone again. Drifting.
I turn toward the sun. It’s sinking; time’s running out. If I can just touch the heat of the sun, I’ll wake up. I know it.
I have to see him again. I have to kiss him. My heart pummeling my chest, I swim toward the light. My arms plow through the water with more force than I ever thought them capable. The sun grows larger, and the bottom of the orb hits the horizon.
I don’t stop. I keep pushing until my arms burn, until I have nothing left and I’m gasping for breath. When I peer up, the sun’s halfway set. He said he’d kiss me if I come back to him. I want to know what his lips feel like pressed against mine. I paddle harder. My legs kick and push through the water, desperate.
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