Drowning Instinct(68)
Author: Ilsa J. Bick

―Oh shit.‖ He closed his eyes, let his head drop to the snow. I saw his back move as his breath came in deep, hitching gasps, and when he lifted his face again, I saw him pushing back the panic, grappling for control. He tried easing back on his other hip, but there was an even sharper crack and then something that sounded like dry branches splintering under a heavy boot. Mitch‘s body jerked and then his hips dipped as the ice began to give.

And, suddenly, there was water: dark as blood, seeping across the snow, oozing from the wounds beneath Mitch‘s body, spreading fast.

―Oh God.‖ He looked at me. ―Listen to me, Jenna. When I go through—‖

―No, you‘re not—‖

― When I go through,‖ he said, ―unless there‘s a shelf, something for me to grab onto so I can hold myself up, you have to let go.‖

―No. No, Mitch, no, I can‘t, I won’t!‖

―You have to!‖ he shouted and now I realized that what I‘d thought was sweat on his cheeks were tears. ―Jenna, I won‘t be able to let go because I‘ll panic and I won‘t want to let go of the coat, but you have to, no matter what I say. Do you understand? I‘m too heavy and you won‘t be able to hold me, honey, not this time. I‘ll just end up killing you, too.‖

―No, Mitch,‖ and I was crying again. ―Mitch, don‘t ask me to do that, I can‘t let you die—‖

―Jenna, please, honey, you have to do this, you have to let me g—‖

Suddenly, all around his body, the ice was crumbling to pieces, like a pane of brittle glass. There came a heavy sodden sploosh as the fissures widened and the ice tired.

And then the lake screamed: a high, grinding squall of rusty hinges, of rotted metal.

Beneath him, the ice broke in a staccato clatter, like the rattle of machine guns: CRACKCRACKCRACKCRACKCRACK!

Mitch‘s eyes found me and held on. ―Jenna,‖ he said, and he put everything into that one word. He put in a lifetime.

Then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the thin ice—that frail membrane that buoyed him up and kept him in my world—let go.

A few moments later . . . so did I.

53: a

So.

What else could you possibly want, Bobby-o? You know the rest. You‘re the one who found us. Me. What a picture that must‘ve been.

Well, shall I tell you what it feels like to watch someone you love drown and not be able to do anything to stop it? Do you want to know how long it took, or if the water boiled? Do you want to know if he screamed?

Would it interest you, at all, to know that he did try to scramble back onto the ice?

That his hands grabbed and his fingers clawed, but the ice—that treacherous, greedy, teasing ice—kept breaking and breaking and breaking, sketching a path straight for me?

And that when he saw what would happen to me, he stopped trying to save himself?

Would you believe that someone could love anyone that much?

Or do you want to know what I said? How I felt? That it might be better to die with him?

Would it help you to hear, Bob, that all of a sudden, he went so still, so silent, that no one would ever have believed that this man was drowning?

Do you want to know what it was like to understand that this was the end? And that there was nothing I could do?

No.

No, I don‘t think I‘ll tell you about that, Bob. I don‘t think I will.

b

But here‘s the truth, Bobby-o.

I‘m no angel. But if I could have sprouted wings from those grafts on my back and plucked him out of the water, and if I‘d been strong enough to fly us somewhere far, far away, I would have.

But I couldn‘t, and so I didn‘t.

As for the rest?

Brush up on your Shakespeare, Bob. Then we‘ll talk.

c

I know science. I know that it is possible for someone to survive a cold-water drowning, and they‘ve been working over Mitch for a long, long, long time. I think it was Rebecca who once told me that they work longer if they think you‘ve got a good chance of pulling through. I guess that explains me.

But it‘s been awfully quiet these last few hours. Awfully quiet . . . and I am so afraid to really let myself know what that means.

Weird, how I didn‘t quite understand what Mitch was trying to tell me when he said that, but I do now. He felt the way my mother did when those Marines came to the door.

Mitch‘s fear was fed by the same fire that kept me recycling Matt‘s e-mails over and over and over again.

Because if you can just hold off the moment when you must confront reality, time stands still and you can keep pretending that life will continue as you‘ve known it: that nothing—not even something as wonderful and as terrible as love—has broken your world beyond repair.

So I think I‘ll stay here a little while longer. There‘s plenty of time to get off this gurney and open that door and rejoin the rest of you.

There‘s all the time I have left on Earth.

There‘s the rest of my life.

When I do leave this room, I don‘t know what will happen next. My mom‘s in a coma; she might die. Dad . . . I don‘t think he‘ll change, no matter what. Matt is dead. And Mitch—

d

I just thought of something.

If Mitch is . . . If he‘s really gone, they can use his skin for my mother. If he‘s an organ donor. Knowing Mitch, he would be. They‘ll parcel him out in little pieces, an eye here, a kidney there. So why not his skin? They could flay his body and cocoon her with him. That last living bit of all that he was would help heal my poor mother—and how ironic would that be?

For that matter, my heart is broken. So maybe they‘ll give me his. It‘s something to shoot for.

And maybe, in all that, Bob?

There is forgiveness.

e

I just remembered Danielle and David. It‘s still Friday. No . . . Saturday? I‘ve lost track. But Monday will roll around soon enough, and Danielle will get her abortion. Or she won‘t. Either they‘ll get in touch with their folks, or Mitch was lying.

But I was on the ice with him, Bobby-o, and you weren‘t. So I don‘t think he was. I think everything Mitch said out there—every word—was the truth.

Every. Word.

f

You probably want me to regret Mitch. You want me to see that he lied, was some kind of predator; that I‘m a victim, like you said. But Mitch was broken, too, in his way and just as much a hostage to his past and his mistakes. Maybe by trying to fix me, he was also healing himself in the only way he knew how.

Oh, I can just hear you now. You and every therapist who ever lived will say that I‘m rationalizing, that I‘ve identified with a monster, just like those kids do who are kidnapped and live in a cage for twenty years. You‘ll want to see me as damaged somehow, and then you‘ll try to cure me. Well, I got news for you, Bobby-o.