Half in a mad haze, I dragged Jin Woo, both of us stumbling, up onto the beach and over the small open area into the brush. It wasn’t exactly a sanctuary, but at least we were not exposed to the elements as much.
Cold radiated from the large rock against my cheek, but it was much warmer than water had been, and Jin Woo’s heat was at my other side. I should be doing things, I knew, life-saving things, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was sleep.
I had almost managed, my eyelids fluttering, when a weak shout rang out. Jin Woo was upright in a second, despite the cold and his shaking.
“Ettore?” he whispered, pulling himself into a standing position using the rock. He stood looking out into the sea for a moment until a faint,
“Help!”
He lurched forward as if he was going to run into the ocean, but I grabbed him. He wouldn’t even make it to the water.
“Jin Woo, relax, relax,” I tried, running my hands over his shaking shoulders as if he were a nervous pony, not a dangerously cold man, “is that your fiancé?”
“Yes, yes, please, I have to go to him, I have to help him!” Jin Woo pleaded, swaying as he did so.
He wouldn’t make it. He had said that he wasn’t a strong swimmer, but I was sapped, chilled to the bone. Jin Woo’s fiancé didn’t seem too far out, but in my state, he could’ve been on the moon.
Jin Woo’s dark, expressive eyes looked down at me, so sorrowful, so desperate, and I knew that I was going to do something so very stupid.
“I need you to look on the beach for anything that can maybe cover all three of us. Don’t go too far, and sit down if you feel weak, ok?”
It was like dawn had broken over Jin Woo’s face.
“You’re going to get him? You’re going to save him?”
I nodded once before I turned and ran back into the sea.
***
I was so weak, horrible shivers wrecked my body as I dragged the unconscious man (oh I prayed he was only unconscious) onto dry land. Teeth-rattling coughs were beginning to shake me, and my vision faded in and out as I sank to my knees on the sand.
It would be so easy to fall asleep. To roll over and let someone else deal with everything else. I had brought the man to land; couldn’t that be enough? Couldn’t I sleep? My eyes pulled downwards, but that grating, irritating voice of reason and duty and fucking guilt wouldn’t let me rest. It jabbed over and over again until I pulled my eyes open, rolled the man over, and, after checking and seeing that he had no pulse, began CPR.
It was a horrible haze, my arms pressing down, and down and down again on his chest, my mouth on his too-cold lips. Jin Woo was next to me, silent. He had arrived sometime in the rush, but I kept going, thirty compressions and then two rescue breaths over and over again until the man below me gasped and sputtered.
He suddenly rolled over and vomited, and then, as my vision faded in and out, he began to breathe on his own. I collapsed next to him, suddenly not so cold anymore.
Before everything faded to black, I heard someone call my name with a strangely familiar voice.
Chapter Three
I could smell him. Oskar. The scent was familiar as the back of my teeth or the freckle on my right index finger. It was the same smell as it had been twelve years ago: the lanolin-y musk of the sweaters his grandmother had knit him, the spiciness of thepepperkaker, Norwegian Christmas cookies, that he ate all year because his father always bought way too many. I knew I was dreaming.
In my dream or memory, he was twelve and running around the small forest behind my grandmother’s house as I read. He always had this boundless energy that I couldn’t help but adore. I was calmer than he was, so he would run and jump and play and then come back and sit at my feet, his cheek pressed to my thigh, and all would be right with the world. In the dream-memory, he had come to sit beside me again, quieter than he usually was, until he finally spoke.
“Ginne, I think we should run away,” Oskar always called me Ginne, which rhymed with Mina, because it is the shortened version of duchess, hertuginnein Norwegian. I always asked him, ‘Why not princess if you were going to give me a royal nickname, or no nickname at all?’, and he had always given me a smug smile and said, ‘Wellprinsessewouldn’t rhyme,’ and that was that. This time, he looked up from where he was leaning on me with a desperate look on his face.
“Why? The island is lovely, and we still have two months before I have to go back to the U.S. Running away doesn’t make sense.”
Oskar screwed up his face, like he was fighting to keep something in, before he relaxed into me with a sigh.
“They won’t let me marry you,” he said despondently.
I laughed at him.
“Of course they won’t. We’re twelve.”
He looked up at me sorrowfully, like I was missing something important.
