Chapter 4 Melissa
Melissa
‘Ensure airways are open and seal their nose with your fingers,’ Melissa begins, reciting aloud her lifesaving training.
Then she performs two initial rescue breaths.
She tries her hardest to avoid cracking his ribs as she begins compressions.
She counts to thirty before giving him two more mouth breaths.
It triggers an unexpected memory of the first time they kissed.
They were fifteen and in an empty kids’ playpark as night fell.
They were drunk on the bottles of Smirnoff Ice they’d stolen from under her older brother’s bed, and it just kind of happened.
They have shared so many moments over the fifteen years they’ve known each other: their journey is not supposed to conclude on this beach. Not like this. It cannot be her fault he is dead.
Regrets flow thick and fast, like a swollen river bursting through a dam and swallowing everything in its path.
If only she hadn’t agreed to these stupid challenges.
Damon often comes up with ridiculous suggestions after a few drinks.
Matching tattoos, cutting each other’s hair blindfolded, ziplining, Interrailing, learning how to play the ukelele, hiking across the Pennines.
She’s shot so many of them down in flames.
But every now and again she humours him because she knows why he wants to pursue them.
There are voids in his life. And guilt compels her to help fill them.
‘Can I help?’ a concerned voice from behind them asks. Melissa turns to find a frowning middle-aged man walking a yappy dog without a lead.
‘Call an ambulance,’ she shouts, then sets to a second round of compressions. The man removes a phone from a tote bag and makes the call.
Statistics from her paramedic training come rushing back. Of how the human brain can survive for four minutes without oxygen, but after that, the chance of permanent damage rises. Time is against her as she begins a third round of compressions.
Random images from their shared history begin to flash like torchlights.
Of their honeymoon in Madrid; of climbing over ten-foot-high fences to enter a music festival without paying; of the star he paid to name after her beloved cat Freddie, who was hit by a car; of him joining her for two months of her Australian travels.
And of their wedding day, when she promised until death do us part.
She isn’t ready to become the sole guardian of these memories.
Suddenly, a fountain of saltwater jets from Damon’s mouth.
Her prayers have been answered.
Melissa pushes him on to his side where more follows, dribbling down his cheek as he gasps for breath. She rubs his back and reminds him he is safe, and she is here with him. His body shivers, and his teeth chatter so hard she is scared they might chip.
‘Pass me those towels and give me your coat please,’ she tells the man with the dog, and together they drape them over Damon. He is as white as a ghost and she holds on to him for dear life, irrationally fearing that if she lets go, he might float back out to sea, never to be seen again.
‘What about you, love?’ the man asks, and it’s only now that Melissa realises how badly she’s trembling. A combination of cold and shock. Goosebumps march across her flesh but it’s Damon’s well-being that matters. This isn’t something new; it’s been this way for years.
Now a woman appears and covers Melissa with her own thick suede coat.
Melissa tries to thank her but can’t get the words out.
She doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears the faint sound of an approaching ambulance siren.
It brings about a Pavlovian response in her and she leaps to her feet, scrambling into her clothes.
She is about to begin dressing Damon when he speaks for the first time.
‘Who was he?’ His rasp is barely audible.
‘Who?’
‘The boy.’
She glances around the beach, but it’s only the four of them. ‘What boy?’
Damon turns to her, finds her eyes.
‘The boy I think I killed?’