“Someone’s drowned—he’s not dead,” I insisted. To me, at that point, there was a difference between drowning and dying. “His kids are down there alone with him.”
The four of them shuffled off, leaving me propped up against a boulder.
“He’s not dead.” A scream, a whisper, a dispatch straight from my trembling heart.
Stillness was terrifying. I scrambled to my feet and ran up the paved road for more help. Little pebbles gouged my feet but didn’t pierce the skin. I ran faster. I found an abandoned cabin set back from the road. When no one answered my knocking, I burst through the unlocked door, screaming, “Phone! Phone!” In the darkened room, there was only a wooden table, a couple of chairs, and a stout bookshelf. No people, no light, no phone.
Back out on the road, I couldn’t see the beach or hear Jenni and Sebastian. I stood in my bathing suit waiting for something to happen, shaking and twitching, with nowhere to run. A low guttural moan escaped from my throat, a nonsense word, mashing up “no, no, no” and “please, please, please.” My hands held each side of my head as if it would split apart if I let go.
A family from Kansas—mom, dad, and teenage son—stopped at the lookout point. I waved my hands: “Help! Please!” Good news: the dad was a cardiologist. He and the son disappeared down the trail while the mother offered me a can of root beer and invited me to sit in her car. I sipped the sugary drink, still shaking, my body absorbing the awful truth.
A highway patrolman cruised by in a black truck, and the mother jumped out of the car to stop him. He stuck his head out of the window, and she whispered something to him. He peered at me and then promised to send help.
Thick gray clouds rolled in out of nowhere. Rain splattered the car. The rain turned to hail. I flinched as each ice pellet tapped the window. And still I shook. It felt like my molars would fall out from the chattering. I could still my body for a few seconds by holding my breath, but as soon as I gasped for air, the shaking started again.
Overhead, helicopter blades whirred in a staccato rhythm, a giant metal bird gliding toward the beach. The mother winced and grabbed my hand. She knew what it meant. The golfers appeared at the head of the footpath. I bolted from the car, hopeful still, about news from the beach, even though the two in front shook their heads. No, he didn’t make it. No, he’s dead. No, there is no more hope.
“The children are coming up behind us.” Hope finally drained out of my body.
I could hear the hum of the blades even when there was nothing to see but the gray expanse of sky. The helicopter rose up over the mountain with a long rope hanging from its belly. At the end of the rope was a black body bag, swaying like a weighted tail. It sailed across the sky until it was only a tiny dot on the horizon.
12
After sharing all the awful details in one unbroken narrative, I felt lighter. I believed that taking up that space and letting my witnesses know what I experienced was all the healing I needed. Now my group knew about the Cure tape, David’s contact lenses, the ravenous ocean, my bare feet on the trail, the root beer, the rain, the helicopter.
The next week, as I walked from the elevator to the group room, I imagined that Dr. Rosen would allude to the good work I’d done around Hawaii the week before. It was a wish: I wanted a gold star for finally letting the group witness the awful images I carried around from that traumatic summer. But as I reached the waiting room, I felt something else, something seemingly unrelated: anxiety about Dr. Rosen’s upcoming vacation. He would be out for the next two weeks. Without these weekly sessions to anchor myself, I’d be pulled under by a wave of loneliness. Two weeks without group felt like two weeks without oxygen. Underneath the anxiety, I also felt angry. How could he abandon us for two whole weeks?
“Get on the floor and grab Carlos’s leg,” Dr. Rosen suggested fifteen minutes into the session when I shared how I felt about his upcoming absence. Grabbing Carlos’s leg was supposed to soothe and ground me. It did neither.
The group energy had been frenetic and unfocused from the first moment. We zipped from Carlos’s patient to Marty’s wedding planning to Rory’s sex life. Multiple side conversations broke out every time we switched topics, detracting from the main discussion. Dr. Rosen insisted it was our collective anxiety about not meeting for two weeks.
I wrapped my right arm around Carlos’s shin and picked at the carpet with my left hand as Marty discussed life post–cyanide stash, when suddenly, the urge to scream at the top of my lungs came over me—it crept slowly upward from my stomach through my sternum and to the edge of my throat. It was too strong to hold down—like a sneeze or an orgasm. It flew out of me and stopped all movement in the room. Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! It was from my deep-down guts and it shook the walls.
“What the fuck?” Carlos said, peering down from his chair.
“I don’t know what that was,” I said, embarrassed by my primal wail that seemed to have no narrative, no trigger, and no explanation.
Unfazed, Dr. Rosen said, “Sure you do.”
I heard the helicopter buzzing and felt my body constrict with panic. My mind zoomed to Hawaii, right above the waves and the black sand.
“Where do you think I’m going on vacation?”
“No idea.”
“You have a picture in
