Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [92]
Cherie’s eyes were red and swollen from crying. “You’re lucky you’re okay. I would never have forgiven you if you had died, Yara.”
I cleared my throat and flinched. “Was it really as serious as that?” The expressions on everyone’s faces was the only answer I needed.
“The paramedics said if Steve hadn’t given you CPR, they would have been too late,” Melanie said, taking my hand as she sat beside me. She rested her chin on the bed’s metal bars. Her free hand used a Kleenex to wipe away the moisture that still leaked from her eyes.
I tried to make eye contact with Steve, my hero. For a second I caught his gaze but he looked away. He seemed almost . . . haunted, leaning in the corner, his arms folded.
“It would seem that you brought me back from the dead.” When I said this, my heart beat hard against my ribs, as if recognizing the significance of my words more than my mind. “Thank you.”
Steve bowed majestically, seeming more like himself.
“ ‘Tis all in a day’s work, m’lady. Know ye any more dragons that need slaying?”
Melanie’s cell phone started vibrating in her purse. She checked the screen and smiled. “It’s Mom and Dad. I better take this. Mom has been calling every fifteen minutes since the school called her.” I watched her leave, guilt twinging inside of me for causing so much worry to my loved ones.
“Do you know what happened?” Cherie asked.
I shook my head, hoping to clear the fog in my memory. I could tell Cherie had tons of information to share but right as she opened her mouth the doctor came in.
“I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask all of you to leave now. She needs her rest.”
“Doesn’t she get to come home with us?” Cherie pleaded with puppy dog eyes.
“No. We need to keep her a while longer for observation.”
Cherie, to my surprise, stood up without protest. She hugged me tightly. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “we’ll find a way back in.”
That sounded more like the Cherie I knew. As my grogginess increased I heard the doctor begin to explain what had happened to me but I couldn’t understand her words as I drifted off to sleep.
****
I woke with a start and my body complained. I searched my memory to see if any further clue about my accident had resurfaced, but the smudged slate was still my only answer.
“Are you awake?”
I jumped in surprise.
A small chuckle escaped Steve’s throat. “Sorry to scare you.”
I turned to face him and stretched out my hand to loosen my aching muscles. My hands felt stiff and inflexible under all the bandages.
Steve answered my unasked question. “You scratched your hands pretty bad trying to free yourself before I got you out of the pool.”
“The pool?”
“You almost drowned, Yara,” Steve said, his blue eyes exhausted.
“I did?” A flickering vision of struggling underwater flashed in my head but vanished before it could fully form. I examined my frayed nails and for a second I remembered my hand making contact with something. Try as I might, there was nothing more, and instantly the image I had conjured was lost behind the fog in my brain. I groaned in frustration.
“And you saved me?”
Steve smiled into the right side of his mouth. “Yeah.”
“So you’re the man of my dreams, huh?”
Steve startled upright in his chair.
I reached out and grabbed his hand with a laugh. “I didn’t mean it that way. I kept having this creepy dream about drowning and in it a guy tried to save me. That must have been you.” He settled back into his chair. “Thank you, Steve. You have my best friend stamp of approval for dating Cherie.”
He hung his head down, the long evening taking its toll. “What were you thinking?” He asked, seeming uncomfortable. “Swimming in that dress. Alone. It was wound tight around the drain. You almost died. Do you know what that would have done to Cherie? I almost stopped doing CPR. I thought you were gone.” I could see his chin clench in defiance. “Yara, I almost gave up.”
Tears puddled along my eyelashes. “But you didn’t.”
“Yeah, but knowing