Chapter 4
The white motorboat didn't slow until the dock came up hard under us. I felt the hull bump the tires tied along the marina slip and my teeth clicked together. The blanket they'd wrapped around me had soaked through at the shoulders where my dress was still dripping, and the orange vest rode up high under my chin, inflated tight, squeaking every time I breathed.
A man from the crew kept a hand on my back. "We got you, we got you," he said. He wasn't talking to me so much as to the other guy who'd already jumped onto the boards and was waving both arms.
There were people on the dock. A woman in a lake association t-shirt had her phone to her ear. I heard her say, "Yes, marina, north access, by the gas pumps. She fell from a helicopter. She's breathing. Come fast."
I tried to say I hadn't fallen. My mouth wouldn't work right. My lips were numb.
The crew helped me stand and my legs didn't want to. The world tipped bright. The sun off the water was too white after the shade of the helicopter, and I had to squint. Someone's cooler had spilled and there were ice cubes melting on the dock boards. I stared at them because I couldn't look at anything else without shaking harder.
"Ma'am, can you sit here for me?" The woman with the phone put her hand out but didn't pull me. I sat where she pointed, on the edge of a bench that smelled like sunscreen and fish. The blanket slipped and I grabbed it. My pink dress was plastered to my thighs, the embroidery dark and clumped. You could see the lines where the harness had been even though the straps were gone, red marks across my collarbones and under my ribs.
Sirens came down the county road before I could get my breathing even. Two paramedics came fast with a kit and a backboard they didn't end up using. The younger one knelt in front of me and put a pulse oximeter on my finger. His hands were warm.
"How long were you in the water?" he asked.
I shook my head. I didn't know. "Minutes," I said. My voice sounded scraped.
He pressed the back of his hand to my cheek, then pulled a foil blanket out and layered it over the wool one. "You're cold clear through. Shivering's good. That vest saved you." He didn't try to deflate it. He left it puffed around me. "Any pain besides the cold? Can you move your fingers and toes for me?"
I wiggled them. The older paramedic was talking quietly to the boat crew behind me, writing on a clipboard. I heard the words helicopter and husband.
The woman who'd called 911 said, "I saw the helicopter hovering. I thought it was a tour."
The ride to the lakeshore ER was seven minutes. They kept me on the stretcher even though I said I could sit. The ambulance heat was on full and I still couldn't stop shaking. The younger paramedic kept calling me honey in a way that wasn't condescending, just automatic, and he kept the vest on me. "Hospital will take it off," he said. "Evidence."
At the ER they wheeled me straight past the waiting room. Fluorescent lights hummed. A nurse in navy scrubs, her badge said Alvarez, R.N., met us at the bay and put her hands on the rail.
"What do we have?" she asked.
"Approximately late twenties, immersion in lake water, hypothermia, possible harness bruising, alert and oriented," the paramedic said. "Still in inflated PFD over clothing."
Nurse Alvarez nodded to me. "I'm going to help you, okay? We're going to get you warm and checked. Can you tell me your name?"
I told her. My last name caught in my throat and I had to say it twice.
They cut the blanket away just enough to get vitals. My temperature read 95.1. Blood pressure low. They put warm blankets from a heater on me, three of them, heavy and smelling like laundry, and left the vest until the doctor came. When he did, he pressed lightly along my shoulders where the harness had dug in and I flinched.
"Here and here," Nurse Alvarez said quietly, and took photos with a hospital tablet. The shutter sound was soft. She measured a red abrasion across my chest with a paper ruler, then bruises on my upper arms where fingers had gripped. "Does this hurt?" she asked before each touch.
I nodded. It all hurt in a dull, delayed way, like the cold had been covering it up.
She helped me out of the soaked dress after the doctor stepped out. She didn't rush me. My hands were clumsy with the cold and she held the gown open. The dress made a wet slap when it hit the plastic bag she held for it. She tagged the bag and wrote on it with a marker. The vest they deflated last, hissing out air, and bagged it separately.
"You're going to stay tonight so we can watch your temp and your lungs," she said. "You've got some water in there."
She brought a clipboard. "For the chart, can you tell me in your own words what happened before you went in the water? Just a sentence or two for now. The police will want more later."
My hands were shaking under the warm blankets. I looked at the curtain, at the hallway light coming too bright around its edge.
"My husband unbuckled my harness," I said. "In the helicopter. He pushed me."
Nurse Alvarez wrote it down exactly as I said it. She didn't ask me to repeat it. She capped her pen.
May you like
"Thank you for telling me," she said. "I've notified the county. Someone will be by later, not now. You rest."
They moved me to a room on the second floor as the sun was going low over the lake. I could see a slice of water from the window, dark blue and calm now. A deputy had come and gone from the nurses' station without coming in. My phone was in a bag somewhere, dead. The chair beside my bed was empty. He hadn't come.
