Just Be Her Page 32

  I don’t remember hitting the water. I remember the flapping piece of carpet by my feet, and I remember that useless information running through my head, but I have no recollection of the impact. After that is just disjointed flashes of memory.

  The water was freezing cold. It felt like spikes of ice, all piercing my skin at the same time in a million different spots. People were shouting. Not many—nowhere near as many as were on the plane. I wore a life jacket. When had I put that on? Something was burning furious and bright nearby. I wanted to go closer to the heat, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but shiver.

  The fire was still there, but it had calmed down significantly. Like the embers of a campfire. No one was shouting anymore. The water rippled gently in front of me, calm and black like tar—impenetrable. I couldn’t see even an inch past its surface. I couldn’t feel my arms or my legs.

  A light. Was it the fire? No, that had gone out a long time ago. It tinged the darkness. Violet. Dawn was coming. But that wasn’t right either. This light was sharp, focused, and moving. There was a sound too—a loud whooshing from above. The water in front of my face rippled from the wind created by the helicopter blades. Helicopter! I had to look up, shout, wave, do something so they didn’t leave.

  I was being lifted into the light, but I was still cold and wet and I still couldn’t feel my legs. The light wasn’t warm and welcoming. It was harsh and bright, and the loud whooshing overwhelmed me. Someone lifted me from behind. An arm wrapped around my middle, holding me steady. The water seemed really far away now.

  It was loud inside the helicopter. I was being jostled where I lay, tied down with something over my chest and hips. I couldn’t see. My eyes were closed, and I didn’t know how to open them. Voices shouted over the helicopter engine, only snippets of conversation.

  “. . . only survivors? Are you positive?”

  “Yes.” A firm “yes.” His voice was clear, close. Strong and masculine, but smooth like warm honey. “We searched the whole area. Only her and the copilot. I don’t know how she even survived. She was in the water so long.”

  Then a sliding sound and a third voice, farther away. “. . . in touch with her people . . . never got on the flight . . . last minute change of schedule . . . good intel, but can’t predict . . .”

  A hand landed on my calf. The man with the honey voice. I knew it belonged to him, but I didn’t know how. It was good that I could feel my legs again.

  ~

  When I woke up in the hospital, I had been asleep for nearly two days, but I didn’t know it at the time. They told me all of it later. Nurses and doctors piled into my room, marveling at the lack of permanent injury and my fast recovery. Variants were more resilient against injury and faster to recover, but I, as someone who was only human, was lucky to have survived, or so the doctors kept saying. I didn’t feel lucky.

  No. When I first woke up, it was only for a few moments. The sounds came first: the soft thrum of machines, a quiet beeping, muffled voices. Then I felt the soft blankets and pillows under me.

  I managed to lift my heavy eyelids and found myself looking up at those corkboard squares that make up the ceilings of hospitals and office buildings. The fluorescent light was off, but it was still very bright in the room. It must have been morning.

  I angled my head down and scanned the space. There was a door on my left and a window on my right, a hospital tray on wheels under it. In the corner, next to the window, was a chair. A man was sitting in it.

  I could tell it was a man by the broad set of his shoulders, the muscles in his tattooed forearms. His elbows rested on his knees, and his head was in his hands. He had dark hair and a buzz cut. His fingers were digging into his scalp; I had a feeling that if he had more hair, he would be pulling at it. He was dressed in black: black boots planted firmly on the floor, black pants, and a black T-shirt.

  I tried to speak, but all I managed was a straggled inhale. It was enough to get his attention anyway. His head snapped up. He looked young, maybe in his twenties, but the look in his intense eyes gave me the impression that he had lived a thousand lifetimes while he’d sat in that ugly hospital chair. He had a five o’clock shadow covering his strong jaw and shocking ice-blue eyes. They pierced me, as the frigid water had pierced me.

  “You’re awake.” I don’t think he meant to say it out loud. It just came out on a breath. And then he was on his feet and next to my bed, leaning over me.

  He reached a hand out as if to touch me and then pulled it back sharply. “I’ll get a doctor.” It was the man with the honey voice.

  I was asleep again before he’d even left the room. The ice in his eyes was making me remember, and I couldn’t handle it yet.

  ~

  The next time I woke up, it didn’t take me as long to gain consciousness.

  I opened my eyes and lifted myself into a more comfortable position. I felt so much stronger than the first time, as if I didn’t need to be in the hospital at all. It was dusk, the window on the right still letting in the fading light.

  My eyes immediately went to the chair in the corner, but the room was empty, and for a second I wondered if I had hallucinated the man with the ice-blue eyes. Then I heard the tap turn on in the bathroom, and a moment later he walked out of it. He was still dressed in all black, but this time he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt, fitted enough to hint at the strong torso underneath. He was tall, his head nearly reaching the top of the doorframe.

  As he turned, closing the door behind him, our eyes met. He paused for a second and then stepped up to the foot of my bed, resting one hand on the railing. He watched me with a neutral expression on his face. I watched him back, not feeling at all awkward about maintaining eye contact with a complete stranger for so long. A scar cut through the middle of his right eyebrow, and a black-and-gray tattoo was peeking out of the black fabric at his neck.

  “How you feeling?” His voice was firm, forceful, but it still felt like honey washing over me.

  My own voice was groggy, though clear enough in the silent room. “You pulled me out of the water.” I didn’t bother answering his question. It wasn’t important at that moment.

  “No. My colleague did. I pulled you into the chopper.”

  He wasn’t going to insist I focus on my health, on getting better, on getting my strength up—all those empty things people insisted when they were trying to avoid speaking about the difficult things. The important things. Good.

  “You sat with me. I could hear your voice. Even over the engine.”

  “Yes . . .” He looked away briefly before meeting my gaze again, letting the word trail off. As if he was going to add more but decided not to.

  “Only the copilot and I made it. There were no other survivors?” I had to be sure. I had to hear someone say it.

  “No.” His answer was definitive, but his eyes narrowed slightly, wondering whom I was asking about. Whom I had lost.

  I screwed my eyes shut, fisting the hospital sheets in my weak fingers.

  My mother . . .

  My mother was on the plane with me.

  There were no other survivors.

  She was not a survivor. She was . . . she . . .

  “My mother.” I opened my eyes as I said it.

  His face fell when the two words left my mouth. He lifted his other hand to the railing of my bed and leaned heavily on the utilitarian gray plastic, hanging his head. He swore under his breath and started breathing hard.

  Why was he so upset?

  I had so many questions. What happened? Why did the plane crash? How did no one else survive? Why did I make it? Why not her? How did you know where to search? Where am I? What’s going to happen now? Who are you? Why are you still here? Why do you care?

  But I couldn’t find it in me to care about the answers.

  No. That one little word had confirmed what I had suspected since I’d first woken up, with a stranger sitting in the chair at my bedside instead of my mother.

  I’d felt st
rong when I’d woken up a few moments earlier, but now I felt weak again. An awful pressure built in my chest, and a lump formed in my throat.

  She was gone. Forever. I would never see my mother again. Never speak to her, hug her, argue with her. Argue. That was the last thing we’d done. She died thinking I was mad at her.

  I was alone in the world. I was motherless. An orphan. I had felt lonely for much of my life, but whatever my mother’s reasons were for keeping us distant from other people, she had always been there for me. She was the one constant in my life, the one person I could always rely on.

  Yes, I had felt lonely in the past, but lying in that hospital bed with a stranger at my bedside, I truly knew what it meant to feel alone.

  I’m alone.

  Fat tears finally overflowed, and I wrapped my arms around my torso. I began to sob as I rolled onto my side toward the window, every muscle in my body taut with despair.

  Boots squeaked across the linoleum, and then the thin hospital blanket was pulled over my shoulder. The bed behind me dipped, and his body pressed into mine from behind, his arm snaking around my front. He held me tight and I heard his voice, close to my ear.

  “You are not alone.”

  I must have said that out loud. His declaration made me cry harder—ugly, unrestrained tears. Sobs wracked my body as I curled into a ball.

  He held on to me through it all. We didn’t touch, nowhere did our skin make contact, but he held me tight until my crying calmed down to soft sobs. He held me tight as the sobs gave way to silent tears pooling on the pillow. He held me tight as I drifted off into blissful unconsciousness again.

  When I woke up the next morning, there was a nurse at the foot of my bed, writing something on a clipboard, and the stranger really was gone.

  https://amzn.to/2y9oxL6

  About the Author

  Kaydence Snow has lived all over the world but ended up settled in Melbourne, Australia. She lives near the beach with her husband and a beagle that has about as much attitude as her human.

  She draws inspiration from her own overthinking, sometimes frightening imagination, and everything that makes life interesting – complicated relationships, unexpected twists, new experiences and good food and coffee. Life is not worth living without good food and coffee!

  She believes sarcasm is the highest form of wit and has the vocabulary of a highly educated, well-read sailor. When she’s not writing, thinking about writing, planning when she can write next, or reading other people’s writing, she loves to travel and learn new things.

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  By Kaydence Snow

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