Page 82 of Releasing 10
She was a nurse in the ICU.
She would know what to do.
How to make him breathe again.
“I’ll start the engine,” Keith declared hoarsely. “I’ve called the paramedics. They’ll meet us on the shore.”
“No, no, no!” Sadhbh screamed, pulling and tearing at her hair, as she dashed to the side of the boat where her daughter had fallen overboard. “My baby! My baby’s in there! We can’t leave her!”
“Gerard’s going to die if we don’t get him help,” Keith argued back. “We have to go, Sadhbh, love.”
“He’s already dead.”
“Shut up, Mark.”
A few moments later, when the sound of the motor running filled the air, and the vibration rattled through my body, a pair of small arms came around me, and I didn’t hesitate to fold her into my body, holding on for dear life tomybaby sister.
“Joe!” Sadhbh screamed, sounding feral. “Joe!”
“It’s okay, love. They’ll give you something for the shock when we get back to land.”
“Bethany! Joe! No, no, no, don’t do this. Don’t leave them behind!”
I felt more gratitude for Claire in this moment than I ever had in the five years since she’d arrived into my world. Because she was here, on this boat, with her heart beating. “I love you, Claire,” I heard myself cry, holding her so tight, I was sure I was hurting her skinny, little body, but I didn’t care. She was alive and I had to feel that in this moment. After holding Gibsie’s lifeless body, I had to touch somethingalive. “I love you. I love you. I love you!”
“I loves you, too,” Claire sobbed, clinging to me just as tightly, smothering my face with her wild curls. “Don’t ever go away, Hughie.”
“I won’t,” I whispered, burying her face in my neck, needing to protect her from what was unfolding around us.
The hopeless feeling that was festering inside of me continued to grow and inflate and consume me until the sound of a choking cough filled my ears.
“That’s it, lad,” my father cried out. “Come on, come back to us.”
Another choking cough filled my ears, but I didn’t get my hopes up.
Because what if I was wrong?
What if I was imagining the sound?
“Quick, roll him onto his side, Pete, he’s asphyxiating,” Mam instructed. “That’s it, Gibsie, love. Good boy. Cough it all up.”
“Quick, warm him up before his body goes into hypothermia.”
“Gerard,” Claire cried out, and it was only then that I dared to look.
That I dared to hope.
Scrambling out of my lap, Claire crawled on her hands and knees to where our friend was lying on his side, in the recovery position, facing us. His eyes were blank, but they were open and focused entirely on my sister’s face.
“We’ve got you, Gerard,” she continued to tell him, hunched down close to his face, with her small hand touching his hollow cheek. “You came back to me.”
He was a deathly bluish-gray color and trembling violently beneath the bundle of coats and blankets the grown-ups had thrown over him, but his chest was moving.
He wasbreathing.
In that moment, I vowed to never sit back and do nothing.
I would never be a statue like Mark or incapable like Sadhbh and Keith.
