The sirens grew louder. Charlotte kept talking to me, to the crying woman, to the 911 dispatcher on someone's phone. And yet her hands never left my chest.
Flashes of reality were all I had; I clutched to them and tried to hear her voice.
The ambulance doors slammed shut, and suddenly we were moving, sirens wailing, the world reduced to this small metal box and the woman gripping my hand like she could physically keep me tethered to life.
"Stay with me, Miles." Her voice came from somewhere. I could imagine her teary face, and I wanted to leap out to her. "Talk to me. Can you talk to me?"
I tried. God, I tried. But my body was in an ocean, and the words I wanted to say,‘I love you,’ ‘I'm sorry,’ ‘I should have told you sooner,’were trapped in my throat under the depths of infinity.
"Okay. Okay, that's okay, you don't have to talk." She pressed her lips to my hand, and I felt the wetness of her tears against my skin. "Just stay with me. Don't leave me."
My body was so heavy. Drifting further and further into nothing. The darkness was so warm, so soft, promising an end to the searing pain that pulsed with every heartbeat.
"Miles," Her voice cracked. "Please. I'm not done with you yet."
I'm not done with you either,I thought, but the thought was slippery, hard to hold onto.I wanted to watch you read the Sunday paper for fifty years. I wanted to learn how you take your coffee when you're sad versus when you're happy. I wanted to see your face again.
I could hear something about blood pressure, about head trauma, words that didn’t register. Charlotte responded in that steady nurse voice, but her hand never loosened its grip on mine.
"We're two minutes out," someone said.
I could hear echoes in the distance; I couldn’t tell anymore where they came from, or who it was. I was alone.
I tried to think of her eyes. Green like sea glass, like the first leaves of spring, like every clichéd comparison ever to be mocked in bad poetry. I understood those writers now.
When you loved someone this much, language failed. All you could do was reach for metaphors and hope they caught a fraction of the truth.
Then an earthquake shook me. I was comfortable at the bottom of this ocean, but the fault lines underneath were shifting. I felt I was moving. Echoes of doors opening and people yelling in the distance.
"Thirty-six-year-old male, pedestrian versus vehicle?—"
“Started at eight, dropped to six in transit?—"
"Get him to imaging. I want a full trauma panel and?—"
The words blurred together, meaningless noise. The only thing that mattered was Charlotte's hand in mine. The bottom of the ocean was cold, but I could feel a warm current. I wanted to let it carry me.
"This is as far as you can go.”
I heard voices again as the water carried me. I couldn’t tell who it was.Did they speak to me? Was this over?
"No." Charlotte's voice rang out distinctly in the distance, "No, I need to?—"
I forced all my being to hear more. I couldn’t choose where to go. My body wouldn’t move. I just prayed I’d hear that angel again.
"You fight. You hear me? You fight with everything you have."
I tried to speak. Tried to tell her I would. But the words wouldn't come.
Tried to scream out her name, but there was no air in my lungs.
"I love you."
It echoed through the ocean floor, reverberated across the water like a prayer. I heard it once. Then twice. It stuck to my ears.I love you. I love you.I love you.
One of my hands gripped sand, as if it grew a mind of its own. I felt it slip between my fingers. I was searching for something, anything. I needed to stop flowing away. Wanted to swim.
The cold hit me immediately. The warm water that flowed with me was gone. I was alone, but I still remembered her. I couldn’t let that voice go.
