The Anatomy of Drowning (ONC 2022 Longlist)

6. Early Spring, 1985

Vera came back to her body with a phantom grip on her fingers.

Barley there under the pins and needles that spread under her skin. Her heart was pounding, and beneath her sweater her undershirt clung wetly to skin, soaked through with sweat. Her fingers twitched were they rested on the keyboard. The indents of the keys pressing into her fingers at angles that would hurt too if Vera wasn't someplace between being adrift and settling into her body.

Pain was a common thing that Vera had gotten used too. She knew the kinds of pain that were her companions whenever she breathed or stood, the ache that was always constant in the bones that made up her hands, the dull throb that clawed at her spine.

It was always there in some measure.

The table lamp on Reeds desk swung a gold chair back and forth, propelled into motion from her jerking herself awake. It tossed light back and forth across the small corner office, displacing the white, almost blue glow of the computer screen.

Everything in her head felt foggy, out of focus and dim. She counted all the places her body made contact with the furniture until the office focused around her. When it did the leather chair groaned against her when she settled back into it, exhaustion pulling at her bones.

How long was she asleep? The echo of radio static rang in her ears along with the hum of the lamp but there were other sounds now. People that weren't there before.

Vera shifted and focused on the glass door, nudged open a crack as opposed to propped wide the way she left it. She looked up and over the monitor. The office didn't have any outside windows but the walls were nothing but. Across the wide room dials of all colours flashed and blinked at her, but now they were being pulled and adjusted by people. Four or five in rumpled attire that could only mean they were students.

Each had a cup of coffee or a bag of something that was dripping in grease if the stamped brown paper slowly liquifying were any indication. Vera sat up, stiff and hungry, and pulled at the sleeve of her sweater adjusting the length. A cool breeze of AC bit into her skin and Vera debated taking the sweater off outright.

She felt tired and achey. A little dazed.

Vera reached for her right sleeve, curling the ends toward her, when a searing needle of pain rushed through her palm. She let go with a sharp inhale and looked down at the fingers of her left hand. Smudged between her index and middle knuckles were bruises.

Vera's hands began to visibly shake. Sometimes bits of her dreams followed her into reality but this wasn't the dregs of waking up.

This pain was real and it marked her skin.

Stay with me. I will.

Vera's breath hitched. It's nothing more than a reflex. You tightened your grip in your sleep in response to a physical reaction in your dream, she tried to reason with herself, she dipped her inflection to match her therapists. It added bite to the words, authority.

But this had never happened before and it felt more real than a reflex.

It was nothing more than a dream. Wasn't it? After all the memory of Sydney followed her around when she was awake, would it be to much of an assumption to imagine someone else found her when she was asleep?

Underneath the scattered pages on Reeds desk where grids of the sea floor and maps of her brain. Muddied together and interchangeable for all the good either had gone. But it meant that Vera knew there was nothing wrong with herself.

There were side effects to downing.

Side effect to living. Hallucinations, survivors guilt, PTSD, were written on a chart somewhere next to the words Vera used to hold above all others: not a threat to herself.