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Once I’m free of the sandals I will never wear again, I scramble to my feet and continue charging towards the dock. I hear commotion and panicked voices behind me, but I can’t begin to care what they’re saying. I make it to the dock and run towards… where the hell did she fall? Where did she fucking fall?! I can’t see, I can’t remember. I frantically look around as my feet slip out from under me and I fall on the wet slatted wood. The impact my chest takes knocks some of the wind out of me. I strain to push myself up as I resume looking for where Luna fell off the dock. There was a boat near where I saw her ponytail go under. Dark green… maybe? I can’t for the life of me see it. Why can’t I see it?!
Chaotic, desperate thoughts flood my head as I scramble and surge forward.
I have to get to her!
How is the fucking sun shining so beautifully when my daughter is hurt, scared and drowning?!
She’s all I have! Please God, let me get to her in time!
Somehow, I manage to get myself upright as time slows down. I thought that only happened in the movies, but it’s happening right now, and all I can hear is my heart pounding hard and loud, echoing through my ear canals, alternating with the deep, gasping breaths coming out of my chest as I see one of the most horrific and beautiful sights unfolding in front of me.
Luna’s soaked, limp body emerges from the water that laps at the nearby rowboat and splashes gently up against her and the arms she’s in. The strong arms of a man clad in a light blue shirt that clings to them, wet and transparent, showing off tan skin. Blood runs from her forehead near her eyebrow and mixes with the water streaming down her temple and along her cheek.
The man hefts my daughter’s slight body up on his shoulder as he uses his other arm to brace himself on the dock. As I fall to my knees in front of him with my arms outstretched to receive Luna, wet, shaggy brown hair hangs in his face, but I can make out one brown eye, and I can see and the strong jaw. The man that led me around the dance floor for a few minutes in his arms last night.
Ben…
Ben
I pass the little girl to her mother before heaving myself out of the water and onto the dock, water dripping out of my hair and pouring from my drenched, heavy clothing.
“Luna?! Baby?”
Kasey. The woman whose very presence woke something up in me last night. She now holds her daughter’s face in her hands, crying desperately, her face full of panic and pain. A flash of her smiling up at me from my arms last night passes through my mind quickly before I regretfully nudge her out of the way as something takes over me and I position myself over the little girl. I instinctually put my hand behind her head and tilt it up as my other hand seeks out a vein in her neck. I put my ear down by her slack-open mouth, listening for breath. I feel a thin pulse in her neck but no breathing and I slip into a familiar mode, a zone.
I breathe into Luna’s mouth while I try to calculate how long she was under. It was under thirty seconds, I’m sure of it.
“C’mon, Luna,” I rasp out between delivering breaths and listening for her to produce her own. It’s then that I notice Melanie running down the dock with her phone to her ear. “We’re at the Huron’s Tranquility Resort, my niece fell in the water, she’s not breathing!” she shouts into the receiver, Matt hot on her heels as they get closer.
“Luna!” he shouts, with a look on his face that says the hounds of hell can’t keep him away, and I react again from instinct.
“Stay back!” I shout as I deliver another breath, which this time, is met by a feeble cough that is music to my ears. Luna’s little chest heaves, trying to desperately pull in breath on its own, and I immediately roll her to her side and hear a gratifying amount of water being coughed out of her lungs.
I let out a breath, heavy with adrenaline, and motion with my head to Kasey that it’s okay to hold her daughter now. The relief on her face is indescribable. It’s one I’ve seen on countless other people that, until now, always blended together, but for some reason, this time, I have a feeling the memory is going to stick with me.
Matt, who had paused in his steps in response to my previous order, rushes forward to drop down and gather his sister and niece in his arms. I look to Melanie who still has the phone up to her ear but has a hand covering her mouth as she fights back tears.
“She’s okay, I think she’s okay,” she whimpers to the operator and I, still seemingly in business mode hold my hand out for her phone.
She looks understandably confused but hands it over, her eyes darting between me and the scene as Kasey sobs in relief.
I get the phone to my ear and hear a voice from my past that I recognize as my own as I immediately start rattling off information to dispatch.
“Nine-year-old female sustained injury to the left temporal area before falling in the lake; submerged for around thirty seconds. Breathing has resumed and is equal but not entirely clear. Make sure your unit has suction and oxygen ready, along with a pediatric C-collar. Child also has a head laceration that appears superficial but will require closer inspection.”
Once the operator reassures me that a rig is three minutes out, I hang up and glance up to see the most dumbfounded look on Melanie’s face.
Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.
“You’re a doctor…” It’s not a question.
I take a moment to replenish my breath before lowering my head to avoid the look of disbelief in her widened eyes.
“Was.”
Chapter Five
Kasey
