Twenty-Nine
‘NO.’
Eyes fixed on the pool in front of me, I finish tucking my braided hair into my swim cap and try to ignore the palpable fury pouring off the dripping man looming over me.
I get a flashback, briefly, to hours earlier, when I was witnessing that same fury, except I wasn’t bearing the brunt of it like I am now.
‘Daniela.’ Wet fingers wrap around my wrist and squeeze. ‘No.’
The shoulder that bore the brunt of my entire dead body weight far too few hours ago screams a similar objection, but I ignore that too. ‘I don’t recall asking for your permission.’
‘You have nothing to prove to anyone.’
‘I’m not trying to prove anything.’
‘You cannot swim with a dislocated shoulder.’
‘Shut up,’ I hiss, head whipping from side to side to check my coach isn’t within earshot. ‘It’s not dislocated.’
Anymore. It barely even left the socket. I gave my arm a shake and it popped right back in. I’ve had papercuts more painful – I’ve slept funny and caused more damage. ‘It’s fine, Heath. I’m fine.’
‘No, you’re an idiot.’
‘Thanks, baby.’
‘Don’t. Don’t do that shit with me right now.’
My lips press together tightly. ‘It’s just the relay. I have to do it.’
‘No, you don’t. That’s what alternates are for.’
‘Our alternate sucks.’
A few feet away, someone scoffs, ‘Hey.’
Heath doesn’t look away from me for even a second. ‘Everyone sucks compared to you, Dani, but it doesn’t fucking matter.’
‘It matters to me.’
‘Well, you matter to me. And this is not good for you.’
‘Jesus, Belfort.’ A haughty snort draws my gaze, and I tense at the sight of my sneering ex. ‘It’s a few laps. She’ll live.’
Heath ignores him. He keeps his gaze locked on me, stepping closer and stooping to murmur, for my ears only, ‘Are you doing this for him?’
I shake my head. I’m not, I know I’m not.
What I don’t know is who I am doing it for.
‘Just think for a second, Dani. Think. Is this actually worth it?’
I don’t need to think about it. The answer comes to me instantly – no.
It isn’t worth it. It’s a damn relay with zero consequences for me, swum with people I fucking despise.
It doesn’t matter, not in any real way, except that, to me, it does.
I’m not a quitter. I don’t just give up.
I don’t let my team down. I don’t sit on the freaking sidelines and watch other people succeed.
A voice in the back of my head echoes what Heath says – this is a bad idea. Don’t do it. Sit it out. The world won’t end.
Louder, a voice I haven’t heard since I was sixteen contradicts – Buck up, Daniela. Not good enough, Daniela. Not you, Daniela.
That second voice drowns everything out, the same way it did when it was real, when my dad was still alive.
It has panic flaring across my chest and my head dipping low with something not quite shameful, but close, and my tongue working to spill robotic words.
‘Better get to your block, Heath. Race is about to start.’
The noise Heath makes is pure disappointment. His next words; pure desperation. ‘I’ll tell your coach.’
That panic swells and damn near chokes me. Renders me near-incapable of threatening, ‘I’ll never talk to you again.’
That has him reeling back. Kissing his teeth and rumbling a rough laugh. ‘That’s what I get for caring, huh?’
I swallow an instinctive comeback; I don’t gripe that nobody’s asking him to care because, God, a part of me is begging for that.
A part of me almost bursts into tears when he stops caring and walks over to his own team – a really, really big part.
So big that when I stuff it away into a mental box reinforced with freaking chains, there’s barely anything left.
Just the booming void that sounds like my dad and looks like my dad and feels like my dad too.
His presence thrums throughout every crevice of my brain as that whistle blows, signaling the lead-off swimmers to step up to the block and the rest of us to lock in.
It’s his voice that barks at me to focus when my turn comes around.
But it’s me, entirely me, nothing but my all-consuming panic, as I position myself to dive.
And when I hit the water and know with absolute, searing clarity that I have monumentally fucked up, there’s only me to blame.
The mere act of breaking the surface sets my shoulder on fire.
It burns as I dolphin kick a mere quarter of the length I’m usually capable of.
And as I wrench it into butterfly stroke after butterfly stroke, tears blur my vision and fill my goggles with saltwater.
I’m struggling to breathe, fighting not to scream instead, and this is wrong, this is so fucking wrong.
I mess up my count. I don’t even think I started counting. I know I’ve fucked the turn even before I hit, and, fuck, do I hit it – my palms slam into the poolwall, sending shockwaves up both arms.
It’s so quick. A second of my life yet I swear I see the whole thing flash before my eyes. I’m swimming, and then I’m not.
The distinctive pop of my shoulder leaving its joint is deafening.
The grind of bone against bone – sickening.
The pain turns my vision black. Underwater, I scream.
Above water, I scream a little too. Panicked and pained, I struggle to keep myself afloat with only one arm, the other hanging uselessly.
I hear splashing and commotion and yelling – I’m yelling.
Pure agony rips through me, but I manage to hook my good arm over the side of the pool.
I try to hoist myself up, but I slip, and my chin cracks against the concrete.
Another pained cry scratches my throat as I dip beneath the surface again.
Disoriented, I just . . . sink. Useless.
And then hands hook under my armpits and dead-lift me out of the water.
I scream again, the pain something north of unbearable. Someone else is screaming too; my name riddled with high-pitched desperation.
‘Fuck,’ Heath says again and again and again.
Fuck, every inch of me echoes.
The emergency-room resident who sees me on arrival, the intern who winces at the bulging bone stretching the skin of my shoulder thin, the orthopedic surgeon who recommends surgery and a minimum of three months recovery, and two different nurses all tell me to get some rest.
An impossible feat, no matter how hard I try.
It isn’t the pain keeping me awake – the steady stream of painkillers flowing from an IV bag and into the back of my hand are doing a stellar job of keeping that at bay.
Hunger pangs make my stomach cramp and I’m forbidden from eating until after my joint damage is hopefully proved temporary, but I don’t think I’d be able to keep anything down anyway.
I’m tired. I’m so exhausted, I know it would be so easy to fall asleep.
If it wasn’t for the bone-deep ache of failure acting as the caffeine from the nightmares I can’t have because I can’t fucking sleep.
I’ve fucked it. I’ve completely and utterly fucked it. I’m out for the rest of the season, at least. I have surgery and recovery and months of rehab after that. I’ll be lucky if my stroke is ever the same again, I’ll be lucky if I have the same mobility at all.
Lucky.
The doctor actually used that word. He’s lucky I didn’t dislocate his fucking shoulder for that.
My life is ruined, and I’m lucky. My life is nothing now, but I’m lucky. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve done, everything I’ve not done, means nothing. And I have no one to blame but myself.
My eyes itch something fierce, but I don’t dare blink the burgeoning tears away. I don’t dare open them. I don’t want the man curled up in the chair beside my bed to know I’m wide awake, ignoring some more medical advice.
Heath has been in this room as long as I have.
He’s heard all the same medical jargon, all the consequences of my actions, all the reprimands too.
He asked all the questions while I sat there, silent and pale and counting the floor tiles, and when they delivered my fatal sentence, he tried to hold my hand.
And he didn’t say a word when I jerked away.
I still feel the sting of my fingernails digging into my thighs as I resisted the urge to take that hand, to hold it, hold him.
But I just . . . couldn’t. Can’t. I’m barely holding it together.
There is a single, thin thread wrapped around my sanity, keeping it contained, and I know, I just know, that with one comforting touch, it will snap.
I don’t want comfort. I don’t deserve comfort. I did this. His train of thought should be a continuous chant of told you so told you so told you so, not pity or sorrow or the same kind of bone-deep grief I feel for myself that I feel pouring out of him.
‘I know you’re awake.’
I stiffen. Just to be stubborn, I keep my eyes shut for a minute longer before opening them to a narrow squint, pushing myself upright with my good arm. ‘Why are you still here?’
The answer is incredibly obvious, the look he gives me says. You are a dumbass for not knowing.
I slump with a groan, wincing when my shoulder stretches the limit of that liquid pain relief. ‘I don’t want you here.’
His expression transforms. Liar.
‘I’m serious.’ I groan some more, wincing some more too when I try to cross my arms, and whoops, oh look, another thing I can’t fucking do. ‘I don’t.’
Legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle, Heath is the epitome of calm as his head lolls gently to one side. ‘Tell me to leave then.’
I try. I really, really try, but the words won’t fucking come out. Instead, I seethe. ‘This is your fault, you know.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You distracted me. You fucked with my head. I wasn’t focused because of you. I was at that fucking party because of you.’
‘I know.’ Regret slopes his brow, crinkling the corner of his eyes. ‘I’m—’