Author’s Note:
This is a rough draft. It has not been edited properly. I also tried using a dictation tool for some parts of this chapter, so that might lead to some weird formatting stuff I didn’t catch. Nothing is set in stone yet, and things may change as the draft develops. Thank you to anyone who reads and leaves feedback.
Read the rest, here:
Day Three:
Augusta feels absolutely frozen. Panic washes over her. Is the water skier dead? Is there a dead person floating in the water in front of her? Again?
Suddenly she’s thirteen years old again, opening the big wrought iron gate to the pool deck at her grandmother’s apartment building. She’s struggling with the sticky latch that no doubt needs that spray on lubricant with the blue and yellow logo whose name she can never remember. She’s frustrated with her brother for not leaving it open for her, even though he knows she struggles with it. She’s frustrated with him for not waiting for him to be ready, and racing down ahead of her. She’s so frustrated that she calls out for him, and when he doesn’t reply, it only serves to anger her further.
“HANG ON!”
Carey’s voice hollering out across the water snaps Augusta back to reality.
“JUST HANG ON!”
Augusta takes her eyes off the skier, looking instead at Carey and Sam, both at the edge of the dock.
“He could have a spinal injury,” Sam warns.
“He’s face down in the water!” Carey exclaims. “He’ll drown!”
Sam nods. “We just have to be careful.”
He turns to look at Augusta.
“Do you have your phone? Can you call 9-1-1?” He asks.
Augusta feels the weight of the device in her pocket. She scrambles for it.
“Yeah, yes. Yep.”
She pulls out her phone, calls 9-1-1, and scrambles through her maps app to pull up the address. Her hands are shaking the whole time. As she answers the dispatcher’s questions, Augusta watches as Sam grabs lifejackets from the pontoon boat while Carey sheds himself of his shoes, phone, and anything else that shouldn’t get wet before diving into the water. Sam isn’t far behind him. They swim the lifejackets out and Sam maneuvers some system to keep the waterskier’s head in place while rolling him over so he can breathe.
“I won’t lie to you,” the dispatcher says. “You’re pretty far from our paramedic station. Based on how close to shore this is, I’m sending a land ambulance, but it may take twenty minutes or more.”
“AMBULANCE IS TWENTY MINUTES AWAY!” Augusta calls out to Sam and Carey. Then, she speaks back into the phone. “O-our friend is a nurse. I think he knows what to do to help him until the paramedics arrive.”
“That’s good,” the dispatcher says. “If your friend can secure him to any sort of backboard, that will really help. But if it’s too hard or they have to move him too much, it’s not worth trying. Be very careful. Don’t use any motorized boats to assist with this. Any waves created could cause further injury.”
Augusta relays this information loudly. It’s timely, because the boat with the skier’s friends is approaching slowly.
“TURN YOUR MOTOR OFF!” Sam shouts at them.
The boat’s driver complies. A passenger pulls out an oar.
“I-I’ll look for something that can be a backboard,” Augusta tells the dispatcher.
“I’ve got it,” Luana says, surprising Augusta. She hadn’t realized Luana was standing right behind her. She must have come back down after putting the dog inside. “There’s an ironing board. I’ll go get it.”
“Thank you,” Augusta mumbles, before Luana turns and jogs back towards the cottage.
What kind of cottage has an ironing board? What needs to be pressed in the woods? Were Carey’s parents wearing linen suits every day when they stayed up here? Does his sister? Oh god, does he? When she’s not around?
You know what? Not important right now. Augusta needs to focus. She can’t let her thoughts go anywhere but the present moment, otherwise she could make things worse than they already are. Otherwise, she might start thinking about her brother again. She can’t have that.
Augusta takes a deep breath and recommits herself to focusing.
The twenty minutes before the paramedics arrive seem to pass at molasses speed. Like every second is dragged out into double or triple itself, giving Augusta the sensation that they are sort of trapped in this strangers’ emergency.
Luana brings the ironing board down to the dock, and luckily it can be removed from its stand and doesn’t sink. Sam and Carey manage to get the guy onto it and secure him with the straps from the lifejackets. Sam says he thinks the guy has head trauma and a dislocated knee. Nothing life threatening, but they can’t rule out a spinal injury in the water, so they still have to be careful. They decide only to move him to shallow enough water so Carey and Sam can stand and hold the board in place, and no further.
Augusta watches the whole thing. She’s not very useful. She’s not helping the way everyone else is. Sure, she’s keeping 9-1-1 updated, but that’s about it. The main thing she’s doing is keeping her eyes glued on the boat, whose driver has managed to paddle in as close as they can without disrupting the skier in the water. There’s a young woman in the boat and she’s sobbing. A girlfriend, a sister, a friend? Augusta doesn’t know. She doesn’t know who the woman is to the injured man, but she’s sobbing for him, so hysterical she’s hiccupping.
“Please don’t let Brayden die,” she’s begging Sam and Carey. “He can’t die!”
“We’re not going to let him die,” Sam says calmly, trying to reassure her. “He’s breathing. He’s got a steady pulse. Paramedics will be here soon.”
“Sam’s a nurse!” Carey exclaims, not for the first time. “He’s got him, okay?”
Augusta’s not sure how reassuring that is, given Sam is standing in the water, just trying to hold Brayden steady, because there’s nothing else he can do. But the woman nods along like it’s a lifeline.
Eventually, the paramedics arrive, and Augusta can end her call with 9-1-1. They get into the water and take over from Carey and Sam, getting Brayden onto a backboard, out of the lake, and into an ambulance. The sobbing young woman rides with him, and his friends head back to their own cottage by boat to meet him at the hospital.
“That was one of the craziest waterskiing falls I’ve ever seen,” Carey exhales once everyone is gone.
“I would hope so,” Sam replies.
“Hey,” Luana says, resting a gentle hand on Augusta’s arm. “Are you okay? You’re still shaking.”
Still shaking? Had Luana noticed her shaking earlier?
Augusta looks down at herself. She is trembling, just a little. Her skin is prickled with goosebumps, like she’s caught a chill, despite the warmth of the day.
“Gus?” Carey asks, focusing specifically on her for the first time since this all happened. Not that she can blame him. He was pretty preoccupied. “Are you alright?”
She shakes her head. “Just… I mean, it must just be adrenaline.”
Sam’s eyes skate over her. “How’s your heart rate? Any shortness of breath?”
What? Is he trying to diagnose her with something?
“I’m fine,” Augusta replies sharply. “I’m okay.”
Carey’s eyes widen with realization.
“Oh, shit,” he says.
He’s cluing in. Remembering the story she told him. Really early into dating. Too early into dating. I walked out onto the pool deck and saw him floating face down in the pool water, blood in the water around him. She remembers the way her throat had constricted as she explained it, voice shaking the way her hands are shaking now.
“Gus,” Carey says. “I didn’t even think. Shit…”
She shakes her head. “Nope. It’s okay. I’m okay. I just… I’m going to go take a shower, alright?”
Carey looks confused. She understands why. How many times have they spoken about it? About this strange darkness they share. How they both have walked into a space, unassuming, and found their family members - her brother, his parents - dead. How that broke something inside them. Something fundamental. It’s why he came to her lecture. It’s why he asked to talk to her again. It’s the whole reason they found a mutual trust and it’s the foundation of their entire relationship. They can talk about hard stuff like this. But not in front of Sam and Luana.
She doesn’t wait for him to respond. She turns and walks quickly towards the door back into the cottage.
Carey hurries after her.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, catching up to her as they reach the deck. “Gus, whoa. Slow down a sec.”
Augusta sniffs. “I don’t want to talk about it in front of them.”
“Okay,” he whispers. He pulls her into a hug. “Okay, no one’s asking you to. It’s okay. I’m sorry.”
He’s still damp from being in the lake, but she doesn’t care. She leans her head into his shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut. She feels dangerously close to bursting into tears.
This is all so stupid. It’s been years. Well over a decade. She almost never reacts like this. Water doesn’t bug her. Pools don’t bug her. Swimming doesn’t bug her. She is not someone who normally projects her brother’s death onto every water-based trauma she hears about. It’s just… Well, it looked so similar, if you swap the pool for a lake and add a pair of water skis. It looked similar and it rattled her.
“I’m sorry, Gus,” Carey says again. “That must have been horrible to watch. You helped so much, though.”
No, she didn’t. Not really. She talked on the phone.
“I know you and Sam are probably damp and cold, but I could really just use a quick shower,” she says again. Because it wasn’t an excuse or a lie. “I just need a minute.”
She can still feel Sam and Luana’s eyes on her. Drilling holes of curiosity and concern into her skin. She needs room to breathe without that.
“Yeah,” Carey says. “Of course. Go for it.”
Without another word, or a backwards glance at her current spectators, Augusta hurries into the house.
▪️▪️▪️
The shower helps. It’s like she’s a piece of clothing that got briefly wrinkled; she can steam all of these flashes of memory out of her system. It doesn’t work a hundred percent, but she does think it helps reregulate her nerves. She feels calmer, more removed from the image of the skier in the lake. She doesn’t feel quite ready to go and pretend like nothing happened in front of Luana and Sam, but that’s something she cannot avoid forever.
Augusta is standing in the bathroom, towel drying the dripping ends of her curly hair, when she hears conversation through the open window. She’d opened it before she got into the shower, not wanting to fill the room with steam. The bathroom overlooks a clothing line at the back of the cottage, where Carey told them to hang their wet bathing suits and towels. It seems that that’s what Sam and Carey are doing right now, beneath her. It’s a two person job, apparently.
“...you’re sure she’s okay?” Augusta hears Sam ask.
And she knows eavesdropping is rude. A sign of a lack of trust, really. But Sam is obviously talking about her. She wants to know what he’s saying. She sits on the closed toilet on top of her towel, right under the window, and listens.
“Gus? Yeah, yeah. She’ll be alright. She’s tough. You know how it can be when things just creep up and remind you of something bad that happened.”
“I don’t think there was any creeping in this case. More like crashing,” Sam points out.
“Well, yeah. Okay. Crashed.”
“How did her brother die? Was it waterskiing?”
Augusta freezes, unhappy with the direction the conversation is taking. She knows she already told Sam her brother died. She knows Carey must have explained her outburst as it reminded her of her brother’s death. It all makes sense. But still, it’s weird that the discussions about Sebastian that she held so personally with Carey would ever extend beyond the two of them.
“No, no. He hit his head on a pool deck, fell into the water, and drowned.”
Augusta bites the inside of her cheek.
“Shit,” Sam says.
“Yeah, they had him on life support for a few days, but… I mean, you know how it goes.”
For some reason, that irks Augusta. The way Carey says it. You know how it goes. Like Sam must see brain dead teenagers who drowned suddenly and horribly every day. Like Sebastian was just another statistic. She knows this isn’t what Carey really thinks; that he’s just relating to Sam’s existing medical knowledge. Still, her jaw clenches and she feels her breathing sort of stutter. They shouldn’t be talking about this.
“That’s really horrible,” Sam replies. He does sound sincere. “That would be a really traumatic thing to go through at such a young age.”
Augusta feels like she’s being held under a magnifying glass in the hot sun. She’s not even there.
“As far as what she’s said, yeah,” Carey replies. “Didn’t have a phone to call 9-1-1 with, either. Definitely some self-blame there at how long it took to get him out of the water.”
Why would he say that? Why would he tell him that? What business is it of Sam’s?
“Like you,” Sam says.
That’s not what Augusta is expecting him to say. She has no idea how Carey will respond.
“Uh, yeah…” Carey says stiffly. “I mean, we… We’ve definitely talked about that.”
“Carey…”
“What?” Carey asks. “Don’t look at me like that? Why is that a bad thing? We have something in common.”
“It’s not about having things in common, Carey. Jesus,” Sam replies. “Guilt over loved ones dying isn’t the same as liking camping or board games.”
He’s right, of course. Augusta can see what he’s saying. She tries to think of it all from his perspective. He’s in love with this person who has had an absolutely horrendous tragedy happen to him, for which he feels personally culpable. That person meets someone else with a similar history, after seeking her out for her expertise on the subject, and they quickly start seriously dating? Yeah, Augusta might be skeptical, too. After all, Carey’s trauma is a lot fresher than hers. Less than half a decade fresh.
He’d explained it all to her on that first coffee date they’d had. Carey and his parents had never gotten along. His father was apathetic, cold, and uninterested in his son as anything else but a potential legacy to his business successes. His mother was emotionally unavailable and always took his father’s side. His sister moved hours away to avoid regularly dealing with them. Still, Carey had tried and tried to win their approval and affection. Fought for it. Yearned for it. Responded to their beckoned call whenever necessary with handiwork around the house, driving them wherever they needed to be driven, and so on. Until one day, a blow out fight between them led to Carey cutting them off entirely. Three months later, they both died of a carbon monoxide leak in the house. A random occurrence paired with a detector that had been expired for six weeks. And though it is an incredibly unlikely thing to have happen in the first place, and both of his parents were entirely capable of changing a CO2 detector, Carey has always blamed himself. If I had visited, I would have noticed, he told Augusta that first day. The same way Augusta always thought, if she’d taken less time getting ready to swim, Sebastian wouldn’t have been alone.
“I don’t get it,” Carey says. And even to Augusta he sounds like he’s being obtuse. “Do you not like her or something?”
“That’s not what I said,” Sam replies.
“You know, she thought you didn’t,” Carey sighs. “I thought she was overthinking it.”
“Carey…”
“But she’s not. You don’t like her. Why don’t you like her?”
“I do like Augusta,” Sam says. “She’s clearly smart and kind and a really cool person. I just don’t know if I like the way the two of you got together.”
“That’s sort of rich, Sam,” Carey says bitterly.
“Only you’re allowed to voice your concerns, then?” Sam asks.
Augusta feels her stomach twist with anxiety; she doesn’t like where this is going. Are they really going to fight over her? And not even for the reasons they really should be fighting, if Sam was honest with himself? She doesn’t want them to fight at all. She doesn’t want anybody to be fighting on this trip. It will only make everything worse. and fighting with Sam will devastate Carey. Augusta doesn’t want that at all. But most of all, Augusta knows that if it really comes down to it, and Sam said that Carey should end things with her, he probably would.
“You know what, Sam?” Carey sighs, exasperated. “I can’t do this right now. I really don’t have the energy. Can we just drop it? We’re on vacation.”
“Fine,” Sam says. “We can drop it, Carey. Whatever you want.”
There’s something sort of bitter about the way he says those words. Like none of this is what Sam wants at all. So why doesn’t he just say something? Tell Carey how he really feels? What is so dangerous about that? Isn’t it better than being trapped in this loop of feeling sick looking at him with somebody else? And is that a loop that Carey has been trapped in too? Is that why he always disliked Sam’s ex-wife? Augusta doesn’t know if they’re two people who can figure out the balance of their friendship and still carry on happy romantic relationships with other people, or if they’re destined to do this strange little dance their entire adult lives. In either case, right now, she’s sort of worried about being collateral damage.
Four and a Half Months Ago:
He approaches her as she’s shuffling papers around, trying to get them to fit nicely into her briefcase. The lectern from which she delivered her presentation is a strange shape, sort of rounded at the edges and made of glass. Her briefcase doesn’t fit quite right on top of it, and the whole thing nearly topples to the floor as she’s trying to arrange her notes.
That’s how she meets Carey.
“Whoa,” he says, ducking to catch her briefcase before it can hit the floor.
“Oh god, thank you,” Augusta sputters. “ I appreciate it.”
“No problem,” he smiles at her, handing her back her briefcase. “Is it an Indiana Jones thing or do you like looking a little retro when you lecture?”
Archeology is a branch of anthropology, but that’s not what she does.
Augusta chuckles. “Neither. I learned in undergrad that I remember things better if I write them instead of typing. The habit stuck.”
“Ah, very smart,” he says. “Uh, not to bug you…”
“That’s okay,” Augusta says. “I have time to answer some questions.”
In truth, the question section of her lecture is long since over. He had his opportunity towards the end and he didn’t use it. But Augusta has never been very good at shooting down curiosity in the first place, and she’s also always been a sucker for a beautiful pair of eyes. So a beautiful, curious pair of bright blues? Of course she sticks around to see what his question is.
“Based on your lecture,” he says. “ I understand the function that grief has across societies and cultures.”
Well, she’s glad to hear that. That was sort of the whole topic.
“And you talked about grief rituals leading to better prolonged psychological outcomes following loss,” he continues.
She nods. This isn’t a theory of hers so much as it is a pretty studied topic.
“So what do you do if you don’t have anything to do?” He asks. “ What do you do if you’re not part of a culture like that?”
Augusta furrows her eyebrows. “ Everyone is part of something. You can’t escape that, even if you blend in with the dominant culture of where you live, and don’t feel like you’re a part of anything unique.”
“No, right, sorry. I understand that,” he amends. “ But what if that dominant culture that you’re admittedly a part of has sort of removed any of those specific grief rituals? Watered them down? Or what’s left just feels performative and unhelpful.”
And, see, that makes more sense to Augusta. In that regard, she understands where he’s coming from, because she can remember being alone with her brother’s death, and not having any outlets. She can remember not knowing what to do or how to move forward, and her mother and grandmother being too lost in their own grief to help her. She can remember the way that the funeral only made her feel worse; the way all the half-sincere displays of condolences only served to make her sadder, to make her miss her brother more. Is that where this guy is now? Lost in a sea of platitudes, with no direction towards land?
“I can’t tell you what you should do,” Augusta says. “I’m not a bereavement counselor or a psychologist. Or even, like, a pastor or something.”
“Right,” he nods, looking down at his shoes kind of sheepishly.
“I can only tell you what other people do, and how they say it helps them, and where that practice came from,” Augusta tells him. “Or, I guess, what I have done.”
He looks back up at her, eyebrow quirked.
“Not that the anthropology part of all this isn’t really fascinating, but I’d sort of like to hear that.”
“What I did?” She asks
“Yeah,” he says. “ Is that too weird to ask? Uh, you just seem really smart and insightful, I guess.”
Augusta blushes. This should not be working on her. This should be raising alarm bells. However, he seems very sincere and like he’s probably experienced something horrible. Augusta feels drawn to helping him. Why be in this field at all if it doesn’t help anybody? Why devote her whole life to studying the ways people react to death, if it doesn’t help somebody react to death a bit more gently?
“Okay,” the guy says, wincing and reading the hesitation on Augusta’s face. “I am freaking you out. I sound like a total creep. I promise, I’m not.”
“You don’t sound like a total creep,” Augusta assures him. “It’s fine.”
“How about I start over?” The guy says. “ My name is Carey. I thought your lecture was absolutely brilliant. I would love to take you out for a cup of coffee, to talk more about it, if that’s not too weird.”
Read Chapter Ten Here.