The accident was my fault. I tripped on my own scarf, hit my head and fell onto the pool cover which was stretched from one end of our pool to the other. The pool cover collapsed beneath me, the rusty rungs which were supposed to keep it firm in cases such as this broke at once under my weight, and I sunk to the bottom of the pool without a splash, the heavy canvas encasing my submerged body like a cocoon. The temperature of the water was as paralysing as the blow I'd received to my head. In the depths, my winter coat and boots weighed down my arms and legs – I couldn't fight my way through the wrappings of the pool cover even if I tried.
Drowning doesn't happen in real life the way it does in the movies. Once you've gone under and water enters your mouth, your epiglottis involuntarily closes over the trachea, trying to hold onto whatever air is left in your lungs. When this fails, your lungs fill with water, except it doesn't feel like water – it's molten lava in your chest, in your throat. I clawed at my jacket and at the canvas, but every movement caused it to constrict tighter, like a python subduing its prey. I struggled, not knowing which way was up, and I writhed and I thrashed until there wasn't enough oxygen to allow me the energy to keep fighting. I felt heavy; there was no air left, and between this, the weight of the canvas and my winter clothes, the moment movement stopped, I sank like a stone to the bottom of the pool.
Ironically, it was then that the pool cover loosened its grip, and I could see the afternoon sunlight peeking through the canvas as it swayed like kelp around me. All I could hear was the sound of my own slowing heartbeat, and the final remaining air bubbling from my throat. The sunlight trickled through the leaves that had blown across the pool surface, casting patterns into my blurred vision that reminded me of the stained-glass windows in the church where they had held Grandpa's funeral, where I had seen that poinciana tree, with its branches dark and its flowers as red as the tassels on my scarf which now floated above my face as I lied dying at the bottom of our pool. Then came unconsciousness; respiratory arrest, and luckily for me, hypothermia.
And all of this, for the sake of my wanting to rescue a bird I had thought was injured – but the moment I tripped it had flown away, completely fine. Unlike me.
Dad had been inside at the time, on a conference call in his study at the far end of the house. Mum was at the library, finishing her dissertation on the mating habits of roseate spoonbills. It was the housekeeper's day off. But whatever it was - by coincidence or luck, Mum had come home early.
In those first few months following the accident, there were so many occasions that I would come home from school, or would walk by her study, or her room in the middle of the night as I snuck into the kitchen for snacks, that I would hear her crying. She cried more in those months than I had in the last two years. I knew she had gone to therapy and I could not have felt more guilty at the fact that she was suffering so much because of me.
I could not imagine how she must have felt, coming home and finding Dad in the study, casually asking where I was, searching the house and calling my name growing more and more confused – until she looked outside and saw the collapsed pool cover, sunken deep in its centre, weighed down by what she immediately and instinctively knew to be. She slammed open the backdoor and the pool gate open, stripping off her jacket, crying out in frustration as she tugged violently at her boots, and then she dove into those icy waters without a second thought.
She did everything right, the paramedics and the doctors told her – checking for signs of life, commencing CPR, continuing to pump my chest even as she pulled out her phone and called the ambulance. Dad only realised what was happening when he heard the ambulance arrive, sirens blaring, red and blue lights flashing bright. For the entire 12 minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive and hurry me to the hospital, Mum hadn't stopped trying with all she could to keep me alive.
And when I awoke, it was her face that I saw first – looking down at me with blue lips, shivering and pale, with dark hair frozen as icicles. I saw through the haze, her face twisted with agonised, tormented terror.
"Mum?" I rasped, trying to turn toward her, wanting to ask what was wrong – was she okay? My throat tore as if filled with shattered glass, my lungs opening and closing as they should and yet feeling as scorched as a fresh burn.
At the sound of my voice, she gave a cry and tried to reach for me where I lied on a cool, crinkly, hard bed, covered in scratchy blankets, feeling metal and plastic around me, hearing beeping, and blinded by lights, dressed only in a flimsy green hospital gown, and wanting to vomit and pass out and for someone to tell me what the heck was going on. Nurses held her back, telling her she needed to let the doctors do their job. Mum's entire face had brightened, eyes shining with wild, joyous hope, even as I shuddered and felt my head spin.
Someone asked me questions – who I was, what year it was, how many fingers were they holding up. I answered, my voice sounding a thousand miles away. The memories of what had just happened were coming back – drowning, falling, the confusion, the fear. Yet here I was, confused, freezing cold, in absolute agony, but alive. And away from him.
My parents' divorce proceedings had begun while I was still in hospital. The day following the accident, Mum had thrown Dad out of the house where he had sat while his daughter lied near-drowned only a dozen metres away. So, Dad had gone to live in the penthouse apartment near his company's office building in Manhattan, never imagining that, a year and a half later he'd still be calling it home.
"It's important to forgive and forget," Dad says almost every time we speak. "Then you can move on. Your mother needs to learn that."
And while I didn't blame Dad for what had happened – Mum did. And that was the end of it. I should have been more upset about the divorce, but at the time I was preoccupied with more pressing matters.
/
They had told me, everyone had told me, that for my own good, my own mental well-being, it was so very important to remember that what had come after I fell unconscious, after I died, wasn't real; it had been a lucid dream – that was the reason I could control my actions, make my own decisions: escape. I'd sat across from those doctors and psychiatrists and had nodded and agreed that they were right. On the walls behind their desks hung framed diplomas and degrees, some of them from the same Ivy League schools my parents now despaired of my never attending. They couldn't see that of all these; none of it mattered. Because not one of those doctors had the slightest idea what they were talking about.
"He isn't real," they had all said.
Yet, I had proof. It hung solidly upon my chest, heavy and reassuring. I could have presented it to any of them, could have stood in their offices and shown them and laughed in their faces as they protested lucid dreaming, hallucinations, delusions. But I never did, because though none of them believed me and none of them truly helped, they had tried, like my mother had tried, but in the end, how could they believe me? How could they help me? So, I kept it to myself. I clutched the stone hanging at the end of the fine golden chain around my neck, and the mere touch of it soothed me in a way that was inexplicable. Proof. That I wasn't crazy. That I hadn't dreamed it. That it was all real. He was real.
To be fair, at first, I had almost believed them – they were neurologists and trauma specialists and doctors with Ivy League degrees, who was I to say they were wrong? It was when I was just finishing off signing the papers to discharge myself from the hospital that Mum perked up as if remembering something, and as we walked toward the doors, I watched her reach into her bag and rifle around for a moment. "Oh, darling, I almost forgot," she said, and I watched curiously, feeling in a good mood now I could finally get out of this clinical, sterile-smelling, place with its endless long halls and harsh fluorescent lights.
And then she pulled the necklace from the depths of her bag.
I stopped in my tracks, freezing in the middle of the reception area, pure horror written across my face and violently twisting my insides. The blue-grey stone hung in the air, suspended by the length of the chain, swaying slightly, making it shimmer ethereally. Confused, Mum stopped to face me. "Pierce? What's wrong?"
For a moment it was if I couldn't hear her, or anything, beyond the ringing in my eyes and my laboured breathing – my eyes were fixated entirely on the impossible object in her hand. How could it be here? She stepped toward me, reaching out in concern, and that was when I shook myself and looked at her, quickly smoothing my features and trying an awkward laugh. "Sorry, yeah I'm fine," I assured her. I glanced down at the necklace, trying to sound casual, "Where did you get that?"
"They brought it out with your things. Apparently, you were wearing it under your shirt. I've never seen it before – it's gorgeous," she said, smiling at it appreciatively. My stomach clenched – there was an urge to reach out and snatch it from her hand. I swallowed hard and nodded.
"Yeah, it was just something I brought from the market a while back."
"Oh," Mum said, and slowly handed it back. The feeling of the cool deep blue-grey stone was cool in my hand, not too heavy and not too light, and the golden chain glimmered in the light. Gorgeous, indeed. "It's always so exciting when you spot such a good find," she smiled. I smiled tightly back, and then we kept walking.
My hand tightened around the stone as we walked across the carpark to the pay station, standing back as Mum paid for parking. Slowly, then, my hand loosened and I stared down at it and saw that the grey wasn't situated on the surface but rather was produced by a gently swirling bundle of mist in its centre, and I saw upon closer inspection that the blue-grey was slowly shifting tones, and that every few moments a flicker of bright colour sparked through like streaks of lightning far in the distance; orange, purple, bright blue. This couldn't exist if it had all just been a dream. This meant it was real. It was all real. He was real. This was proof. My fingers closed around it and I looked around anxiously.
"Pierce, darling, are you ready?"
Swallowing hard as I heard Mum call from behind, in a smooth movement I raised the chain over my head and slipped the stone beneath my shirt.
"Yeah," I called. I turned and we walked to the car, chatting idly, and then pulled out and away from the hospital. The stone felt cool and solid over my chest; it felt right. I could count on one hand how many times I had taken it off in the years since.
/
I sighed as the memory faded. My heart fluttered in my ears and I felt queasy, but with deep breaths, closed eyes and gentle grounding techniques – shout out to psychiatrists and their coping methods – I felt a little more okay. Not a lot, but just enough to not crumple to the ground and rock my way through another panic attack. For a long few moments I simply stood and breathed in the night air, then a deep breath and I gazed upward at the stars and noticed that a grey carpet of clouds was slowly being pulled over the night sky – soon the Moon's light would vanish and things would get very, very dark.
It was perfect timing - I had calmed considerably since I left the house and felt ready to return and face the literal music. Now I just had to figure out how to get myself out of here. It would fully suck if I had to set myself up somewhere and wait until the cemetery sexton – who I knew for sure had a vendetta against me, just because I had ridden my bike through along the cemetery path once or twice – came and unlocked the gates. "Hmph," I grunted, turning my back on the poinciana and on the crypt below it, looking about for something to help me escape.
Casually making my way back down the path, kicking at the dried red flowers at my feet, a cool tingle suddenly spread across my chest, then my shoulders and up the back of my neck, rising the thin hairs there. The stone beneath my shirt became warm – comforting. But I knew what that sensation it had sent across my body meant – someone was behind me.
I felt eyes on the back of my head. Dry leaves and petals were crushed underfoot, the sound of this coming toward me along the path which had only a moment ago been completely barren. It sounded almost like the crunching of broken bones. I tensed. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was. The necklace knew. I knew.
Damning myself for tempting fate, for coming to this place, for risking it despite my well-documented complete lack of luck, I considered walking on – just ignoring him and going home. Pretend it was nothing but a paranoid delusion. But something told me that wasn't in the cards. So, stomach twisting, I turned on my heel to face him. My breath caught in my chest, and it was like everything inside me shut down. My vision darkened at the edges until it was just him. My ears rang and my skin was ice. I was somewhere between dissociation, the beginnings of a panic attack, and absolute clarity.
He looked exactly as he always had – that day in the cemetery and every other instance I had seen him since; dark brown hair, pale skin, dressed in all black; tall and broad-shouldered – the epitome of fearsome and intimidating. There seemed something regal about him as he stood beneath the dark branches which dripped with red flowers.
My body was tense, seemingly frozen as the wind blew, and he was just as still as I. The poinciana blossoms danced along the path between us. My chest felt tight beneath the cool stone which hung from my neck and it took a moment before I reminded myself that I needed to breathe. His stare was severe, his large form completely unmoving and I felt awkward and exposed standing there captured beneath his gaze.
The silence dragged on, and I saw he didn't intend to be the first to speak, so with chest tight and voice shaking, I offered,
"Uh, hi—"
His voice cut sharply through the night air..
"What are you doing here?"