Author's Note:
I have no clue where this story is going. It may be a one-shot or I may write more, once again no clue. Its mostly just an emotional release after watching Drowning on Dry Land. Reviews muchly appreciated
"Use your words. Where exactly is Meredith?"
Derek's heart was thundering like a war drum as he stared earnestly at the small girl with blonde braids. The wailing of sirens and the hiss of water steaming on the burning wreckage of the ferry boat was an odd symphony as Derek waited for the girl's answer. Her dark eyes stared across the rippling water over the side of the bulkhead. Slowly, the girl's small arm rose, and pointed into the cold blue that slapped against the dock.
He had somehow known, but his jaw dropped as he followed her finger down to the harbor. Shadows and reflections flitted across the surface as he stood. The girl could be lying, he knew, but somehow he knew she wasn't.
"Stay here," he ordered as he dragged off his jacket and kicked off his battered sneakers. He stared horrorstruck into the water as he dropped the jacket to the pavement and edged to the side of the dock. The ferryboat was still looming wreckage, a burning charred shell that towered overhead bearing witness to Derek's pain.
The girl watched with big eyes as Derek leaned, squinting into the water. The light angled across the surface making it impossible to see into its dark depths. He glanced briefly over his shoulder. Fear etched the little girl's face as she let her tiny hand fall to her side. She looked up at him, her chin trembling with unspoken words.
"Stay here," Derek repeated as he looked back to the harbor. He took a deep breath, and leapt from the bulkhead, diving into the water after Meredith.
It was so cold it was like hitting a pane of glass. The surface shattered at his touch and the icy water bit at the exposed skin of his cheeks. Everything was a cool shade of blue here, his mind oddly realized as the crackling bubbles settled. He surfaced, the air stung his wet face. For a moment he gasped in air blinking the water from his eyelashes, before he dove back into the depths beneath his churning legs.
Wildly he searched the rocky bottom of the harbor beside the bulkhead. He heard the creaks and groans of the ferryboat and the fireboat only yards away from where he swam. Where are you? He thought desperately Where?
There.
His heart nearly stopped. Floating inches from the bottom, face down, was a lifeless body. Everything from her scrubs to her skin to her reddish gold hair was cast in sickly blue. Her hair floated in an eerie veil around her still caught in the ponytail he had seen her in twenty minutes before.
He dove deeper swimming like a madman down to her. With cold hands he seized her shoulder and turned her. Her face was still, eyes closed, no bubbles streamed from the corner of her lips. She looked…
No he screamed at himself as he wrapped his arms around her. With as much strength as he could gain from his wearying body he kicked off from the bottom hard. Meredith was a dead weight over his shoulder as he swam wildly for the surface, a tantalizing rippling pane of light four feet above him.
Three more strokes with a free arm and fluttering kicks of his cold socked feet and he broke into the life giving air at the surface. He gasped at the sudden cold and sucked in deep sustaining breaths. Horror coursed through his veins as he looked to Meredith floating on her back beside him. It wasn't the water that gave her skin the bluish cast. Her skin was blue, her lips purple. She wasn't breathing, and her flesh of frighteningly cold.
"Oh god no." His arm went back around her as he looked for a way back over the bulkhead. He hadn't thought that far when he dove over the side.
His traveling eyes found a ramp that had fallen into the water during the accident. It led right up onto the safety of the dock and the chaotic help of the rescue squad. He swam to the ramp pulling Meredith along behind him. Like a lifeless buoy she bobbed along.
Finally he reached the safety. He pulled her onto the dark wet wood and clambered out beside her. His muscles trembled as he heaved her into his arms. Everything felt so heavy. His wet scrubs clinging to his frame, his dark hair swept back in a tangled mess. But Meredith was surprisingly light in his arms, her cold forehead resting against his own.
A man in a bright orange jacket, coast guard, was carrying the girl away when Derek managed to clamber up the ramp. She was looking over his shoulder with the man. The coast guard guy looked surprised to see Derek dripping wet emerge into the pale light, carrying what looked like a frozen corpse.
Derek spared them only a glance. He could only think of Meredith. Pale, cold, breathless, and unmistakably a deathly shade of blue.