Mesmerizing Views
Illusion or imagination…?
Had the illusion been that I would be safe with my father?
Or was my imagination setting fire with a presence that didn’t exist?
Or was it rocks, prickly grass, or the concrete wall touching my body that woke me?
Maybe it was the sensation of not being able to breathe.
Or maybe it was the distant shouting: “There’s no fucking bridge!
… Get me a fucking boat! … Anyone have eyes on Maddox yet… ”
Lying on my stomach, ocean water dripped from my gaping mouth and into my helmet.
To my side and below, I reached out to the green eyes that shimmered in the water, watching me from beneath the surface.
The water—an array of stars—danced while a sharp pain spoke of my lungs that felt as if imploding.
Unable to retrieve oxygen from them, flooded with seawater, my eyes began to involuntarily shut again.
Even with this happening, I reached for her but failed.
My arm went limp, banging into the outer part of the seawall.
Next thing I remember was being on my back, large hands doing compressions on my chest. Then vomiting water. All of it making my head pound with a vengeance.
The sun blacked out the face hovering over me, but I could sense his terror, as if it were a blanket of fear covering my whole body. “I’ve got ya, kid,” he said.
I believe he said more, but I wasn’t of sound mind to comprehend much. My weak neck didn’t stand a chance against the heavy helmet that forced my head to fall to the side, showing me where I was.
Dad’s new clubhouse.
It had been a distance from the bridge. How did she know where to bring me?
Infringing blackness caused the clubhouse, a very wide building, to begin to fade from sight. I suppose that scared Dad’s club-brother, because he boomed to someone, “Where the fuck is the chopper? Goddammit!”
Blackout.
Coming to, spinning helicopter blades were remarkably silent as I was carried under them, completely unaware I was strapped to a gurney and being raced into the flying machine.
What I was aware of was that the water my rescuer swam in was now being ripped away from me as we lifted into the air.
In my chest, a dull ache began to pulse, having nothing to do with my injuries or even the sinking Harley and its empty saddle.
My lungs burned as my mind grasped at the too-heavy emotion churning in my stomach.
All of it together left me with a haunting hollowness in my chest.
I hated that feeling.
Green eyes shimmered in the water, watching me from beneath the surface. She mouthed, “I’m with you,” as she cried, the sparkle of her tears floating into the aching sea.
Feeling her gloom as if it were my own, I tried to ask my new magical friend, “Why are you so sad?” Except as I opened painfully dry eyes, I studied joint hands. It wasn’t tiny fingers squeezing mine anymore. It was Noma’s. My grandmother.
I don’t know what it is like for other people to wake up in a hospital, but for me, consciousness became a blade, one that couldn’t be seen by someone who hadn’t received a gift from Death, like I had.
That blade was quick to slice at my young and impressionable heart.
I had forgotten all that I’d witnessed, except for one person, and I didn’t understand what had happened to land me in a hospital.
All I knew was that I was in an unfamiliar bed that had stiff white sheets that smelled of chemicals.
Not like the soft sheets, the woman talking to me had me in every night.
“Maddox, can you hear me?” Noma’s voice quivered with a stress level that seemed to enter my body and hit me in the gut, while she pushed a button on my bed with rails.
I didn’t want her to worry, so my sight drifted up to hers, hoping I could calm her, but my fogged head could barely keep up. I asked, “Noma, where’s the water?”
The pull—the wanting to see my tailed friend—felt like a powerful mathematical equation. Without the other number, there was no answer. No counterpart for it to make sense.
Desperate for that connection—that purpose—I asked, “Where is she—” But a doctor and nurse stormed into the hospital room, interrupting.
The nurse rushed to Noma’s side in a comforting manner as the doctor impeded my space.
Standing to my left, he threw out questions I didn’t listen to because I needed answers of my own, and the penlight shining in my eyes was intrusive.
My head sank into a crunchy-sounding pillow in an attempt to escape while I asked, “Is she still in the water?”
The doctor stilled. Alarm radiated from his skin like heat from a sweltering road. Then he asked me, “Do you know your name?”
Stupid question. “Yes.”
He treaded cautiously. “Can you tell it to me?”
I was annoyed. I had no time for this. “I’m Maddox Gentry. Now, please tell me where the girl with a tail is!”
The room fell eerily quiet, except for the beeping machines and the humming air-conditioner vents.
“Noma?” I called out, a little taken aback by everyone staring at me.
Her grip tightened on my wrist, and inconceivable pain etched her expression. Then, as if petrified of my answer, she slowly asked, “Do you know where you are?”
I nodded, but the movement made me wince. Ouch! Pain shot through my head. “Umm,” I was trying to focus past it. “Yeah, I think we are at your work.”
Noma was an emergency room RN. She’d been one so long she could’ve retired, but the lady, who was in great shape and who had more energy than a girl in her twenties, had refused.
It was cautious, but she slowly exhaled. “That’s right, baby boy. My work.”
She opened her mouth to say something or ask another question, but I needed to know where my friend was! “Noma, where is she? She was so sad—”
Dismissively, her brown eyes shut before she shook her head. “There is no report of a girl in the water. Stop it.”
I jolted at her silencing me.
The nurse wrapped a reassuring arm around Noma while the doctor reached over me, to place his hand on her shoulder. He kindly said, “He needs more scans—”
Her eyes opened, and she shrugged them both away. “The first ones gave all the information needed. I have no time for more, and you both know it. Are you going to help me or not?”
Her worry for me, once again, shot to my gut. Something was terribly wrong. I could sense it, even before she spoke sharp words in an urgent tone. That’s why I asked, “Noma? Am I okay?”
In a melting fashion, she hovered over me, pressing kisses all over my face.
“Yes, of course.” Then, stern yet gentle fingers gripped my chin.
Face to face, she promised, “I know you better than anyone else on this earth. If I say you’re fine, you are.
Hear me?” The last question had been spoken to me, yet by the way she mean-mugged the doctor, I easily assumed who it was truly meant for.
He groaned through clenched teeth, “A mention of mystical creatures is not concerning?”
She countered, “He’s. Ten.”
As she stayed hovering over me, there was a long-weighted standoff until the doctor claimed, “My. License.”
Even though she was sneering her response like a lioness, I could sense her admiration and loyalty to him. “Oh, yeah, because if anything goes wrong, coming back here to sue is at the top of my fucking to-do list.”
Another long pause…
Then he pushed away from the bed and headed for the door, mumbling, “So damn stubborn.” The door shut behind him after he left the room.
The tension evaporated, Noma and her nurse friend both sighing.
With relief that was palpable, Noma’s forehead leaned against mine. “I love you so much, baby boy.” Tears, not my own, wet my skin, making me think of water stars.
Knowing who swam in such waters had me refocused and my lungs expanding with a hunger my young mind couldn’t comprehend. Only… feel. “I know you told me to stop it, but can you please at least tell me if she’s okay? That’s all I need right now.”
I didn’t realize I was sweating until Noma pushed damp bangs from my forehead. Her head was tilted, but not with a question. It felt like adoration. “She must be. Like I’ve already told you, no girl was at the site or clubhouse—”
A ‘site’. What does that mean? I asked myself as I noticed the nurse studying me and walking around the end of the bed to get to my left side again.
In a surrender I could only sense yet not understand, Noma softly continued. “—only a baby boy and…” She whispered the next part as if the words were choking her. “A man.”
A man? At a site?
I squinted as an odd and disturbing sensation started to roll into my soul like an unnatural storm; foreign yet something I recognized down deep. My death gift began to smile, its teeth reflecting off the blade that was about to slice me to smithereens.
Suddenly, echoes of loud booms of gunshots banged in my head, and then I flashed back to Uncle Styx slowing down his bike. My body went stiff. My nerves set on fire. The once serene calm from the water of stars melted away like wax from a candle, with a wick ten times too big.
No! Dad!
Ears ringing and gasping for air, I began reaching for the sky, the sun, all over again. If I could go back in time, maybe I could stop Mr. Death and his vile thievery.
I froze, hands in midair, when I saw my right no longer with a yellow skully. Now the damaged hand was wrapped in a white bandage. Only three full fingers and one thumb left. The blue water… My blood… Her swimming toward me…
“N-Noma,” I stuttered. “I-I think I’m losin’ it.”
Careful not to grab my injured right hand, Noma brought them both back to my stomach, her tone now steady. “You’re not. I need you to slow your breath, okay?” She was now in emergency nurse mode.