Ten Years Ago
ten years ago
DELANEY
“Can I ask you a question?”
I had no business asking this question, but it was one o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t study anymore.
Blake looked up from the textbook he still had his nose in.
“You can ask me anything, Delaney.”
His immediate answer, so confident and sure, made something skip inside me.
“It’s…personal.”
“Even more personal than one of Dr. Keilly’s icebreaker questions?”
“Actually, it’s a follow-up question to one of those.”
Blake closed his textbook and sat straighter in his chair at my kitchen counter. He cleared his throat. Preparing to answer me, maybe. Or shoot down my question, more likely. Because he clearly knew what I was about to ask.
“Who…” I started before clamping my mouth shut. I didn’t have any right to bring this up. “Never mind.”
“It’s okay,” he said, but he didn’t look like it was okay. He looked exhausted, and I hated my impulsivity for speaking thoughts aloud that I should have kept inside. “I didn’t know them.”
“What?”
“The person I couldn’t save?” he prompted.
I nodded slowly, letting him know that we were on the same brain wavelength. Still, I wanted to stop him. Tell him he didn’t need to say anything more. But then he kept going, the words spilling out of his mouth like he’d been waiting to release them.
“I didn’t know them,” he repeated. “She was just a stranger, a young woman, at the beach when I was nineteen. My first spring break, first time at the ocean. I’d gone down to Florida with some guys from my freshman dorm. I watched her get pulled into a riptide. Well, I didn’t realize that was what it was at the time, but I watched her…struggling. Jumped in without a second thought. I was a strong swimmer. I grew up spending summers on the lake.” He paused. Looked down at his closed textbook. “A lake is different from an ocean. I thought maybe I was going to get swept away, too. I couldn’t ? —”
“Blake.” I leaned across the countertop, putting my hand on his. “You can stop. You don’t have to tell me.”
He shook his head, seemingly determined. “I got her out, but it was…I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I understood the basics of CPR, but I wasn’t trained in it. I hesitated before starting chest compressions. She was lifeless. The lifeguards made it to our side within a minute or two and took over, but it…she didn’t make it, Lane.” His voice trembled as he finished.
The confession that I suspected Blake hadn’t spoken in years hung between us. My pulse raced, and I could feel Blake’s hammering in his wrist.
“Blake, you have to know that wasn’t your fault,” I pressed after a beat of silence.
“I hesitated.”
“Not when you jumped in the water, you didn’t. That was a big risk, and you took it anyway.”
He stilled, considering my words. But then he shook his head.
“A risk that meant nothing. I should have been able to save her.”