Undertow (13 page)

Marissa allowed him to settle her into the wheelchair and remembered it had been this way for her grandmother at the end. She was the last person she saw pushed about in a wheelchair, in that horrible dying place they called the convalescent center. Is that what she was doing here? Convalescing?

Over the forty-five minute session, Marissa’s fears of her incapacity faded away as the physical therapist put her through the drill. Raggedy Andy, as she nicknamed him, tested the strength of her muscles and their responsiveness to stimuli until he pronounced her “free of any lingering damage in regards to gross motor functioning.” Which sounded like a good thing.

“You
are
a tad atrophied, though.”

“Huh? Is there a cure for that?”

The lanky man displayed a set of wide teeth.
“You bet—exercise!”

Marissa groaned.
“I was afraid of that.”

“No more for today, though. You worked hard enough already. We’ll pick it up again Monday—same time, same place.”

She slumped back in the wheelchair.

“Miss Johansen?” Andrew’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re lucky, you know. It could be way worse. You’re a really lucky girl.”

Twenty-One

“I
know what you did.” Kelly lounged in the nearest of the two visitor’s chairs and leaned toward Marissa. Her voice was low. “I know what you did, and I know
why
you did it.”

A few minutes after Kelly had arrived, her mother left, claiming she wanted dinner and needed to make a couple of calls. It was obviously just an escape from Marissa’s anger, though. So far, nobody but her mother had come to visit. Marissa was pretty sure her mom was responsible for that fact, and confronted her.

“You can’t tell the hospital not to let my friends come see me.”

She’d snipped back at her, “I guess I just question the value of your friends, Mari, if they encourage you to do crazy things like you did.”

Neither of them said a word after that, and it had been a long afternoon.

Now Marissa lay immobile in the bed and Kelly glared at her accusingly. “Have you lost your mind?” she said. “Don’t bother answering that. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry I said that. But damn it, girl, you almost died.
Died
!”

Marissa looked away and stared at the ceiling, wishing she had. That would be better than this hell.

“That mermaid dude’s not real. You do know that, right?” she plunged on, but Marissa kept quiet, eyes fixed on some imaginary speck above her bed. Kelly reached out and took her hand. “Look, Issa. I love you. Do you
get
that?”

Marissa still said nothing, and Kelly’s voice betrayed her anger. “But what you did—throwing yourself into the ocean—if those surfers hadn’t seen you . . .”

“What? What surfers?” Marissa snapped her head toward Kelly. “What are you talking about?”

“God, Issa . . . you don’t even remember what happened, do you? No, of course you wouldn’t; you were already knocked out from the cold or . . .”

“Just tell me what happened.” Kels was never one to cut to the chase, not when there was a good story to be told, but Marissa didn’t have time for that. No telling when her mom will come back. “No one else here will.”

“Oh, right. Keep the patient in the dark, I guess, as if you haven’t spent long enough there already. Well, there were some guys on the beach when you were there. They were done surfing, said the waves were getting kind of rough as the storm rolled in. One of them happened to turn around while they were packing up and saw you walk straight into the water like a zombie or something.”

Marissa’s mind reeled
:
Surfers? Why hadn’t she seen them? She’d thought she was alone.

Kelly was high on the story now; her eyes twinkled like she had some spicy morsel she couldn’t wait to share. “So, two of these guys—thank the deities they still had their wetsuits on!—dove in and dragged your ass out. The other one called 911. Life Flight got you out, no way could those surfer dudes lug your ass up that cliff. Don’t you remember any of it? The helicopter ride, even?”

No, she didn’t remember anything after the moment she walked into the waves. Surfers? If she was pulled out of the water before reaching her destination, that meant He hadn’t sent her back again, hadn’t rejected her. They’d been kept apart by a bunch of idiots playing Superman.
How dare they,
she thought
. Why didn’t they just mind their own business?

Kelly eyed her, concern on her face. “You . . .” she said, and stabbed Marissa’s forearm with her finger.

“Ouch! What the hell did you do that for?”

“Because
you
, Issa, are very,
very
lucky. Can you even imagine what a horrible time this has been for everybody else? Your mom’s been worried out of her mind, Jim called and sounded like he’d been crying—crying, Marissa, for God’s sake!—even Drake’s taking it super hard.”

“Drake!” She spat his name. “How does Drake know? Did you tell him?”

“No. But I would have, if your mom hadn’t done it first. Shannon called and blasted him, blamed it all on what he did to you last summer. Totally ripped into him, accused the man of driving you to the brink of suicide. I swear she even threatened to sue him for emotional injury!”

Marissa couldn’t help but laugh. That would serve Drake right, even if her mother was completely off base about what happened.

Kelly smiled briefly before turning serious again. “Look, no more damn mermaids, okay? Tell me you don’t believe in any of that crap anymore. Please?”

“Sure. No mermaids. Whatever.” Easy enough to say, and it wasn’t really a lie. He wasn’t a mermaid anyway. He was something else entirely.

Her friend looked at her doubtfully, like she wished she could believe her. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before saying, “One more thing, Issa. Promise you will never, never,
never
do anything to hurt yourself again. I don’t want to lose my best friend.”

On Saturday the rehab wing operated with a skeleton crew, and she was relieved to be off the hook for any poking and prodding by the therapists. Yesterday’s exertions and Kelly’s visit completely wore her out. The nurse brought her breakfast and Marissa made a half-hearted attempt to eat the rubbery stuff that the hospital euphemistically called “eggs.” After three bites, she fell sound asleep.

A girl not much older than herself woke her up and stuck a thermometer in her ear. Marissa wondered how anybody ever got better in this place, when their sleep was constantly interrupted. All the hostility her sleep-addled brain could muster turned into a snarl unleashed at the poor aide, who shuffled out after completing her job without saying a word.

I
mages from the dream floated behind her eyelids:
His
face, pure as crystal; the water, a silken cloak; the cave, its filtered light illuminating the space. Marissa clamped her eyes shut tighter, willing herself to sink deeper and return to the underwater world, a world she preferred to her other life, a life filled with pain and secrets. She allowed the vision to anchor her and drag her down with its weight.

“Marissa.”

A man’s voice reached out and yanked her back from the dream’s embrace.
Richard.
Unmistakable, although she hadn’t heard his voice for months. Her eyes popped open and found her father standing near the foot of her bed, armed with a bouquet of pink carnations.

“Dad.”

“Hi Chickadee. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dive like this?”

The joke wafted in the air like stale smoke; she didn’t laugh, or even smile, at his effort to break the ice. “Yeah,” was all she could dredge up.

“So, how’s the girl?”

“Been better.”

“I would’ve come down sooner, but I’ve been embroiled in this monster project at work all week, and anyway, Shannon said you weren’t up for visits yet. I drove down this morning.”

“From Olympia?” Not like him to give up sleeping in late on a Saturday. Especially not for her.

“Where else? That’s where I live, remember? Or did you lose some of that great memory of yours?” He smiled at her to counter the sarcasm.

“Where’s Claudia? Did she come?”
Two could be snide, Dad,
she thought
.

Claudia couldn’t stand her. Over the years, her stepmother criticized Marissa’s hair or skin or clothes. Even her weight. “
If you don’t quit gorging on chocolate you’re going to be fat like your aunt,”
or
“Why do you cut your hair so it flops in your eyes like that?”
and
“Men like women who take pride in their figures, Marissa.”

She was glad the bitch stayed home
.

“Your mother said that you were pulled out of the water by a couple of men who were surfing.”

It was intended to be a neutral statement, obviously designed to elicit confession, but she refused to bite. “Guess so.”

“And, can you tell me what you were doing there? On the beach, I mean?”

The cross-examination has begun
, she thought. He’d pulled this act before she turned eighteen, when she was still legally his “dependent,” a fact he volleyed at her whenever they argued. Retaliating, she’d suggest he should have been an attorney. Or an investigator at least. Instead, he was a financial planner—a total waste of such raw talent. “I plead the fifth.”

“Very funny, Marissa. You haven’t been arrested. Yet.”

Yet? Panic flushed her face before she realized he was joking. At least he was smart enough not to have become a comedian, she decided; he’d have starved.
So what choice did she have? Disclose the truth about why she went to the beach that day, a truth that even her best friend considered a wacked out fantasy? Or lie? “I was stressed out, needed a break.”

“So you went all the way up to Ecola? Why not someplace closer?”

“It’s just my place, I guess. Where I like to go to get away.” She bit her lip. Inside, a voice guided her:
Keep it simple, don’t embellish.

“Seems remote.”

Her father wouldn’t quit, he was like a pit bull. Time to play offense. “So how come you care all of a sudden where I go and what I do?” She laced each word with acid and let them eat away the fragile bonds between them. She was long past caring.

He inhaled and clenched his jaw, making the muscles in his cheeks jump. “Marissa, whether you believe it or not—I
do
care. And a week ago, you were pulled out of the ocean by some boys who reported that you had walked directly into the water. You spent three days in a coma. You nearly died! Don’t I have a right to be concerned, to ask you questions, like: What the
hell
were you doing in the damn ocean?”

His voice lifted into a crescendo which drew the attention of the duty nurse. She stepped into the room and inserted herself in the space between Richard and the bed, staring him down. “Everything all right, Sir?”

His shoulders slumped. “Sure. Everything’s fine.”

“Miss, do you need anything?”

Marissa shook her head but gave her a look to say,
No, my Dad’s just a jerk
. The nurse tossed a cautionary look in his direction and left.