“You okay, man?”
Who is he talking to? I bend my neck toward the sound of his voice. My head and chest ache. They are heavy and sodden. David is standing over someone. I see bare feet, but I can’t see a face because whoever it is, they are hanging over the side of the wall. Over the water.
I watch as the person moves in silence. They slide backward on the ground, away from the wall, and then twist their upper body around to look back at me. It’s Matt.
Our eyes connect. I steady my face. Strengthen it.
What is he doing here?
I close my eyes. Before he can see too much.
I hear tires digging into gravel. I hear doors closing. I hear voices that don’t belong to David. Or to Matt. An ambulance is here. And a police car. Dread seeps into me. I didn’t feel it on the bridge, but I sure as hell feel it now. Standing on that bridge, I was so sure of myself, so sure of David. So sure I was doing the right thing.
And now…now I’ve got a story to tell. I need to think.
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David
The sirens are getting closer. Thank you, Laticia, for getting them here so quickly.
“You okay, man?” I say to Matt as I look down at him hanging over the edge of the wall. He doesn’t say a word. Instead he twists his body around and looks at Emma. She’s lying there, on her side, and out of the corner of my eye, I see them look at each other for a long second. I see them connect. And then I watch her close her eyes. As soon as they are shut, I stare at her. I need to watch her chest rise and fall. I need to see her breathing. I need to make sure she doesn’t stop. Ever again.
A police car pulls in and parks next to Matt’s car. An ambulance follows soon after, and when the EMTs jump out, they start throwing questions at me.
How long was she in the water? How many minutes did you perform CPR before she started breathing? How much did she throw up? Has she opened her eyes? Do you know if she regained consciousness at any point? Is she high on something? Has she been drinking? Have any of you been drinking?
They open their toolbox of medical tricks and check her blood pressure and pulse. They listen to her heart and her lungs.
Every time they touch her, it makes me sick inside.
They ask me and Matt if we are alright. We both say that we are fine. I don’t look down at him, but I know that Matt is sitting there stock-still. On the edge of the wall, watching.
And then, like a shot of lightning, Emma sits up. Her mouth opens and she purges another burst of puke out of her body. Her body curls over itself as she wretches, and my throat grips closed with fear and pity. For the first time ever, self-hatred swirls through me. I did this. I did this to her. I am bathed in disgust for myself. I drop to my knees. I want to cut my body open and watch my guts spill out onto the pavement. I want to pay for everything I have ever done. I want to suffer for this. Especially for this. I want to tell the truth.
And now…now I’ve got a story to tell. I need to think.
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Matt
The sirens are getting closer. I see David’s feet right next to my head.
“You okay, man?” he says to me as a small circle of spit leaves my lips and drops into the water. What kind of fucking question is that? I’m not even going to acknowledge it with an answer. He doesn’t deserve it. He deserves nothing until he explains what the hell just happened.
Over the sound of my own sloppy wretches, I heard Emma gasping for breath a few moments ago. I know she’s alright because if she weren’t, David wouldn’t be standing over me right now, asking me if I’m okay. He would be back there with her, pumping her chest and breathing into her mouth, just like he was before. My head was tilted only enough to peek out from under my own arm and watch him drop to his knees next to her with the phone to his ear. I watched his face change from concentration to anguish as he worked to make her breathe. I watched calm, collected David splinter into a heap of wreckage before my very eyes. It’s because he loves her. I know it. She knows it. But I don’t think he does. It doesn’t matter now, though, because it’s probably too late. More than likely, whatever just happened was his undoing. Once again, David has screwed himself out of his own happily-ever-after.
And then everything changes.
I turn my upper body and look down at Emma. She’s on her side now, and her head bows down in the direction of David’s voice. Our eyes meet, and in that one long second, it is all very clear. I see strength in her face. I see that it isn’t too late for David. That whatever just happened was not David’s undoing. What is going on here? She looks serious and sedate and tough as fuck. Whatever happened, she was in on it. This was her choice.
Emma’s eyes close, and I look up at David. He keeps staring at her, even as a police car and an ambulance pull into the lot. He watches her as the cop and the EMTs get out and begin to check her vitals, as they start asking him questions. His answers are short, and his eyes are focused only on Emma. When the EMTs inquire as to whether we’re alright, we both say that we’re fine, and they go back to their work.
I flinch when, a second later, Emma sits bolt upright and tosses more water out of her body. The thick droplets are like liquid bullets hitting her bare legs. I look up at David. He’s standing there with his arms slack at his sides and more pain in his face than any man deserves. There is torment painted across his body, and I see a plague of anguish dig into him as he drops to his knees.
He does know that he loves her.
And now I am hoping that it isn’t too late. I am hoping tonight isn’t their ruin.
And now…now I’ve got a story to tell. I need to think.
Chapter 6
David—Age 8
I’m sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. It’s my favorite cereal. I usually like it with milk, but there wasn’t any. So today, I’m having it with water. It tastes almost the same.
Daddy is still asleep on the couch. I can hear him snoring all the way out in the kitchen. He must not have gotten home until very late last night. I listen to him as I finish my cereal. Part of me wishes he would stop. Not just stop snoring, but actually stop breathing. Because if he did, I could go live somewhere else. Somewhere that doesn’t have a stupid map on the wall. Somewhere that doesn’t smell so bad. Somewhere where he isn’t. Anywhere but here.
Daddy didn’t cry at Momma’s funeral last week. Of course he didn’t. I didn’t either, even though I wanted to. I didn’t cry because I know he would have called me a crybaby in front of all those dozens of people. Instead of crying, he just sat there, breathing out his whiskey breath and looking stupid. He was too busy shaking people’s hands and talking about “business” to even care about her. She was right there, in that glossy box with the closed-up lid, and it was like he didn’t even notice her. It was like he didn’t know that a person was in that box. Like he didn’t know that my momma was in that box. I don’t think he looked at me even once the whole day. But I don’t care. Because it’s better that way. It’s better if he doesn’t notice me.
He still doesn’t know I was there the night Momma died. He still doesn’t know I jumped in after her. And I’m never gonna tell him. Because he’d probably kill me. He’d probably hit me hard enough for me to die if he knew I couldn’t save her. Then he’d tell me I never should’ve been born.
I take my empty cereal bowl and put it in the sink. I walk back down the hallway toward my room, trying not to make any noise as I pass him. When I get there, I grab my backpack. The school bus will be here in just a few minutes. But before I put it on, I sit down on my bed and open the zipper for the little pocket in the front. My hand reaches in and pulls out my momma’s letter. The one that was pinned to my shirt the night she fell off the bridge. I take it out of the envelope and carefully unfold it. The ink is a little smeared and the paper is all wrinkly from having been wet, but I think if I work really har
d, if I try and try to crack the code, I’ll eventually be able to read it. My teacher could probably read it right now; she knows how to read cursive, but I don’t. I can’t show it to her, though, because then she’ll know that I was there when my momma fell, and she might tell my daddy and that would be bad. Real bad. Jimmy Paxton told me that we’re gonna learn cursive next year in the third grade. Maybe then I will know my momma’s secret message. But, for now, I just need to keep it to myself.
I refold the letter, tuck it back into the envelope, and then put it into my backpack. In the front pocket. Just to keep it safe.
My digital baseball clock tells me it’s time to go to the bus stop. I put on my backpack and shoes and walk out into the living room. When I get to the front door, I stop and turn around to look at the kitchen wall. I don’t care if he gets mad. I don’t care if he hits me hard enough for me to die. I hate it. I hate that map. I walk to the kitchen, and one by one, I pull out all the thumbtacks. Then I take the map down and fold it up neatly and quietly, even though I really want to tear it into a million, billion pieces. I shove the folded-up map inside the sleeve of my jacket.
On my way back over to the door, I grab a handful of coins out of the change bowl on top of the bookshelf. I’m going to have to stop for milk.
Chapter 7
David—Present Day
One of the EMTs has his hand on Emma’s back. He’s rubbing it up and down and telling her that she’s doing fine. I am on my knees next to Matt listening to the EMT tell Emma how her stomach is filled with water. She needs to get it all out, he says. He tells her to vomit as much as she can. Vomit until her stomach is empty. He uses the word laryngospasm. He explains that when you are drowning, your trachea constricts and seals off the air channel. He says it’s a reflex intended to prevent water from flooding the lungs. Instead, the water travels into your stomach. And that’s why I’m kneeling here watching Emma’s body empty itself out onto the pavement.
The other EMT walks back to the ambulance and returns with a gurney. Emma says she’s done puking, and they tell her they need to take her to the hospital for tests. They need to make sure she didn’t inhale any fluid and that none of her stomach contents aspirated into her lungs. They need to watch her for pulmonary edema. Whatever that is.
I am frozen.
They strap her onto the gurney and cover her face with an oxygen mask; then they put her into the back of the ambulance. One of them walks over to me and Matt and asks which one of us is going to accompany her to the hospital. Which one of us is going to answer their questions and fill out the necessary forms.
“Me,” I say, snapping out of my haze. “I’ll go.”
As we both stand up, Matt makes eye contact with me at long last. He nods and wipes his hand across the top of his head. He looks tired and confused.
“You’re going to have to stay here and answer a few questions,” the police officer says to Matt. “I need to know what happened.”
“Okay,” Matt says quietly.
“But before you get in the back of that ambulance,” the officer says, his body now turned toward me, “I need you guys to tell me if this was a suicide attempt. Do we need to put a watch on her? Should I contact the folks at General?” One hand is at his side and the other is reaching into his left shirt pocket. His hand sinks into the pocket and pulls out a business card. His badge is there, pinned just above his pocket. There’s a number on it and the name WARREN. Officer Warren.
“No,” Matt says after a split second of hesitation. My head snaps over to him as soon as the word escapes his mouth. What is he doing? “No. That’s not what this was about. Emma’s good,” he continues. “That’s not what happened at all, Officer.”
“Okay. That’s what I needed to know.” Officer Warren turns to me and says that I can go ahead and get in the ambulance. He hands me the business card and tells me he will see us at the hospital when he is finished talking with Matt.
As I walk over to the ambulance and put my foot on the back bumper, I hear Matt’s voice. He’s talking loudly and quickly.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe they talked each other into this,” he says. “It was for tricks and giggles. This whole thing. They were gonna jump off the bridge and swim here together. They’re kind of nuts like that, you know. They like doing all kinds of crazy stuff together. I was only here to give them a ride back to their car. It’s still up on the bridge. See?”
What the fuck is Matt doing? And more importantly, why the fuck is he doing it? He doesn’t have a goddamn clue what happened here. His words are making me sick inside.
I sit down in the back of the ambulance and look over at Emma. I take hold of her hand, lacing my fingers into hers and softly squeezing her palm against mine, wordlessly loving her and hoping to hell she isn’t hearing the words coming from Matt’s lips. Her mouth and nose are covered by the plastic mask, but her eyes are wide open. She’s hearing it. She’s listening intently to every sickening word coming out of Matt’s mouth. And I swear I see her smile.
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I wake up with my cheek pressed into a white hospital sheet and my ass parked in a green, vinyl-covered chair. I am bent over at the waist with my face nestled into Emma’s bed, the crown of my head pressed against her sleeping hip. I don’t move because I’m afraid that I’ll wake her if I do. Instead, I take a deep breath and thank a God I don’t believe in for making her chest x-ray clean. No signs of pulmonary edema, they said. No fluid in her lungs. Still, she has to stay here for twelve hours. They need to make sure there is no evidence of hypoxia. Six minutes without oxygen and the brain ceases to function. Six minutes. 360 seconds. Fuck.
Emma’s hand brushes against my head, and then her fingers are moving through my hair, skimming against my scalp and weaving between the strands. She’s touching me just like she did when my head was on her lap in the car. Before I took her to the bridge. Before I asked her for this.
She still loves me. Why?
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Officer Warren comes into the room a few minutes later. My head is still on Emma’s bed, and I sit up as soon as he walks in. He apologizes for taking so long to get here. My car was towed to the impound, he says, and I can go pay the towing costs whenever I want. His words cause me to think about the backpack sitting on the floor of the backseat and silently hope Officer Warren didn’t open it. I hope I’m still the only one who knows about what’s inside.
“So, what happened last night?” he says to Emma, shifting my mind back into this moment. I am holding my breath, and a ball of apprehension throttles around in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what I want her to say.
She looks at me sweetly. It’s like her eyes are singing. They are light and sure and energized. She is going to follow Matt’s lead. And I think she’s looking forward to it.
“I thought it would be fun,” she answers. “I thought it would be cool to do something like that together. We were going to jump and then swim over to meet Matt. He was going to give us a ride back up to the car.” She shrugs her shoulders and takes a breath. Her eyes drop down toward her hands. She’s feigning shame. “But then I hit the water at a bad angle, and I think it must have knocked the wind out of me or something because I don’t remember anything after that. Not until I was puking up all that water.”
My mouth opens to interrupt her, but before I can say a single word, she’s talking again.
“It was stupid, and I can promise you that we will not do anything like this ever again.” Her eyes move to mine, and she’s staring right through me. The sweetness is gone from her face. It’s been replaced with determination.
“Right, David?” Her voice is as sharp and pointed as a tack. “We’re done doing stuff like this forever, aren’t we? Tell Officer Warren here that nothing like this is ever going to happen again.”
I inhale a shallow mouthful of air and straight
en my back. I wrap my arms across my waist and lean forward toward the bed. Emma’s eyes are focused on mine, and I am considering telling Officer Warren every bit of the truth. About my whole life. About Sarah and Jenny and Kelsey and all the others. About last night. About Michael and Evan and Ricky. About the poker games. About everything. But I don’t. Because it will hurt her. It will hurt Emma to hear me say the truth out loud. And I’ve hurt her enough already.
“Nothing like this will ever happen again, Officer Warren,” I say emphatically. “Emma’s right. I’m done doing this kind of shit forever. Done.”
Emma turns her face away from mine and up to his. And then she’s smiling at him.
“I’ll keep him in line. Don’t worry, Officer,” she says with a wink. Sweetness fills her voice again, and I am half bathed in awe and half sunk in regret.
I look up at Officer Warren and see that he’s grinning at her like a flaming idiot. He thinks she’s flirting with him. He has no fucking clue.
“Good. Take it easy on each other.”
He sighs loudly and tells us he’s charging us each with a misdemeanor for public trespassing. It should be a felony, he says, because someone got hurt, but he’s going to cut us some slack. We’ll both have to pay a fine, but that’s it.
I bite my tongue to keep it from moving. I swallow down all the words I want to say to Officer Warren. All the stories. All the facts. All the reasons why I don’t deserve to have this life. All the reasons why I don’t deserve to have any life. I swallow down the truth. And it stings with a pain I never recognized before.
“Thank you, Officer,” Emma says kindly. “Unless there’s something else, I think I’d like to go to sleep now.”
Officer Warren nods at us and hands me a stack of papers. When he is out of the room, I put them on the small table next to Emma’s bed. She watches me do it then looks at me with a small, sheepish grin.
“How are you feeling?” she says.
“It doesn’t matter how I’m feeling.” I wipe my fingers against my eyes and taste the now-familiar, caustic flavor of self-hatred on my tongue. “What matters right now is how you’re feeling.”
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