Chapter 40 Damon
Damon
‘Damon!’
The voice is shrill, and I feel hot breath against my cold ear. My body shakes with the same violence as the sea’s waves.
‘Damon!’ she screams again, and I’m aware of hands upon my shoulders.
I open my eyes to find Melissa using all her force to rock me back and forth. I almost immediately spew water on to her face and chest and she pushes my head towards the floor as I vomit ice-cold water across it.
Now she knows I am alive, she begins to cry. I turn briefly and make out rivulets of tears pouring down her cheeks.
‘What happened?’ I whisper, my voice barely audible. It sparks a coughing fit so powerful, I worry I might pass out.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ she sobs. ‘I didn’t think I could bring you back.’
Her face is wet with my vomit and is as white as a ghost. She holds me tight and we remain like that for a while, the heat of her body warming up the coldness of mine. I have missed her holding me like this, her skin pressed against mine. For so long she was my home. My world.
Finally, when her grip eases, I use my little remaining strength to push myself upright, my back now leaning against the side of the bath. I let out a gasp as a sharp burst of pain shoots through me and I clutch the left-hand side of my chest. It’s agonising.
‘It took longer than last time,’ she says, sounding hollowed-out. ‘I might have cracked some ribs when I gave you compressions, then you didn’t respond to the defibrillator.’
She helps me to my feet. That’s when I also become aware of a stabbing pain deep in my leg.
I sit down on the bath’s edge and look down to discover the leg of my cargo pants has been pushed up.
A needle protrudes from it. She must have drilled into my bone marrow to get the required medication into my system fast.
Then she moves towards the sink to splash water on her face. She leans over the sink, resting on her elbows. I can sense her swelling resentment towards me from here.
‘How long was I . . . ?’
‘Sixteen minutes,’ she says. ‘You’ve been dead for sixteen fucking minutes.’
‘Oh,’ is all I can say, because the fact I am still here and with the cognitive ability to think and reply is a minor miracle.
She begins questioning me, asking my name, where I live, what day of the week it is, who she is, how we met. She relaxes only slightly when I answer correctly. Is it possible to build a tolerance for death?
I’m still shivering, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m cold, because I’ve just been brought back to life or because of what I saw when I died. Melissa takes a duvet from the bedroom and returns with it, wrapping it around my shoulders.
‘Tell me it was worth it,’ she says without looking at me. ‘Tell me it was worth the living hell you have put me through.’
Slowly, I nod. ‘Yes.’
However, Melissa doesn’t give me the opportunity to reveal what I saw. Instead, she removes the cannula, bandages up my leg, packs up the equipment she arrived with and leaves my phone within reach on the lip of the bath.
‘Call 111 if you have any difficulties breathing or heart palpitations.’
‘Can you stay? What about secondary drowning?’
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t be around you.’
My heart sinks as Melissa closes the door behind her.
She leaves me with my body in the present but my head in the past. I feel so overwhelmed by what I witnessed in death that now it’s my turn to cry.
I sink into my bed, my brain swimming with memories I’ve carried back from the dead like holiday souvenirs.
There’s so much I need to unpack, and I don’t know how to do it alone.
This time it’s a girl I saw.
A dead girl with half her face missing.
I turn my head to one side. And there she is, lying next to me.