Excerpt of In Her Eyes
Prologue
Avalon
The first time I died was at my birth. No oxygen entered my lungs as my mother expelled me into the world. My tiny body didn’t shiver as it met cold air for the first time. No cries passed through my blue-tinted lips.
But I had luck and medicine on my side. Doctors and nurses hovered over me and unwrapped the umbilical cord from around my neck. Pressed fingertips into my chest, and butterfly-light touches pumped life into my heart.
My first gasp of air was followed by my first cry.
There was laughter and celebration in the delivery room. But it was short-lived, for one life was traded for another that day. My mother never had a chance to hold me.
I was five the second time I died—a cardiac arrest resulted from some absurdly high fever. They worked on me again. Cooled my body, pumped me full of drugs, machines breathed air into my lungs. The fingertips pressing into my chest, less butterfly, and more thumping bird. They blamed it on a virus—the catch-all culprit doctors blame for all the ailments they cannot explain.
The third and last time I died, I was thirteen. We were at the beach. I loved the sand between my toes, the tug of the water, the scent of sea and salt in the wind, the distant line where dark green met blue sky on the horizon. The ocean called to me with a siren’s whisper.
I didn’t scream or try to escape when the first wave took me in, lifted my feet off the ground, and robbed me of breath. I didn’t know how to swim, but instinct had me kicking my legs, moving my arms, seeking the light just above the watery prison.
I kicked and kicked, but the ocean didn’t let me go.
Not until he dragged me out of it.
Not until again there were hands at my chest, pressing harder this time. And lips against mine, pushing air into my lungs until his breath was my breath, and his gift of oxygen forced the water away. I sat up coughing, saltwater burning my throat, coating my mouth as it left my lungs and stomach.
I opened my eyes to the beautiful face of a young man. A young man with two different-colored eyes. One green like the sea and one blue like the sky. The first time someone’s lips touched mine was to give me the gift of life. I was just a child, on the cusp of womanhood, but I knew I would never forget those eyes.