Breathless -Lurlene McDaniel

Emily

Emily

We hear Travis scream the minute he bobs up in the lake. He thrashes and I think he’s drowning. Cooper hits the water at a dead run, swims like a torpedo out to where Travis is floundering, and grabs him under the arms. My brain kicks in and I run after him. Darla and I meet them hallway to the beach, but Cooper shoos us away. “Let me get him on shore.”

“No,” Travis says through clenched teeth. “My leg. I can’t stand. It hurts. Oh man, it hurts.”

“Get the boat,” Cooper says, and Darla and I scramble backward. Grab the hull. And push it away from the island toward the deeper water.

Cooper gets a kickboard under Travis’s leg for support and uses rope that he cuts from the anchor line to secure it. We keep Travis afloat while he works.

Darla can’t stop crying. I’m crying too, and when I find my voice, I ask. “What happened? Did you hit something? A rock?”

“Don’t know.” Travis’s words are moans. “Happened when I jumped. My thigh.”

I can see a hump under his skin near his hip, where the skin is turning dark purple, and I feel queasy. “Looks broken. There’s some aspirin—“

“Not a fix, little sister.” He’s pale as milk.

I’m shivering and shaking and Darla’s scrambled into the boat to help, but she’s clueless and keeps begging Cooper to tell her what to do. We’ve left our cell phones in the car back at the marina, because they wouldn’t have worked out here on the lake. Cooper says we can’t leave Travis and go for help either. We need to go hit into the boat and back to shore.

Cooper slides his arms beneath Travis’s body in the water. He warns, “This is going to hurt.” He tells me to get into the boat and for me and Darla to use our weight to pitch it as far to one side as we can without taking on water. We do, and the small boat dips sideways even with the deadweight motor. With amazing strength Cooper lifts Travis and the board out of the water and over the railing. Travis stifles a scream as the board slides inside and onto the bottom. Cooper shoves the boat farther out, leaps inside, and starts the motor.

Darla wedges her lap between Travis’s head and the hard fiberglass floor of the boat, and while my brother cries with pain, we smash across the water toward the shore.

I call and tell Mom about the accident, and she says to meet her and Dad at the hospital ER. Cooper gets Travis on the backseat of Cooper’s old car, and Darla sits on the floor by Travis’s head. I jump into the front. Cooper breaks every speed limit getting Travis to the hospital.

Having a nurse for a mother is a huge benefit, and Travis moves quickly into triage with Mom and Dad. The rest of us are banished to the waiting room.

In the aftermath, I feel my knees wobble.

Cooper takes my arm steady me. “You all right?”

“No.”

He leads me to a chair. The room is cold and our swimsuits are still damp. Fortunately, we had shirts in the car, or Darla would be standing around in her bikini and every eye in the place would be on her big boobs. I hug the shirt—an old one of my brother’s—close to my skin, wishing I had something to cover my legs.

Darla asks, “Would you like a Coke? There’s a machine down the hall. I’ll go get you one. If you want one.”

“A Coke’s fine.”

“What do you think happened?” Cooper asks.

I shake my head.

“And how long does it take before we know something?”

“I don’t know.” I look up, suddenly conscience-stricken. “We should pray.”

“What?”

“We should pray and ask God to heal him.”

Cooper’s black eyes stare hard at me. He says, “Sorry, I don’t believe in God.”

I’ve never heard anyone say this out loud. When you grow up in the Deep South, belief in God is embedded in your DNA. We pray before football games, before school starts, when anything happens that’s out of our control. Travis and I have church enrollment card from nursery school through high school. I still attend youth group and Sunday school, so Cooper’s announcement shocks me. “But God’s real,” I say.

“Not for me.”

Darla’s back with my Coke. “What’s wrong?”

“Emily want to pray for Travis and I don’t believe in God.”

Darla says, “I believe in God.”

“Well, good.” Cooper says. “Then you two pray.”

Before I can say a word, Cooper adds, “Wait. Here come your parents.”

I throw myself into Mom’s arms. “How is he?”

“His leg’s broken—his femur—thigh bone, up high near his pelvis.”

“Can they fix it?” This is from Darla.

“They want to check him in.”

“Can’t they just set it and send him home?” I ask.

Dad says, “Can’t set the bone until the swelling goes down.”

Cautiously Mom says, “They want to run some test.”

“What kind of tests?”

“We can talk at home. Right now, we want to get him settled upstairs.”

“What do you want us to do, Miz Morrison?” Cooper speaks up.

“Go home. Take Emily—“

“Please, let me stay,” I say quickly. “I—I want to see Travis.”

“You’re half naked,” Mom reminds me.

Dad steps between us. “I’ll run her home to change, then we’ll come right back.”

I don’t want to leave, but Mom’s making the rules.

“I want to see him too,” Darla says, looking frightened.

“Tomorrow.” Mom pats Darla’s hand.

“We’ll go take care of the boat,” Cooper says.

For the first time I think about our boat, which we’ve abandoned on the shore near the marina. Our cooler is back at Chimney Rock too.

“I’d appreciate that,” Dad says.

Cooper is halfway to the door when Darla bolts after him. “Wait for me!”

Once they’re gone, Mom walks to the elevator.

“Let’s go, honey.” Dad puts his arm around my shoulders.

A hundred questions are banging around inside my head. I ask none of them. Whatever happened to Travis is more than a broken bone. I’ve been the child of a nurse too long to not know better.