Chapter 2
Mesmerizing Views
Illusion or imagination…?
Had the illusion been that I would be safe with my father? Or was my imagination setting fire with a presence that didn’t exist? Or was it rocks, prickly grass, or the concrete wall touching my body that woke me? Maybe it was the sensation of not being able to breathe. Or maybe it was the distant shouting: “There’s no fucking bridge! … Get me a fucking boat! … Anyone have eyes on Maddox yet…”
Lying on my stomach, ocean water dripped from my gaping mouth and into my helmet. To my side and below, I reached out to the green eyes that shimmered in the water, watching me from beneath the surface. The water—an array of stars—danced while a sharp pain spoke of my lungs that felt as if imploding. Unable to retrieve oxygen from them, flooded with seawater, my eyes began to involuntarily shut again. Even with this happening, I reached for her but failed. My arm went limp, banging into the outer part of the seawall.
Next thing I remember was being on my back, large hands doing compressions on my chest. Then vomiting water. All of it making my head pound with a vengeance.
The sun blacked out the face hovering over me, but I could sense his terror, as if it were a blanket of fear covering my whole body. “I’ve got ya, kid,” he said.
I believe he said more, but I wasn’t of sound mind to comprehend much. My weak neck didn’t stand a chance against the heavy helmet that forced my head to fall to the side, showing me where I was.
Dad’s new clubhouse.
It had been a distance from the bridge. How did she know where to bring me?
Infringing blackness caused the clubhouse, a very wide building, to begin to fade from sight. I suppose that scared Dad’s club-brother, because he boomed to someone, “Where the fuck is the chopper? Goddammit!”
Blackout.
Coming to, spinning helicopter blades were remarkably silent as I was carried under them, completely unaware I was strapped to a gurney and being raced into the flying machine. What I was aware of was that the water my rescuer swam in was now being ripped away from me as we lifted into the air. In my chest, a dull ache began to pulse, having nothing to do with my injuries or even the sinking Harley and its empty saddle. My lungs burned as my mind grasped at the too-heavy emotion churning in my stomach. All of it together left me with a haunting hollowness in my chest.
I hated that feeling.
Green eyes shimmered in the water, watching me from beneath the surface. She mouthed, “I’m with you,” as she cried, the sparkle of her tears floating into the aching sea.
Feeling her gloom as if it were my own, I tried to ask my new magical friend, “Why are you so sad?” Except as I opened painfully dry eyes, I studied joint hands. It wasn’t tiny fingers squeezing mine anymore. It was Noma’s. My grandmother.
I don’t know what it is like for other people to wake up in a hospital, but for me, consciousness became a blade, one that couldn’t be seen by someone who hadn’t received a gift from Death, like I had. That blade was quick to slice at my young and impressionable heart. I had forgotten all that I’d witnessed, except for one person, and I didn’t understand what had happened to land me in a hospital. All I knew was that I was in an unfamiliar bed that had stiff white sheets that smelled of chemicals. Not like the soft sheets, the woman talking to me had me in every night. “Maddox, can you hear me?” Noma’s voice quivered with a stress level that seemed to enter my body and hit me in the gut, while she pushed a button on my bed with rails.
I didn’t want her to worry, so my sight drifted up to hers, hoping I could calm her, but my fogged head could barely keep up. I asked, “Noma, where’s the water?”
The pull—the wanting to see my tailed friend—felt like a powerful mathematical equation. Without the other number, there was no answer. No counterpart for it to make sense.
Desperate for that connection—that purpose—I asked, “Where is she—” But a doctor and nurse stormed into the hospital room, interrupting.
The nurse rushed to Noma’s side in a comforting manner as the doctor impeded my space. Standing to my left, he threw out questions I didn’t listen to because I needed answers of my own, and the penlight shining in my eyes was intrusive. My head sank into a crunchy-sounding pillow in an attempt to escape while I asked, “Is she still in the water?”
The doctor stilled. Alarm radiated from his skin like heat from a sweltering road. Then he asked me, “Do you know your name?”
Stupid question. “Yes.”
He treaded cautiously. “Can you tell it to me?”
I was annoyed. I had no time for this. “I’m Maddox Gentry. Now, please tell me where the girl with a tail is!”
The room fell eerily quiet, except for the beeping machines and the humming air-conditioner vents.
“Noma?” I called out, a little taken aback by everyone staring at me.
Her grip tightened on my wrist, and inconceivable pain etched her expression. Then, as if petrified of my answer, she slowly asked, “Do you know where you are?”
I nodded, but the movement made me wince. Ouch! Pain shot through my head. “Umm,” I was trying to focus past it. “Yeah, I think we are at your work.”
Noma was an emergency room RN. She’d been one so long she could’ve retired, but the lady, who was in great shape and who had more energy than a girl in her twenties, had refused.
