Everything hurts. My chest rises and falls heavily. My calves cramp. I can’t keep going. Only a sliver of sun sits above the waterline. I’m failing. Somehow, I know I’m going to lose everything. But I won’t stop fighting until the last of the sun is gone. I can’t. I draw in a great breath and dive. Water races past my face, my shoulders, my legs. It gurgles in my ears and splashes up my nose, but I keep going. I pop to the surface. The sun’s nearly gone. One last attempt, and it’s over.
I dive again.
Below the water, a great orb of golden light rises beneath me. I must touch it. I dive deep. It rises to meet me. We collide in great explosion.
As the blast rips me apart, I hear the sweetest voice say, “Don’t die, Cassie. God damn it, I love you.”
Pain roars through my body like a tidal wave of freshly honed razors. Every muscle clenches.
I’m awake. This is the reality he talked about, and it hurts like hell. The bastard. I want my ocean back, where everything was serene. I don’t care if it’s dark. I don’t care if scary things lurk beneath the water. I just want the pain to stop.
The scream of an ambulance siren reaches my ears, followed by pounding feet. People speak in strained voices. I’m in too much agony to concentrate on their words. My leg is elevated. Shards of pain shoot up to my crotch and down to my foot. I want to scream so loud and furiously, no one will ever touch me again, but I can’t. My body refuses to so much as whimper. Even my eyes stayed fused shut.
I think I hear Tyler. I hold onto the sound, worn and raspy, still familiar and calming. Someone moves my leg again. I gasp for breath and silently scream. It hurts too much. Way, way too much. Everything from my hip to my foot is on fire. I want the blaze to travel up so it can consume me and end my misery.
Someone shouts. Ice floods my veins; the pain in my hip dulls. Like a cresting wave, numbness flows down my thigh, eating all sensation. The surge streams to my calf, lifting the pain as it pours by. When my foot deadens, I want to cry from the relief. The pain’s gone, and I draw in one last conscious breath and drift.
When I wake again, my head’s heavy. Pain grips my leg, but it’s duller. I can’t help but wonder if my ocean would wash away the last of the anguish, but I don’t know where it is any longer. I think that’s a good thing. Sobbing fills my ears, soft and feminine. Something touches my palm. For a moment, the comfort of the flesh pressed into my hand makes me forget how badly I hurt. I squeeze.
The sobbing stops on a sharp inhale. “Cassie?”
I try to open my eyes. The lids are like sandpaper grinding against my eyeballs, another pain to add to the torment of my leg. I manage to lift them, though only half-mast.
“Oh, sweetie!” my mom wails. Tears stream down her cheeks, her eyes red and swollen.
Behind her, my father stands stoically, his hands curved around my mother’s shoulders. I’ve never seen him cry, but the puffy bags beneath his eyes are evidence of spilt tears.
My eyelids droop. I force them back up, trying to hold onto my mom and dad for as long as possible. I’m afraid when I close them, I’ll never see my parents again. I want to tell them I love them, but I’m pulled back under. Everything darkens. They disappear, and so do I.
I know when I’ve woken for good by the return of all sensation. I smell bleach and lemon and something else I can’t place, something flowery and familiar. I hear beeping and whirring and dripping. I taste metallic bitterness. Scratchy sheets brush my skin. The pain in my leg’s an echo in the background of my mind. It’s bearable, and I’m grateful.
Opening my eyes, I stare at the ceiling. It swirls. Pretty colors, like pink and lavender, pool at the edges of the wavy patterns. That doesn’t seem quite right. Ceilings aren’t supposed to be colorful or move. I blink, twice, and the tiles turn white and stationary. Better. Much, much better.
Too comfy to move, I take a deep breath and explore my mouth with my tongue. It still tastes of eroding pennies, and I swallow, barely able to round up enough moisture to make my throat move. My tongue darts out, seeming to have a mind of its own, and licks cracked lips. ChapStick. That’s what I need. I wonder where I can get some? Water would be nice too. With ice. And maybe a little lemon to get rid of the coin taste.
Beside me, something shifts. Whatever it is, it grabs my hand. My brain is so woozy, it takes me a moment to find my neck muscles and turn my head in the right direction.
My mom sits next to me. She’s clasping my hand and stroking my knuckles with her thumb. “You’re awake.”
I think she tries to smile because the lines around her mouth deepen, but her lips only twitch at the corners. I nibble a bit of dried skin on my lips, my fuzzy brain figuring out what I should say. “Where am I?” My voice croaks from disuse.
“Hospital,” she says, squeezing my hand gently. Her brown hair’s a mess, sticking up on top and ratty at the bottom.
She’s not one to fuss over her looks, but I’ve never seen her this unkempt, and it makes me wonder just how bad off I am. My creaky mind sobers in a hurry, and the scene at the lake comes rushing into my brain with a tidal wave of fear. The snake. The pain. The panic. I’d been sure I was going to die. Maybe I am dying. My chin trembles, making speaking nearly impossible. “Am I dying?”
She cups my face, leans down, and presses her forehead against mine. “No, honey. You’re not.” She closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “We thought we lost you. Twice. Especially when you went into shock, but praise God, we didn’t.” She kisses my cheek. “You’re not allowed to die before me, okay?”
I’m going to live. I’m so relieved, I feel like laughing and crying all at the same time, but the tears win out. They come faster and faster until I can’t stop. My mom holds me while heavy sobs shake my body. After a few minutes of bawling, I think I must have cried out all the pain medicine because my leg throbs.
“The bite?” I ask. “How bad is it?”
“It’s swollen,” she says, pulling back.
The lines on her forehead are the deepest I’ve ever seen them. I think I’ve aged her ten years in… I don’t know how long. “What day is it?”
She moves toward the end of the bed. “Monday evening.”
I’ve been unconscious for twenty-four hours. I gaze around the room. The blinds are open, and the sun is setting. In a chair by the window, my sister’s curled into a ball, sleeping.
My mom grasps the edge of the sheet. “The nurses kept getting on me for covering your leg, but I was afraid you’d get cold.” She shrugs sheepishly and lifts the sheet.
Cool air sweeps past my leg, and she tucks the sheet next to my calf. I gasp. Not a normal, oh, my God gasp. More like a holy-mother-of-sweet-baby-Jesus gasp. I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe two punctures surrounded by angry red skin. Certainly not this.
My calf’s propped up on a pile of pillows, and I swallow back bile as I stare at it. My mom had called it swollen, but that isn’t a broad enough adjective to describe my leg. Bloated. Inflated. Engorged. Those don’t do it justice either. It looks like a purple sausage stuffed into a casing ten times too small. I’m scared the skin will split if I so much as touch it. Even my toes are puffy, and they angle in different directions to make room for them all. As if that’s not bad enough, thick black ink-lines bisect my calf and thigh in uneven intervals with dates and times scribbled next to them. I’m a living whiteboard.
I swallow a sob. Will they have to amputate? I know I should be grateful to be alive—everything else I can work through, even a lost leg—but I want to walk again. I want to wear high heels and be a normal college kid strolling across campus. Not a student learning to use a prosthetic because of a stupid snake.
I wish I had killed the damn serpent instead of running. I imagine smashing my foot on its skull and savoring the crush beneath my heel. I was just sitting on a damn rock. It wasn’t like I tried to hurt it. My whole body clenches, sending a shooting pain up my calf. I moan and blow out a puff of air. No revenge fantasy will make this better.
/>
My mom squeezes my hand. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie.”
I try to stifle a sob, but it won’t stay tucked in my throat. It comes out shrilly. My cries sound like wet choking as I try to stop them. “Will they… have to… cut it… off?”
Through the tears blurring my vision, I see my mom startle, her chin jerking toward me. Her eyes are wide and full of compassion. “The antivenin’s working, honey. The doctor says it’s all swelling. You’ll have a scar, but he said you can start physical therapy in a week to get it back in working order.”
“I’m not going to lose it?” I sniffle.
“Nope.”
“It’s just swelling?” I stare at my leg and try to figure out how I’ll ever move a thigh big enough for a rhinoceros.
She smiles reassuringly. “Just swelling.”
I sink into the bed, giving myself a moment for the panic to subside. As the ache in my leg lessens, my gaze fans out across the room. The evening sun spilling through the window dimly illuminates the darkest corners. I don’t see anyone else besides my mom and sister. Tyler’s absence surprises me.
I keep going over the room as if I can make him appear. Could he be outside in the waiting room? “Mom? There was a boy with me when I got bitten…”
She nods. “Tyler.”
“Has he been here?”
“No. I’ve been trying to reach him all day. Hannah gave me his number. She said he saved you, and I want to thank him.”
“He wasn’t here when you arrived?”
She shakes her head. “Hannah said he left when she and Dylan showed up.”
“And he hasn’t been back.”
It wasn’t a question, but my mom says, “No. I haven’t left, so I’d know.” She raises an eyebrow. “Is he your boyfriend?”
Somewhere in the recess of my mind, I hear him yell, “God damn it, I love you.” It sounded so real, and I vaguely recall hearing it just before I’d been submerged in darkness. My heart sighs and stretches contentedly as if his words were real, but they were just a hallucination induced by a venom-soaked mind.
“We’re friends. For now,” I finally say.
My mom smiles. “I’ve never met him, and I already love him.”
He’s not hard to love, I want to tell her, but it’s too soon to reveal emotions that deep.
Three days later, Freddy sits by my hospital bed, leaning toward me with his brown eyes wide. I’ve just told him about Mr. Westbrook’s kiss, Tyler’s reaction, and how it all led to a field by the lake and a feisty snake.
“You’re livin’ a soap opera, girl. Two fine men fighting over you. You should be ashamed of yourself.” He smiles smugly. “Didn’t I tell you Mr. Westbrook had a thing for you? I’m always right.”
I barely hear a thing after the words “two fine men” leave his lips. Freddie’s never flat-out called a man good looking before, and it makes me wonder if he’s had a breakthrough. But if it was only a Freudian slip of the tongue, I’m not sure I should point it out. Coyness is probably my best bet if I want to discover what’s going on in his head.
I fiddle with the white sheet covering my legs. “So if you had to decide between Mr. Westbrook and Tyler, who would you choose?”
Without hesitation, he says, “Team Tyler, all the way.” He flips up the collar of his white polo, exactly the way Tyler wore his shirt the day Freddie saw him. “He’s got the hot James Dean look down to an art.” He winks at me. Actually winks.
The boy knows what he’s insinuating, and I don’t feel the need to tiptoe around the subject anymore. “You openly admit Tyler’s hot?”
His eyes glitter with orneriness. “He’s man candy.”
“Freddy!”
“What? It’s true.”
“I know it’s true, but I never thought you’d say it.”
“Just because I admit he’s candy doesn’t mean I’m ready to taste,” Freddy says.
“But are you thinking about tasting? Not Tyler, of course. We’d have a diva smack down if you tried to take him. But… is there someone else?”
He shakes his head, his sparkling eyes dimming a degree. “Naw. I’m still figuring all this out.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it right now. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He grabs the stuffed snake curled around my bed rail, a present from Dylan and Josh, and drapes it around my neck. “Tell me more about this Tyler of yours.”
“I wish you could meet him.” I adjust the snake so its little head rests just below my shoulder.
Freddy leans back in his chair, making himself comfortable. “Maybe if I hang around long enough, he’ll show up.”
That won’t happen. Tyler hasn’t come around since I was admitted to the ER, but I don’t tell Freddy that. It’s too depressing to think about Tyler refusing to visit.
Freddy stays for another thirty minutes while I fill him in on the finer points of antivenin and the beauty of a painkiller known as Dilaudid. When he leaves, I have a moment of quiet in an otherwise visitor-filled day at the ICU. I grab a tissue from the box by my bed and blow my nose. My allergies are acting up from the pollen coming off the twenty dozen flowers surrounding me. Every flat surface that isn’t occupied by a vase has a get-well card or a stuffed animal holding balloons. Mr. Westbrook—I mean, Aiden—dropped by and gave me a dozen red roses. Even Wyatt sent a potted hydrangea the size of a football field, along with a half-dozen foil balloons and a pink sock monkey. I’m not certain how I feel about either of their gifts, but I do know one thing for sure. I’d trade all the flowers, cards, and gifts for one visit from Tyler.
I push aside my uneaten lunch, grab my cell, and hold it up so I can see the screen. Three new texts. None of them from him. My sigh pierces the quiet room.
I’m trying to enjoy my rare moment alone. If it’s not Hannah, Liz, or my family trying to entertain me, then it’s random friends coming by or a constant stream of nurses and doctors monitoring my progress. I’ve never felt so loved, except by the one person I want it from.
After turning the ring volume up on my phone so I don’t miss new texts, I lay it on the stand next to my bed and wonder why Tyler’s MIA. According to Hannah, he rode over in the ambulance and stayed until she arrived. After that, he left but called her every fifteen minutes until the doctors announced I’d survive. No one’s heard from him since. I’ve spent my entire stay wondering where he is and why he won’t visit or at least answer my texts. When I’m not obsessing over his whereabouts, I’m mentally replaying the night I was bitten and how he called me his girlfriend.
Girlfriend isn’t a term Tyler uses lightly, even during a time of crisis. I’m probably fixating on the word because I want him as more than a fuck buddy, and the only way I’ll get the courage to broach the subject is if I think he wants more too.
I know I’m playing with fire. No one thinks Tyler’s boyfriend material, but over the last two months, I’ve seen a different side of him. One that’s sweet and caring and even a little possessive. It’s time we figure out if this relationship’s deepening, but I can’t do that until I see him. So far, that’s proving impossible. He’s not even answering his phone.
My cell chirps, and I check the screen. A text message. From Tyler. My heart leaps in my chest.
How’s the snake bite? he asks.
I type back, Have you ever seen a chubby person cram into a leotard five sizes too small? That’s what my leg looks like. I have to retype leotard three times since autocorrect doesn’t recognize it and my fingers are trembling. When I finally push send, I hold my breath for a reply. I can’t help but expect him to disappear again.
Sounds sexy.
I release my breath on a long sigh and type with steadier fingers, It’s not pretty, but I’m told I won’t be disfigured. I glower at my purple leg, my stomach knotting. Not sure I believe them.
You’ll still be hot, bum leg and all.
Thanks.
Could you imagine if it bit your chest?
I laugh so loud, I sno
rt. There’s an idea. Instead of implants, just use a rattlesnake. Side effects, death and severe bruising.
I wait for a reply but get nothing. I text again, more serious this time. Thank you for saving me.
Just glad I was there.
Me too.
When are you breaking out of that joint?
Few more days. I’ve had sixty vials of antivenin so far and need about twelve more. If you miss me, you can come see me.
I chew on my fingernail, waiting for him to text back. When he doesn’t, my happy buzz from finally talking to him fizzes out. Or not, I text.
I sigh, abandoning my finger and biting the inside of my cheek instead. Everybody and their dog has visited me. I don’t understand why Tyler won’t drive the four miles to the hospital just to say hi. I don’t expect him to stay for more than five minutes. Hospitals are antiseptic and overrun by cocky doctors, stressed nurses, and cranky sick people. Not exactly a fun place for anyone, especially someone who spent time in hospitals with a sick ex-girlfriend, but I thought after everything we’ve been through, he’d care enough to show. Maybe girlfriend really was a slip of the tongue.
My phone chirps. Tyler texts, Will you go to the lake again or have you sworn it off?
“Way to change the subject,” I mumble. I type, I’ll go back eventually, wearing jeans, boots, and a long sleeve shirt.
Next time you go, you’re packing the snake kit in your duffel, he texts back. That’s an order.
I suck in a sharp breath, reading between the lines. He’s not coming with me. My heart beats like a techno drum, faster and faster and faster. He’s still mad about Aiden. That’s why he hasn’t visited. I’ve been so busy focusing on everything else going on, I haven’t once thought he’d still be angry over my teacher.
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