“Rachel? Can you hear me?”

A light flashes across my eyes. It burns but then it’s gone and there’s nothing. Just the dark and the heavy feel of a weight on top of me, pinning me down. I move to sit up but I can’t. I’m under water again. I’m back in the dark in the ocean. I can’t move my arms or my legs, I can barely lift my head, and I’m opening my mouth to scream when I feel the soft press of a warm palm against mine.

I can’t see him, I can’t hear him, but I know he’s here. He promised me he would be.

“She’s stable. Let’s lift her. On three. One... two… three!”

I’m rising through the air. There’s something solid underneath me and I think it’s Lawson’s board. I roll from side to side the way I did in the surf, but I’m steady. I’m strapped down tight, the rough scratch of a blanket painful on my burned skin. Sound changes, becoming echoed and hollow as I’m lifted high and pushed across the ground with a protesting screech.

His hand leaves mine and I grab for it, searching blindly. I open my eyes and lift my head, mumbling words that don’t even make sense to me. It’s dark inside, but to my right I can see instruments glowing. Panels and gauges. Controls. When the shadow beside them kicks on a switch, the angry whir of an engine starts to vibrate everything around me. Someone holds the blanket down hard over my body as sand flies everywhere, making me close my eyes again.

“You can’t!” a man is shouting over the roar of the chopper blades. “There’s no room for you! We’re taking her to Cottage Hospital! Meet her there!”

A needle goes in my arm. A mask descends on my face, oxygen filtering in and making it easier to breathe, but inside I’m panicking.

“Cut the bullshit, Chris!” Lawson shouts. “You know you can carry one more.”

“Not you.”

“I’m not looking for a joy ride!”

“It doesn’t matter, man. You can’t go with her.”

“I promised her.”

“You promise a lot of girls a lot of things.”

“Oh, don’t be a dick! This is serious.”

“So was my sister. Now get the hell out of my way so we can take off! You’re hurting her more than helping her right now!”

I hear Lawson curse angrily, but he doesn’t fight the guy. I see it when Chris gets on board the helicopter, his shadow blending in with the rest of the darkness around me, and I wish I didn’t have this mask on my face. I’d ask him to please let Lawson on board. I’d tell him I’m scared. I’d let him know what a bureaucratic asshole he’s being.

“Wheels up!” the pilot shouts.

We rise into the air, leaving Lawson behind. Leaving Katy and the beach and the water. My body burns as I shiver under the blanket in a cold sweat and I wonder how bad it is. I can’t feel my leg. It doesn’t even hurt, but I know it should. It did before. So why doesn’t it now? Is it because I’m in shock?

Or is it because it’s at the bottom of the ocean?

 

***

 

I’m awake and alert when we make it to the hospital in Santa Barbara. They tell me it’s a good sign. I ask about my leg, about how bad it is, and they tell me they’re doing everything they can. No one lets me see it. No one tells me if I even still have it.

A team of men and women in white coats and scrubs meets us when we touch down in the parking lot outside the hospital. The stretcher I’m strapped to is lifted, legs kicked down, and they run me toward the Emergency entrance as the responding medics give all of my information to the hospital staff. Heart rate, time since the attack, location of the attack.

That’s what they keep calling it; an attack. I don’t know why but it sounds so weird. Like it’s somehow not enough. Like that one word can’t encompass the sheer terror and trauma of what it felt like to be pulled under the water against my will by something I couldn’t see. Something I could never fight off.

One word can’t possibly be all there is to describe how it feels to barely make it out with my life.

I’m pushed down a hallway, through a bunch of doors, and into a stark white room. They change out the blanket draped over the top of me and the chill in the air sends me near convulsions. The room is freezing cold, even after they wrap my torso in a new, warmer blanket. A nurse wheels over an IV drip and injects the needle neatly into my arm. That I feel – the pinprick of a needle going into the tender flesh of my arm, but my leg is still missing. The nurse injects something into the IV, someone else secures the oxygen mask on my face so tightly the rubber straps pull at my face, and then the fog rolls in.

People come and go. The warmth is gone, then it’s back, then it’s everywhere and I’m nowhere.

I’m lost.

 

***

 

It’s morning when I come to. The sunlight is pouring in through the window in the hospital room. I know immediately that that’s what it is. There’s no mistaking the stark white walls or the blue curtain pulled far across my right. I can hear a TV playing but I can’t see it. I must have a roommate. I wonder what happened to them.

I wonder what the hell happened to me.

“Rachel?” my mom asks hesitantly.

She stands up from a chair in the corner, her face tight with concern. Her eyes guarded and hesitant.

“Hey, mom,” I answer thickly. My throat is bone dry. My tongue is made of thick cotton.

She smiles, her body sagging with relief at the sound of my voice. “How are you feeling?”

I start to laugh at the absurdity of the question but it turns into a rough cough that won’t stop. My mom quickly pours me a glass of water and I gulp it down in one long swig. I hand it back to her and immediately ask for more. This cup I take more slowly, enjoying the feel of the cool liquid on my throat.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask.

Mom walks to the blue curtain next to me. She pushes it back to expose my neighbor – my dad. He’s in his work clothes (coveralls and heavy boots) passed out with the TV remote in his hand and a juicer infomercial on the screen.

“He worked a double yesterday,” Mom explains. “He was exhausted when we got here and then you were in surgery for hours and—“

“How many?” I interrupt.

She blinks in surprise. “Oh, um. I think it ended up being three total. It was after midnight before they brought you out.”

My eyes flicker nervously down to the bottom of my bed. To the white blanket laid across my legs. To the two feet standing tall at the end.

I sigh in relief when I see them. “I didn’t lose my leg,” I breathe.

“Oh my God, no!” Mom cries, shocked by the idea. “No, not even close.”

“Then what happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I know it was a shark.”

Mom’s mouth pulls into a grim line. “A great white.”

“Wow,” I sigh, amazed by how real those words make it.

I never saw it. Until this moment, it was some abstract horror like a tornado or a tsunami. You know what they look like but you’ve never tangled with one up close. They’re not really real until you do.

This shark bite just got real for me.

I lick my cracked lips, thinking. “I remember being in the water. I remember being pulled under. My leg hurt when I tried to swim away. Then… I don’t really know.” I look around the room like I’m looking for answers but I don’t find any. Nothing that makes the memories make sense. “Was… was Lawson Daniel there?”

“Honey,” my mom says softly, sitting on the side of my bed, “he saved you.”

It comes flooding back. The arm across my chest. The hand holding mine. Green eyes and golden skin.

“He pulled me out of the water,” I mutter to myself.

“He did more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

Her face clouds, her relief fading into dismay. “The bite was high up on your leg. On your thigh. It nicked an artery. You were bleeding so fast. When he got you to shore he cut the cord on his surfboard. The one that attaches to his ankle?”

“The leash.”

“That’s it. He cut that and tied someone’s shirt to your thigh to apply pressure. The nurses said you could have bled out before help got there if he hadn’t done it. They airlifted you out because of that cut.”

I swallow thickly. “And the bite? How bad is it?”

“It’s not pretty,” she answers frankly, her face firmly serious. “They said you have chaffing on your lower leg where your skin hit the shark’s scales the wrong way. You have a lot of puncture wounds up and down your leg. Some are pretty deep. Those are where he grabbed you to pull you under. But you’re lucky. They think it was just curious, that it wasn’t looking for something to eat. The doctors said judging by the size of the bite and what Lawson told them, it was a baby.”

“A juvenile,” Dad corrects groggily from my right.

I can’t help but grin, glancing over at him. “Morning, Dad.”

His blue eyes are open and on me, gauging me. Watching the way he always does. “Hey, kiddo. How do you feel?”

“Surprisingly good,” I reply, stunned to find out that it’s true.

I still have my leg and my life. The shark didn’t take a bite out of my body. He didn’t come at my arms or my hands, meaning I can still play piano. I can still go to the NEC.

Or can I?

“Oh, shit,” I mutter, throwing my hands over my face. “I missed my flight to Boston.”

“That’s the last thing you need to be worried about right now,” Mom scolds.

I drop my hands heavily. “But all that money. I told you guys not to get the travel insurance. Insurance that I’m sure would have covered shark attacks.”

“It’s fine. We’ll be fine.”

“Why would you need insurance?” I ask, regurgitating my own words in an oafish voice. “Nothing could keep me off that plane. It’s a waste of money.”

“You didn’t know. How could anyone know this would happen? And besides, you don’t need to worry about that. You need to worry about getting better.”

“I am better. I feel fine.” I look down at my leg, noticing the thickness of my right thigh under the blanket. The bulge of the bandages wrapped around it. “Why am I fine?”

“What do you mean?” Dad asks, sitting up and turning off the TV.

“I should be sad, shouldn’t I? Or freaked out? Why aren’t I freaked out?”

“Because you’re high.”

“I’m what?”

He points to the IV by the bed. The long, clear tube leading into my arm. “Liquid euphoria. You’re so hopped up on painkillers right now we could tell you that your dog died in a fire and you’d laugh in our faces.”

I scowl at him. “I don’t have a dog.”

“Are you sure?”

Mom swats him on the arm. “Stop messing with her. She’s been through enough.”

“The good news is that she survived it.” Dad looks at me seriously, his expression softening. “That’s why you’re fine, Rachel. Because you’re alive. We’re all fine, better than fine, because you’re alive. Your leg will heal. You’ll go on with your life because you still have one. Because you’re still here.”

He points at me with his thick, calloused fingers. The ones that will always be blackened by motor oil and hard work. That used to try to braid my hair when my mom was away and that smoothed pink bandages on my elbows when I fell off my bike. The fingers that taught me Chopsticks. That molded me into who I am today.

“That’s my euphoria,” he tells me quietly. “You breathing.”

My eyes sting with tears I don’t want to cry. I take a shaky breath and smile at my dad, so touched by the sweet sentiment of this rough, weathered man.

Mom reaches out and takes my hand, smiling down at me. “We’re both happy you’re okay.”

“Yes, we are,” dad agrees, his entire manner shifting from sweet to stern in an instant, “because maybe now that you’re awake you can explain to me why the hell Lawson Daniel of all people has been hovering in the waiting room demanding to see you all night.”