The Inadequacy of Breathing

“Will! Do you have it?” I shout over the waves. Another rush of water comes and knocks me under. I tumble around underwater for a few seconds and then burst up on the surface, clinging to my board, laughing.
I’ve been through ten hurricanes, two tornados, and a flood. There was a point where I thought humans were invincible. We have means, shelter, plans and ways of surviving. We have determination, protection, and each other. We dare nature, and we defy it.
“I’ve got it. I’ve got it!” Will calls back. I watch as he carefully stands up on his board and rides a massive wave. He doesn’t even fall until he’s a couple feet from the shore. He lets out a holler of success and throws his fist up in the air. “Look behind you- you’re next!”
A wave licks at the back of my board and I scramble to get set up. I’m not as graceful as Will. I’ve never been. He’s the sort of guy who’s never tripped, never accidently tipped his drink over, and almost never misses a wave. He makes for a great surfer, and good competition.
I stand up. I know that if the wave doesn’t knock me down, the wind will. My hair whips all around my face, and my legs feel numb with cold. The wave takes a violent swerve and I fall forward and do a perfectly unbalanced nose-dive into the raging waters.
I swallow mouthfuls of salty sea before I come up sputtering and coughing. Will calls over the waves from the shore “You all right, man?!”
I mean to answer him, but all that comes up is a choking cough. Through watery eyes I can see him looking kinda scared. When I catch my breath, I decide to play a joke on him.
I duck underwater and grasp onto the surface of my board. He does this all time and I always fall for it. One time he actually stayed underwater for two minutes before coming up. I nearly had a heart attack trying to get to him.
Being under the raging water is like being in a slow car crash. Everything is moving, every part of you, everything around you, nothing is still. You can’t breathe, you can’t see, you start to panic. You want to come up for air, but your swirling, which way is up? You stretch out your legs and arm waiting for the cold air, searching for an exit. Your eyes open and it burns, but you’re desperate for that light.
A hand pulls at my hair and I’m yanked from the depths. When I rub the burning water out of my eyes, Will is in my face, looking furious. “Don’t do that, you idiot! This is serious, we’ve only got a little while before the police come looking for surfers. Do you want to get arrested, or do you just have a death wish?” He cuffs me on the back of the head with his fist.
I start to answer with “Death wish,” but a wave comes and buries us both under gallons of heavy water. It catches us both by surprise, and the last thing I see before I go under, is Will smiling stupidly and then a brief look of shock as he’s throttled to the floor of the ocean, without a last breath.
The wave slaps me hard in the face. My neck whirls and lashes, my ears fill with water.Its everywhere, I’m trapped. I swim and flap my arms around uselessly. The wind is stronger, the waves are harder, it finally hits me: There’s a reason you don’t swim right before the storm comes.
I don’t know how it happens, but my lungs finally fill with air, and I’m thrust onto the shore, gasping and gaping, starving for oxygen. My brain is lazy and two seconds too late, to grasp what is going on around me. Where is Will? I don’t see Will.
I’m dead on my back. The water tickles my feet. I can’t hear anything, but ringing in my ears. It’s raining really hard now. The sky is so black that it looks as if night has come six hours too early. I try to move my neck. I try to move everything. Will is still in there. I have to help him.
“WILL?!” I scream, scared, petrified. “WILL?! WHERE ARE YOU?”
I can’t move. I can’t breathe. Rain is drowning me. I have to move. I twist my neck and it cracks sickeningly. I howl in agony. It takes my brain a second to process the picture in front of me.
Will is laying down next to me. His eyes are open, staring at me. He’s bleeding something awful. His hair is matted, and water laced with crimson ribbons twirl down his neck onto the dark sand. “Will?” I whisper, because it’s all I can manage. “Will..?”
Will doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t blink. “Will?”
Something dark shades the white of his eyes, for a second, I think he’s blinking. Until the dark encompasses his entire eyeball, and drips down his cheek. Blood. “Will?!” I scream, hysterical now.
Will doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything at all.
***
Antiseptic. It’s so thick in the air that I feel nauseated. I reach out my hand and try to push it all away. The water is in my face. It’s always in my face. I push it away, if I don’t its going to drown me. It’s going to kill me.
“John?” Someone is calling my name, I think. I want to say something. I can’t figure out how to move my lips correctly. “John?”
It takes me a minute before I even mutter something, it’s indistinct, and not an actual word.
“It’s all.. in the hospital…everything’s all right.”
That voice is so familiar, but I can’t place it. Did they say hospital? Why am I in the hospital?
“Mhmgrp” I try. “Hugmm”
“Go back to sleep. Press this…. if …any pain.”
Something is shoved into my hand. I don’t want to hold onto it. I let it go.
***
I drift in and out of sleep for I don’t know how long. My brain is slowly starting to function again. When I wake up for real this time, I can move my lips.
My eyes take a few moments to adjust to the light. My leg is hanging in front of me, its stiff in its cast, strapped to some sort of floating sling. My mother is sitting in the chair next to my bed. She’s reading one of those ragtag magazines that she loves. I suppose she can’t see me yet.
“Mom?” I croak. My throat is so goddamn dry. Why is it so goddamn dry?
Her magazine drops from between her fingers and she stands to tower over my bed. She’s got circles under her eyes, and her blonde hair looks gray in this light. She’s not wearing any makeup, and her clothes don’t match. She looks exhausted.
“You’re awake.” She says, placing a hand on my cheek. “How do you feel?”
She sits down on the edge of my bed and I ask her for some water. She quickly snatches a bottle with a straw from the night stand and brings it toward my lips.
“Do you remember what happened?” She asks, after she pulls the straw away.
I try to remember, but everything is really hazy. I’m confused, and not knowing what’s going on is a little scary, but I feel . . . sedated.
“What am I on?” I answer in return.
“Morphine.”
I blink back tired eyes, “Morphine?”
“For your leg, you shattered the bone.” She replies, giving a backwards glance to my elevated leg. “The police found you on the shore in Deerfield.” She looks very restrained as she says this, as if she’s trying to hold herself back from screaming something at me.
“On the shore?” I repeat, feeling rather stupid and tired.
” Yeah, on the shore.”
***
Three days later when I had managed to stay conscious for more than an hour, the doctor and my parents came in to have a talk. I still couldn’t remember a lot of what happened. I remember being on the beach, I remember a wave coming, or at least I think I do. That’s what everyone keeps telling me. That the waves were coming because of the hurricane, which had come and gone, leaving our town with the normal damage. Broken down tree’s, shattered windows, and power outages. Nothing more than usual.
Even though my mother and father came in every day to watch over me, I felt like something was off. Even through this drug-induced state of euphoria,I knew there was something they weren’t telling me.
***
Day Ten.
Its 2:00 A.M., things are slowly starting to come back to me. In nightmares mostly. I’m always drowning. I was drowning. I had a pretty bad head injury, part of its from drowning, another part of it is from hitting a piece of coral, or something. They found pieces of coral in my hair, anyways. That’s all we really know right now. Or at least, that’s all I really know.
I asked my Mom and Dad why I was at the beach a day before the hurricane. They told me because I was surfing. I know I like to surf, but why would I go to the beach alone, when it was so dangerous? I’m not that stupid, am I? I wouldn’t go alone. I wouldn’t. That’s not something I would do. I know I’m reckless, but I wouldn’t..I wouldn’t… Wouldn’t. The word sounds important in my head. I say it out loud “Wouldn’t…Wouldn’t Wo..W..”
I…
Will.
My head falls forward into my palms. It feels like there are a thousand strings in my head recconnecting from where they’d been snipped. Its all making sense now. The beach. The surfing. The wave. And Will.
Why didn’t they tell me?
Don’t they know he was with me?
No…
No.
I push the nurse’s button on my bed. I wait, my heart pounding, hyperventilating. No one is coming. ‘HELP! HELP!” I scream. I’ve got to tell them. They don’t know.
No one is coming, why is no one coming? I start screaming again “HELP! ANYONE? HELP!”
I try to get out of bed, but my leg is all strapped down, and every time I move my neck it singes, like flames running up and down my skin. I’ve got to get up, I’ve got to find someone, I’ve got to tell them where Will is. I turn myself over and roll, my leg popping out of its sling and dropping to the bed with a heavy thump. I roll until I fall off the bed and onto the floor. My shoulders hit the linoleum first. I reach my hands out and start attempting to untangle the bed sheets that are trapping my legs in place. With a rough tug the rest of my body comes toppling down. It hurts, but I’ve got to find someone.
My arm is attached to an IV. I grasp onto the pole and climb up it. It takes every inch of strength I’ve got to do it, but I’m finally standing. “HELP!” I start screaming again, because I can’t make it any further, the pain is too much. “HELP ME!” My voice comes out loud and desperate and not my own at all.
A nurse comes running into the room, she drops the papers she’s holding and scurries over to get me to sit back in the bed. “What are you doing? Are you insane? Your going to kill yourself!”
“WHERE IS HE?” I scream, pushing away her demanding hands as they go to put me back in the bed. “WHERE IS WILL?”
“Who? Sit down, your going to hurt your-”
“WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS HE?” I keep screaming, pleading with her, “Just tell me. Just tell me where he is…and I’ll be..fine..just tell me..please..please..please…”
The nurse picks up her walkie-talkie and calls for backup. Two male nurses come stomping into the room a minute later, they grab my arms and put me back in the bed. I flail my arms in a familiar movement. “Stop it . . . tell me . . . where is Will?”
“Just calm down. We’ll tell you whatever you want.” One of the men says, as the other runs out of the room to grab something.
I’m sobbing now, reaching out to grab onto the nurse’s scrubs, “Just listen to me, please, if he’s not here, he’s still at the beach, he’s still there, someone has to help him. He was with me, we shouldn’t of…but we did…please..please…go save him…please… we can’t leave him there…”
The other nurse comes back in with a tray of solution and a needle. He holds me down while the other one injects the needle into my IV. “Please . . . “I beg, “We weren’t supposed to tell . . . ”
***
I throw either leg over my board and stare down at the metallic designs. Pink and green and red all bleed together on a white surface. I try to look up but my neck won’t move. I’m not scared, I understand that I can’t see what’s in front of me just yet. Will’s voice filtrates through my ears. It’s so eerily familiar that I want to cry, or scream just to block it out.
“Are we going to do it? Is it time yet?” He asks, I want to look up, I want to see his face.
Everything is grey, a filter of the sky, and its raining down on me. “What? I don’t know what your talking about.”
“Is it time? Are we going to do it?” He asks again. He sounds impatient, excited.
“Time for what? Will, where are you? Why can’t I look at you?” I ask, I try moving my neck again, but it’s so stiff.
“Stop playing John, we’re only pretending.” He says, splashing me with water. ” Are you staying here?”
“I have to.” I answer, because I can’t move. There is no moving right now.
There is silence. Someone has turned off the sound. There is nothing but ringing in my ears now. I want to talk. If I don’t say anything then things will be this quiet forever.
“Will you go?” I ask, but my voice doesn’t come out as my own, it comes out as a sob of mutilated words. “Where will you go, Will?”
I look up. Will’s bleeding eye stares over my shoulder. “The storm is coming.” He whispers.
***
“John, Wake up now. John? Can you hear me?”
I bolt straight up in bed, as a shooting pain climbs up my spine and into my neck. My mother pushes my shoulder back until they’re back on the bed. I lie flat and stare at the popcorn ceiling of the hospital room. My throat is sore and when I go to speak it’s hoarse and my words come out as if they’ve traveled through a rusty pipe.
“Yeah, I can hear you.” I answer, reaching out and grabbing the water off my bedside table. I take a sip and choke on it. Mom props me up higher on my pillows and I gasp and sputter until I’m red in the face.
“You keep screaming in your sleep, are you having nightmares?”
I don’t really feel like talking about it right now, so I give a noncommital shrug and close my eyes again.
“How did he go, Mom?” I ask quietly, “Was he in pain?”
She strokes a hand over my naked arm and can not answer.
***
Day Twenty
I’m finally released from the hospital. My legs in a thick cast that they say won’t come off for a few months. I’ve got to change the bandages on my head every four hours, and there is so much medication that I could get full off pills.
I’m not allowed to use crutches, I’m only supposed to use the wheelchair. No pressure on my leg at all, that’s the rule. Lots of bed rest, and no over exerting myself for a few weeks. My parents are considering hiring a nurse to watch over me while they’re at work.
My Mom said she’d take a sick leave for a few weeks, but with all the hospital bills that is simply not an option. I had to have two extensive surgeries in the first two days after the incident. I don’t even remember them at all. They say I’ll probably have another two before I’m able to walk again. I did a nice job nearly killing myself, and all.
School starts in two weeks, and we’re not sure if I’ll have to be on a hospital homebound home school program for a while. Mom says I can have visitors at home starting tomorrow. She say’s all my friends have been calling worried sick about me. I haven’ t called anyone back yet, only Jax, but that’s only because he doesn’t know Will. He didn’t ask me much about what happened, just said if I needed anything he’d be right over. If I said I needed my best friend back, do you think he’d still come over?
No, probably not.
I’m not sure if I want company right now. I’m not up to pretending to be okay with everything that’s just happened, and I’m still in a constant state of drowsiness from all the pain medicine. The first thing I wanted to do when I got home was take a shower, but I have to take a bath and keep my cast over the ledge.
I feel so inadequate sitting here in the tub, the door half ajar incase I need help. I’m not used to needing anyone’s help and it drives me crazy. Not being able to walk around, or take a piss on my own. I scrub uselessly at my skin. There’s still sand on me, in my hair. I’ve got to be really careful not to get the bandages to wet. I lay my head gently back against the ledge, and the water drifting over my skin, echo’s itself over my eyes and I succumb to the confusion that has overwhelmed for days.
Will is dead. I’m alive, and naked, and bloody, and disgusting, and there’s nothing I can do but wash this sand out of my hair and get up. I can’t very well sit in this tub for the rest of my life. I can’t stare at myself in the opposing mirror and scream at my reflection for existing. I can’t challenge the ceiling to reason with me. I can’t do anything but wash up, and get out of here.
***
When I sleep it’s filled with dreams, things with only him and me. Time is meaningless, oxygen is pointless, endless, no reason for worry. We skip on silver waves, that threaten to swallow us, but we smile, and laugh and pet them with the pads of our heels, and taunt them with the touch of our toes, skim over water like clean, safe sand.
When we kiss, it’s hungry and full of want that is silent and insinuated. I want him like oxygen in a world where it matters.
Soon I sink into the waves and drift back to shore without him. Water rains forward and bathes my ankles with moisture. You can see out for miles and miles. The water looks gray and the clouds seem to melt from their height and into the violent sea. I can’t see him in this mess of color–
Only . . . I can feel him here.
Thunder claps from somewhere in the distance and I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t bring myself to even move. If the shore would just stretch a little further, it could get me, it could have me.
I can see him walking out of the water. Glowing and stronger. His board is in one piece, and he drags it across the sand toward me, droplets of water sliding over his face, tanned and not pale at all. He lets it fall behind him and kneels down beside me.
I ask him where he has been, and he laughs at me, he says: “You surf before the storm comes. That’s when the best waves come.”
He will grab my hand and drag me into the water, but this time, he’ll be the one coming out alive.

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