Chapter 1 #2
So I stayed. I stayed until the next stage came.
I stayed until the shroud of darkness around us lifted and a beam of light poured in, cutting through the murk, brightening the water around us with a brilliant glow.
You have to see it to believe it. Our eyes aren’t designed for underwater sight.
Water distorts our vision and bends light in its own unique way; that’s how looking through water works.
But I know what I saw. Officer Madison saw it too.
Her eyes closed, and her lips moved. She was praying.
Of course she was. Officer Madison believed in a being stronger than herself, and the scriptures she quoted, the exemplary life she led, and the cross she wore around her neck weren’t for decoration.
God knew her, and if He heard her, this sign was what she needed to see, what she needed to let go.
I knew what came next: the slow and inevitable crawl of death and the peace of acceptance.
It happens after the briefest of hesitations, a breath caught between two worlds.
And when it came for her a second later, Officer Madison’s chest rose slow, her lips parted, her eyes glassed, and she moved no more.
She deserved to live, but some people are not meant to be long for this world, someone once told me.
If there’s a heaven, she was on her way there.
I released her hand, but not before taking one last imprinting look at her.
I collected this for safekeeping, though I didn’t know why exactly.
I am pieced together by fragments of this day, a collection of moments that refuse to be forgotten.
Later, the memory of her brave last moment keeps me company when all others jerk me awake.
Later, this last look helped me make the hardest decision of my life.
Not all memories are tangible. But this one, I wanted to remember, a reminder that strength is not always measured in muscle or endurance but in the grace with which we face the end.
Officer Madison’s body pitched forward, locked, as the water jostled her.
I floated there, watching her lifeless body drift, until I realized I was waiting.
Waiting to die. My heart thumping in my ears slowed, each pulse a battle, as the water faded from gray to black.
I was out of air. Out of time. And, somewhere deep inside, out of fight.
Because it wasn’t just this fight, but all the others before this day, every battle I’d lost, resurfacing collectively.
The weight of exhaustion, more than physical, pressed down on me, heavier than the water, more suffocating than the cold.
I was tired. Tired of treading water. Tired of auditioning for a life that barely wanted me.
Seconds slowed in the way they did when you were drowning.
So this is it, I thought. This was what it felt like.
Death, or the beginning of it, the moment just before its long fingers slowly reach for you.
I didn’t resist and allowed myself to drift.
The voices called out after me, louder and louder, as I moved toward them.
Death would be easier. I could see Lila again.
Maybe this time I wouldn’t have to fight.
Then, I remembered that I couldn’t die. Remembered I didn’t want to die. Remembered who I was. Remembered I had already learned how not to drown.
The reflex to breathe surged, my stubborn lungs fighting to fill, straining against their limits.
I exhaled slowly through my nose and mouth to take some pressure off my lungs.
It didn’t work. My chest tightened, my lungs demanding air once again.
Panic fluttered through me. Pain too. I was awake now, scrambling, writhing, twisting, desperate to breathe again.
My arms clawed at the water for something, anything, to hold on to but found nothing. Only wetness and cold.
My body already knew what to do. On its own, my legs kicked until I slipped through the opening of a huge panel ripped from the bus.
On the way to the surface, my chest seized again, and I gulped water.
It burned like fire, and I gasped, inhaling more, the swampy taste filling me.
Seconds later, I broke the surface, but still drowning in every breath.
A horrible sound tore free from my chest as I vomited—a harsh cough, something halfway between a sob and a gag.
I sucked in air where I could shove it: in my nose, in my mouth, in my ears, had I been able to.
It stung my lungs, a bolt-of-lightning protest, sharp and fast, over their sudden fullness.
Sounds returned next, muffled at first, giving way to the clear splash and ripple of water, the rush of cold wind against my ears.
My vision blurred, stinging with grit and irritation.
As I treaded, I swept my eyes from left to right, and there, just a few feet away, the shoreline appeared, a thin strip of land barely visible through the blur.
It was only then that I felt the pain. All of it.
Everywhere. It screamed as loud as if it had its own voice separate from me.
You don’t survive a bus crash unscathed; sharp swipes lanced at various places on my body.
Stretching my arms and kicking my legs sent bolts of fire through my shoulders and down to my thighs.
A deep ache spread across my ribs, and my wrist throbbed, a sharp twist of agony with every movement.
I screamed, the sound weak, a strangled thing swallowed by the wind and rush of water.
The moving water felt like a lifeline, pulling me toward the shore.
I relaxed, surrendering to its current, my body too tired to resist. When the mud of the bank finally met my hands and knees, I dug into it, gripping for purchase, the slick earth sliding beneath my palms. I crawled out, every inch of movement a slow battle, until I collapsed on my back, my lungs heaving in resistance as air, raw and sweet, sawed in and out.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, my arms and legs thumping, my ribs and wrist pounding with every beat.
My body pulsated from exertion. It was then that I realized how weak and out of shape I had become while in prison, the amount of strength I’d lost. My body had forgotten what it meant to be strong, to feel capable, and every movement reminded me of how far I had fallen from that version of myself.
Such a contrast to the woman I used to be.
You are a survivor.
The voices called out at me against the wind, thin with every word but audible nonetheless.
The words clung to me like a spiderweb, more of a curse now than a promise.
I should have felt something. Gratitude, perhaps.
Rejoiced in the fact that I had lived when so many had not.
But a wave of appreciation failed to arrive.
Reflection was not something I ever allowed myself to do.
I didn’t know how; my mind stutters, staying stuck on the things I can do, what comes automatically to me. Blinking. Breathing. Being.
I stumbled to my feet and collapsed to my knees just as quickly, my legs buckling, the effort to stand too much, too fast. I bowed my head and raked my nails against the ground, gripping dark, damp soil as the words rumbled in the pit of my stomach and rose from somewhere deep.
“This is really it?” I whispered to myself at first. Then I tipped my head to the sky, my voice hoarse and breaking over every word as I screamed, “This is really why I’m here?
” My body mocked me. The air in my lungs, the heartbeat in my chest—loud, greedy reminders.
Proof of life. Evidence that I was still here.
Yet this existence felt insufficient. This could not be my life, my cross to bear, what I was made for.
To just survive. To watch everyone around me die. It could not.
“Answer me!” I pleaded to no one, to anyone but to whom it should have been directed.
The words weren’t mine. It was the adrenaline talking, yelling back, thrashing like a caged animal, its potency surging with no outlet, my body realizing it didn’t have to be strong anymore. That it was free to fall apart.
The silence echoed through me like a breeze, because words are air and sound. If the voices heard me, they didn’t answer.
My breathing slowed and I settled into it, sinking deeper, dissolving into the night itself. A faint shiver crawled up my spine, the air sharp against my skin. October’s chill seeped into my bones until the tips of my nose and ears tingled with numbness.
The sun’s last whispers faded into the horizon, where shadows lengthened, casting a veil over the landscape.
In the gathering darkness, the world around me fell quiet, save for the gentle rustle of leaves and distant birdsong.
Before me, the water stilled, its surface glassy and unbroken under the fading light, concealing the evidence of what lay beneath, the truth hidden away beneath the calm. A normal night made wrong.
Back pressed against a rock, I curled into myself, drawing my knees tight into my chest. My task was once again complete. I had survived. Daddy’s words echoed in my mind—he had always insisted I was meant to endure. And it had happened again.
Tomorrow, that elusive promise, beckoned on the horizon.
Tomorrow will come, and they will come for me, I thought.
The weight of that certainty pressed down on me, but the thought barely registered before exhaustion pulled at my eyes.
I blinked slowly, fighting the pull of sleep, but my eyelids grew heavier, slipping closed against my will.
Just before my eyes fluttered shut, I thought, And I’ll survive that too.
All that was left to do was wait.