as unsinkable as i can be // the wilds

chapter twenty-four.

The veil that had been surrounding us for so many days lifted. The veil that told us that maybe we would be okay... was gone.

There was a second of silence; when the air became thick and it felt like breathing through honey. All of our hearts stopped at once.

Then, it registered. The clouds stopped moving in slow motion. The air stopped humming in my ear but whooshed, hissed, shoved me so hard in the chest that it nearly knocked me off balance.

Dot's body, floating in the water.

My brain just kept replaying the smack, over and over again, hitting me each time on the nape of my neck until I didn't know what to do anymore. Until I didn't know what to say.

But my feet began moving. Despite the voice in the back of my head, yelling at me to stop, to retreat, to throw my arms around Toni's -

Toni.

Kissing Shelby.

No, Dot, focus on Dot. My feet didn't stop. They rushed towards her. I waded through blood, not even registering that it was her blood...

Coming from her knee.

Her knee.

All of us let out a breath that we had been holding for so incredibly long, it wasn't even funny.

It wasn't her head. It was her knee.

"Where's Nora? Nora would know what to do, right? She-she reads books, she has to know-" Fatin sputtered as we heaved Dot's limp body face up out of the water and onto shore.

"She stayed back to keep the fire alive," Rachel muttered, pulling Dot's hair back out of her face and starting to examine her knee. Martha tried to clean the blood that surrounded her knee, but she heaved instead, bile splattering on the sand.

I pulled Martha back away from Dot's body, leading her a few feet away. Stripping my shirt off, I soaked it in freshwater and rolled it behind Martha's neck, using my own hair tie to knot her hair on the top of her head.

"I have to help-" she wheezed, but I forced her back down.

"No, you don't. It's okay, Martha. She's going to be okay, but you need to stay right here."

I stood back up, wiping sweat from Martha's brow and turning back around to move back to Dot. I motioned Shelby to watch her, avoiding eye contact with her. As much as it angered me to even look at her stupid blonde hair and gorgeous blue eyes, this was a much bigger issue: Dot was losing a heck of a lot of blood, and her eyes were still closed.

As I moved closer to where she was, Rachel and Leah were using their jackets to support her knee, which I could see for the first time was completely cut open, not to mention it was dislocated.

"She must've hit a rock as she fell," Leah muttered, and I heard Fatin whimper.

"Why isn't she waking up?" she mumbled, stroking Dot's hair. "W-what if she hit her head and has an internal bleed or something?"

Rachel finished covering her knee, tight enough to cinch the blood flow. "It's probably better that she doesn't," Rachel said. "That is gonna hurt like hell. And she didn't hit her head, I promise. I... I watched her fall."

Leah pulled both of Dot's eyes open and examined the pupils. We all stared at her, confused about what she was doing. "I-I saw somewhere - Grey's Anatomy, I think - that if her pupils have uneven dilation, that it means there's brain damage." She checked again. "She's okay."