Chapter 3 - The Cold Shore
Thirty-two years ago, before the county consolidated the regional high schools, I was required to take a certified first-aid course every three years to keep my job as a school media specialist. The dummy had been named Resusci-Anne. It had plastic ribs that clicked when you pressed hard enough.
Tyler wasn't plastic. His skin felt cool, slimy, and terrifyingly slack under my palms. Blood was still oozing from the cut above his right ear, mixing with the muddy lake water trapped in his hair.
"30 compressions, two breaths," I whispered to myself, locking my elbows.
I pushed down. One, two, three, four.
"Mom, be careful! You're going to break his ribs!" Laura cried out, reaching to touch my shoulder.
I didn't look at her. I swung my elbow back and struck her hand away with enough force to make her gasp. "Get away from me, Laura. Go to the house and get the landline phone. Call the paramedics now. If you aren't dialing 911 in ten seconds, I will let him die."
It was a terrible thing to say. It was a cold, cruel, monstrous thing to say to your own daughter. But it worked. The sharp, venomous authority in my voice snapped the fog in Laura's brain. She scrambled to her feet, almost slipping on the wet deck herself, and sprinted up the wooden stairs toward the lake house, her sandals flapping wildly against her heels.
"Ten, eleven, twelve..." the kayaker counted out loud, kneeling on the other side of Tyler, maintaining his airway. "Keep going, ma'am. Deep compressions. Two inches."
Rob collapsed onto the bench nearby, burying his head in his hands, uttering a low, pathetic moan. He couldn't bear to look. He couldn't bear to help. In the forty years I had known men like Rob—men who talked loudly about home investments, rode expensive bicycles on weekends, and wore polo shirts with tiny embroidered crests—I had learned that their confidence was usually as thin as the varnish on cheap plywood. The moment real life broke through the surface, they cracked wide open.
"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty," the kayaker said. "Tilt his chin. Give him two breaths."
I didn't hesitate. I pinched Tyler's nose, covered his cold, blue-tinged lips with mine, and blew into his mouth. The taste of lake water and iron filled my throat. I watched his chest rise slightly, then fall. I did it a second time.
"Back to compressions," the kayaker said instantly.
I put my hands back on his sternum and pushed. My wrist joints creaked. A sharp, burning spasm shot through my lower back, traveling up into my shoulders. My clothes were dripping wet, freezing me in the breeze that had begun to blow across the lake. I was seventy-three years old, my heart was hammering against my ribcage like a trapped bird, and I couldn't find enough air to fill my own lungs. But I kept pushing.
One, two, three, four...
I remembered Tyler when he was four years old. He used to sit on the floor of my living room, lining up matchbox cars by color. He had been a quiet child, sensitive to loud noises, always looking for my hand when strangers entered the room. I had saved his finger-paintings. I had kept every single crude Christmas card he had ever drawn for me, tucking them into the front cover of my favorite recipe book.
When had he changed? Was it when Rob gave him his first smartphone at age twelve? Was it when Laura began measuring the quality of her life by the number of comments on her vacation posts? Or was it simply the slow, insidious rot of a family that had learned to treat people as props for their own entertainment?
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen...
"Come on, kid," the kayaker muttered, watching Tyler's face closely. "Come on."
On the twentieth compression of the second cycle, Tyler's body suddenly convulsed beneath my hands.
His back arched off the wooden deck, his stomach heaved, and a torrent of brown lake water exploded from his mouth and nose. I pulled back just in time as he gagged, coughing violently, his lungs fighting to purge the fluid.
"Turn him on his side! Recovery position!" the kayaker barked, grabbing Tyler's far shoulder and rolling him toward us.
Tyler lay on his side, retching and coughing, his chest heaving with ragged, desperate gasps. His eyes fluttered open, glassy, unfocused, and terrified. He looked around wildly, not recognizing the dock, the sky, or his father sitting weeping on the bench.
"T-Tyler?" Rob stammered, taking a tentative step forward. "Son?"
Tyler didn't look at Rob. His unfocused gaze drifted across the wood and landed on me. I was still on my knees, chest heaving, my hair plastered to my skull, my face covered in mud and his vomit.
"G-Grandma?" he choked out, his voice weak, high-pitched, and stripped of every bit of the cruel, casual bravado he had possessed twenty minutes ago. He looked like a small child again—small, broken, and shivering in the damp shade.
"Stay down," I told him, my voice flat and devoid of warmth. "Don't move your neck. You hit the ladder."
The sound of sirens drifted across the water in the distance—a high, wailing scream echoing off the tree-lined hills around the lake. Laura came running back down the wooden stairs, her phone still clutched in her hand, screaming that the ambulance was turning onto the gravel access road.
The kayaker stood up slowly, wiping his hands on his shorts. He looked down at me, then offered his hand. "Let me help you up, ma'am. You're trembling."
I took his hand. He pulled me up gently, supporting my elbow until I was sure my legs wouldn't fold under me.
"What's your name, young man?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the approaching sirens.
"Ethan," he said, giving me a quiet, respectful nod. "Ethan Vance. I live across the bay. I saw the whole thing through my binoculars from my porch, ma'am. I saw him push you."
I looked at Ethan. His eyes were steady, clear, and uncompromising. There was no mockery in him. No phone in his hand. No desire to record my misery for an audience of strangers.
May you like
"Thank you, Ethan," I said softly.
"I'm not going anywhere," Ethan said, looking over at Laura and Rob, who were now fussing frantically over Tyler as the boy moaned in pain. "When the police get here, I'm going to tell them exactly what I saw."
