Chapter 36 - T.J.

When the wave hit, it tore Anna from my grasp and tossed me up and down and around. I coughed and choked and couldn’t breathe, and the waves pulled me back under every time I managed to get my head above water.

“Anna!” I yelled her name repeatedly, fighting to keep the water from going down my throat. I spun in a circle, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.

Where are you, Anna?

The trunk of a tree crashed into my hip and pain shot through my body. Endless debris swirled around me, but there was nothing big enough to grab onto before it passed by, carried along by the churning waves.

I slowed my breathing, trying not to panic.

She has to fight. She can’t give up.

I floated on my back to conserve my strength, yelling her name and listening carefully for a reply. Nothing but silence.

A second wave hit, smaller this time, and I went under again. A large tree branch bobbed next to me when I surfaced, and I clung to it. The thought of Anna trying to keep her head above water killed me. She was terrified of being alone on the island but being alone in the water was a nightmare neither of us had ever thought about. She said she felt safe with me, but I couldn’t protect her now.

I only left you alone, Anna, because I couldn’t help it.

I called her name again, pausing for a full minute to listen before trying again. My voice grew weak and my throat ached with thirst. The sun, high in the sky, beat down on me, my face already stinging with sunburn.

The waterlogged tree branch sank. There wasn’t anything else to hold onto, so I alternated between treading water and floating on my back.

I fought to keep my head above water. The time passed and my exhaustion grew. Squinting into the distance, I spotted a wooden beam floating. My arms and legs barely had enough strength left to propel me toward it. I grabbed it, grateful that it supported my weight without sinking. My cheek rested on the wood, and I weighed my options.

It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t have any.

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Chapter 37 – Anna

The man in the wet suit splashed into the water next to me. He spoke, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the helicopter blades. He held my head out of the water and motioned with his free hand for someone to lower a basket.

I wasn’t sure if it was real, or a dream. The man put me in the basket; it rose and another man pulled it into the helicopter. They lowered it again and pulled the man in the wet suit back up.

I shivered uncontrollably in my T-shirt and shorts. They wrapped me in blankets and I struggled in the midst of exhaustion more profound than I’d ever experienced to form the words I wanted to say.

“T.J.” It came out no louder than a whisper, and no one in the helicopter heard me. “T.J.,” I said, a little louder.

The man lifted my head and put a water bottle to my lips. I drank, satisfying my raging thirst. The cool water soothed my throat, and I found my voice.

“T.J! T.J. is down there. You’ve got to find him.”

“We’re low on fuel,” the man said. “And we need to get you to the hospital.”

I struggled to understand what he was saying. “No!” I sat up, grabbing his shoulders. “He’s down there. We can’t leave him here.”

Hysteria overwhelmed me, and I screamed, the sound filling the helicopter. The man tried to calm me down.

“I’ll have the pilot alert the other helicopters. They’ll look for him. Everything’s going to be okay,” he said, squeezing my shoulder.

I couldn’t get the image of T.J. slipping under the surface, and not coming back up, out of my head. I shut down, and went to a place deep inside myself where I didn’t have to think or feel. The homecoming with my family, the scene I’d played out in my head hundreds of times over the last three-and-a-half years, failed to elicit any emotion at all.

The helicopter banked sharply and we headed for the hospital, leaving T.J behind.

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Chapter 38 – T.J.

I couldn’t identify the noise at first. It hit me suddenly, when my brain figured out that the thwack-thwack-thwack sound was helicopter blades echoing in the distance.

The sound grew fainter until I couldn’t hear it anymore.

Come back. Please turn around.

It didn’t. My hope turned to despair, and I knew I was going to die. My strength was fading, and I had a hard time holding on to the beam. My body temperature had dropped, and I ached everywhere.

I pictured Anna’s face.

How many people can say they’ve been loved the way she loved me?

My fingers slipped off the beam, and I struggled to grab it again. I held on, drifting in and out. A dream about sharks jerked me awake. A faint sound in the distance became louder.

I know that sound.

My hopes soared, but I had used up the very last of my strength and I lost my grip on the beam, my fingers sliding down the wet surface. My head went under and I drifted downward. I instinctively held my breath as long as I could until, eventually, I couldn’t.

I floated in a sea of nothing, weightless, until another sensation overpowered me. Death wouldn’t be peaceful after all. It hurt, the crushing weight of it pounding on my chest.

Suddenly, the pressure vanished. Seawater spewed from my mouth, and I opened my eyes. A man in a wetsuit knelt beside me, his hands hovering above my chest. My back rested on something solid, and I realized I was inside a helicopter. I breathed in deeply and as soon as I had enough air in my lungs, I said, “Go back. We have to find her.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Anna! We have to find Anna!”

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Chapter 39 – Anna

I nestled deeper into my numb place. The man gently shook my shoulder, and I didn’t want to talk, but he wouldn’t stop asking if I could hear him. I turned toward his voice and blinked, trying to focus my swollen, tear-filled eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “One of the other helicopters just pulled a man out of the water.”

I struggled to sit up, wanting to hear clearly what he was about to say.

“They said he’s looking for someone named Anna.”

It took a moment for his words to register but when I comprehended their meaning, I experienced elation, pure and true, for the first time in my entire life.

“I’m Anna.” I wrapped myself in my arms and rocked back and forth, sobbing.

We landed at the hospital and they loaded me onto a stretcher and brought me inside. Two men transferred me from the stretcher to a hospital bed, neither of them speaking English. They wheeled me past a pay phone hanging on the wall.

A phone. There’s a phone.

I turned my head toward it as we went by and panicked when I couldn’t immediately recall my parents’ phone number.

The hospital was overflowing with patients. People sat on the floor in the lobby, waiting to see a doctor. A nurse approached me and spoke soothingly in a language I didn’t understand. Smiling and patting my arm, she pierced the skin on the back of my hand with a needle and hung the IV bag on a pole next to my bed.