Pocketful of Sand(72)

I feel more frantic the longer I talk. I hear my own words. I hear the desperation. The fear. It feeds the terror that’s swelling within me, around me. Threatening to drown me. Like the ocean that tried to drown my daughter.

“Eden!” Cole snaps, his fingers gripping my upper arms, digging in. As his eyes bore holes into mine, I see his own anxiety. The alarm. The dread. The hopelessness. Fighting its way to the surface. Wrestling him for control. “We don’t have much time. Do what I say and do it quickly. Emmy needs our help. Right. Now.”

Without waiting for my agreement, Cole takes my daughter from my straining arms and lays her gently on the dry part of the sand. With wide, burning eyes, I watch him set to work on her–checking her neck for a pulse, listening to her chest for breath sounds, tipping up her chin, plugging her nose, blowing air into her lungs.

Her chest rises and falls, once, twice. He spares me one sharp look and one loud word. “Go!” And then, with the heel of one hand, he’s pressing into her chest, pumping life-saving oxygenated blood through my child’s gravely still body.

With a sob that’s torn ruthlessly from my throat, I clamber to my feet and run as fast as I can to Cole’s house. I find the side door and fling it open, not even bothering to close it behind me. I race to the kitchen for the phone. Surely this is where it would be.

I spot it immediately and dial 911. With breakdown fighting me for dominance every step of the way, I speak to the operator, directing rescue workers to this location the best that I can without an actual physical address. She transfers me to an emergency worker who begins questioning me about the circumstances in which we found Emmy. He asks about water and how long she might’ve been immersed. He asks about her responsiveness and the color of her skin. He assures me that chest compressions are the best thing we can do for her until they get here, and that warming her very slowly and making sure she stays still and horizontal are important as well.

When I hang up, I start off back toward the side door, only to find Cole rushing in with Emmy. He takes her into the living room, kicking the coffee table out of the way so that he can lay her flat on her back on the floor. Without a word, he resumes chest compressions immediately.

As I watch, my eyes are focused on my daughter. The bluish cast to her skin, the darker purplish color of her lips. The closed lids, the lifeless limbs.

I’m not even aware of my legs giving out until I’m on my knees within a few inches of her body. I take her cold hand in mine and bring it to my trembling lips. “Please come back to me, Emmy. I can’t live without you, sweetpea. You’re my whole world,” I tell her tearfully. “Please, God, don’t take her! Don’t take her from me!”

“Get her clothes off,” Cole says quietly. “Then we’ll cover her with blankets.”

When I glance up at him in question, he’s looking at me. In his eyes are the pain and loss and utter devastation that hovers around the corners of my heart. And in these few seconds, I know why. I know why he is here. I know why he won’t leave. I know why he can’t give up.

His daughter. My daughter. Blood of our blood. Death doesn’t change that kind of love. It doesn’t really separate parent from child. Not in the heart. Not in the soul.

I set to work on getting Emmy’s clothes off her without disrupting Cole’s life-saving cycles of pumping her heart and filling her lungs with air. I don’t know how long has passed when the knock sounds at the front door, followed by a harsh, no-nonsense voice, announcing, “Emergency Services.”

From the moment I open the door, I’m in a nightmare. I watch men in thick jackets and white shirts assess and treat my daughter, exchanging words like “near drowning” and “hypothermia.” I watch from behind the bars of my own personal hell as the two men place tiny pads on my child’s chest and feed electricity into her heart, watching for a viable rhythm to appear on the small screen. After the second attempt, I hear the reassuring blip. I hear a strangely haunting howl and I feel arms come around me. It isn’t until Cole turns my face into his chest that I realize it was me.

The two men work as efficiently as one, preparing my daughter for transport, continuing every measure to save her life, her brain, her organs. To bring her back to me in as much the Emmy state that she ran away in as possible.

I watch, heartbroken and horrified, wanting to help, wishing I could. Yet knowing there’s nothing I can do except stay by her side and pray that she wakes up.

The ride to the hospital is a blur. Speeding and sirens, monitors and vital signs, warm IVs and warm blankets. I vaguely remember Cole saying he wouldn’t be far behind, but the memory is as fractured as my mind seems. As my heart feels.