Chapter 3 Melissa
Melissa
Fear has Melissa in a chokehold as she swims back to where she thinks she last saw Damon, but it’s such a disorientating environment, she can’t be certain.
It’s then that she feels it, a tug against her ankles. Her stomach knots when she realises what’s happening to Damon.
Of the eight months she spent backpacking in Australia after completing her A levels, five were spent at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, working as a lifesaver.
She recalls being shown a documentary as she trained for her Bronze Medallion.
Rip currents are narrow channels of water that don’t typically drag people beneath the surface, but can pull them away from their intended path without warning.
The narrator of the video explained that a person’s reaction is more likely to kill them than the current itself.
Melissa takes one more frantic look around her, and when she can’t locate him, she takes a deep breath and dives.
Everything under the water is grey, silty and murky, making it almost impossible to see her own hands in front of her face, let alone hope to locate Damon.
When her air runs out, she rises to the surface, surveying her surroundings again and continuing to shout his name as loud as her constricted throat will allow.
Nothing.
She takes in another breath, and this time when she submerges, the strength of the current intensifies.
Melissa doesn’t know for how long it carries her, but eventually she reaches beyond the zone of breaking waves.
Another sharp intake of air and she dives again.
The water is less cloudy here, but only moderately so, and she wishes she was wearing her swimming goggles because then she might see further and without having to keep squeezing her eyes shut.
She kicks with her legs and moves her arms in front of her, mimicking the technique police divers use in fingertip searches of murky rivers.
And all the time, she is acutely aware that the longer she takes to find Damon, the lower his odds of survival are becoming.
When the air runs out and the burn in her lungs threatens to set her chest ablaze, she rises, sucks in more air, and dives again and again and again until she is utterly exhausted.
The warmth of her tears as they streak down her face is at odds with the water’s sharpness.
She is fast reaching the point where she might have to consider defeat when, under the surface, she spots colours close by.
Orange and white. The colours of Damon’s shorts.
She swims towards him, fumbles around until she can grab hold of his arms, then pulls him up to the surface with her.
He’s unconscious. She cannot hear if he is breathing over the sound of the waves.
She turns him on to his back, resting his head against her chest to keep it above water, and kicks hard to get them both back to shore.
She thanks God he has a slight frame because it’s taking every ounce of her depleted strength to keep them moving.
At last, through sheer, desperate stubbornness, she eventually feels the shingle under her feet. She clambers out from under him and begins dragging him by his arms up the beach, away from the water.
‘Please be alive, please be alive,’ she whispers as she settles him on to his back and flips to trained paramedic mode, searching for vital signs. There’s no air coming from his mouth or nose, no pulse emitting from his wrists or neck.
His heartbeat is absent.
Damon is dead.