60 Days of Salt and Sand

D a y ~ 1

It was dark out the night I ran on the shore, my first day in Bisou beach. It was the day I found the girl in the sand. The day I was too late.

It was a Tuesday.

The thing about running on the beach is that you are always looking down. At least, I was. The splatter of sea shells washing up beneath me was enough to cut my feet. And it was different than running in the city... more than I expected. The ocean was like a spider's web, sticking to me and pulling me down into its trap if I weren't too careful. Whenever I stopped looking down, I started to sink again.

That's why I didn't see her, not right away. She was about a hundred yards out, right in my path. My eyes flicked up for a moment, just to catch a glimpse of the shore ahead.

Instead, I saw something washing up on the shore, stuck in the ocean's grip. I stopped for a moment, slowed down and caught my breath, then kept walking towards it.

I'm ashamed at how long it took me to figure out that it was a girl. Her face was in the sand, a mop of dark brown hair quivering ever so slightly with the pull of the tide. Her arms and legs were underneath her. To me, at first, the lump on the shore was probably an animal. Or seaweed.

But as I got closer, I sped up. I saw the blood. I could see her shoulders shaking from the cold that wasn't there. It was August, but she still looked like she was frozen.

But then she went still.

Deadly still.

It took me a few minutes to haul her out of the water, to pull her onto the beach. I listened for breath. Nothing.

I tried CPR. She was breathing now, just barely. But it wasn't like you see in the movies when they just wake up. When they cough up the water. She still wasn't moving. Her breath was so shallow that I was sure that I was imagining it.

I yelled for help, but of course, nobody was around to hear me.

At that point, I was sure she was dead. Already thinking that maybe if I had just come a few minutes earlier... Maybe she could have been okay.

But I wasn't going to stop there. When I felt her wrist for a pulse, I found one. Slow, soft, and just barely hanging on. But it was there. And that was enough to get me to fight for her.