Midway to the bank I popped my head up, checking to see if he was catching up… but he was swimming in the wrong direction. Swimming along with the current. Away from me, away from the shore, toward the edge.
“Auden!” I shouted. “Wrong way!”
He’s not wearing his glasses, I thought suddenly, horrified. He can’t see.
“Auden! Swim toward me! Follow my voice!”
But he didn’t call back. He didn’t change direction. And I began to realize he wasn’t swimming at all. He was drifting.
Cold, I thought as the water lapped against my body. But how cold? Cold enough that a person—a real, live, warm-blooded person—couldn’t take it anymore? Couldn’t fight back against the current? Couldn’t make it to shore?
“Auden!” I screamed, and then I ducked under the water, pushing myself harder than I ever had on the track, when it didn’t count, pushing the legs to kick, the arms to dig, to reach him, to grab him before the current carried him away, before the water caught him and wouldn’t let go, not until it plunged over another edge, down another ripple of jagged rock, into a storm of erupting water, and down, into the silent depths, the center of the whirlpool.
I swam fast. The current was faster. He was one arm’s length away, close enough that I could see his pale face, his closed eyes, his arms floating limply and his head tipped back, bouncing along shuddering water—and then two arm’s lengths, and then three, and the river carried him away from me, the river claimed him. I screamed, I lunged, one last, powerful kick forward, one desperate grasp—and his body disappeared over the edge.
I went over after him. This time there was nothing joyous about the plunge. Nothing fast or chaotic. It seemed to last forever. Enough time for me to go over it in my head, again and again, seeing him on the shore, hearing him scream my name, clinging to his body—and then letting him go. Hold on, I thought furiously, as if I could communicate with the past, as if the girl in the memory could make a better choice. It’s cold, I told her. It’s too cold.
But the girl in the memory didn’t notice the cold or didn’t care.
She was invincible.
I was sucked down again at the bottom, but there was no peace in the dark, quiet water. The empty stillness just meant he wasn’t there. I fought my way to the surface, hoping, but I didn’t see him, didn’t hear him, so I dove down again, sweeping the river from one side to the other, swimming blind, arms outstretched. Telling myself that it would be like before, I would catch him, only for him to tell me that he hadn’t needed rescuing, and we would laugh over the misunderstanding, and this time I wouldn’t let go.
I don’t know how much time passed before I realized what I had to do. Seconds, maybe. Minutes, at the most. No time at all if you didn’t have breath to hold. And if you did? Too much.
Lungs filled with oxygen floated. Empty lungs sank to the bottom.
So that’s where I searched next, my bare stomach scraping against the muddy riverbed. I forced myself to keep my kicks slow and steady, covering the ground methodically, hoping I would find him, hoping I wouldn’t, because if he was there, a still body in the mud, if he was…
I didn’t let myself think about it.
I swam.
And then I touched something that wasn’t rock, wasn’t mud, was firm and long and foot-shaped, and I wrapped my hand around it, around him. I scooped up his body and kicked toward the surface, burst out of the water. And only then did I force myself to look at what I was holding. His eyes were open, rolled back in his head. I had to turn away from the unbroken white stare. He wasn’t breathing.
CPR, I thought, towing him to shore. I voiced for help, gave our coordinates, and someone would come for us, to save us—but maybe not in time.
Make him breathe. Breathe for him.
But I didn’t breathe at all.
Still, there was air flowing through my throat, I thought. Hissing past my voice box, when I needed it, the stream of unfiltered air that made the artificial larynx vibrate so I could talk. I didn’t know if that would work. I had to try.
The network told me what to do. I tipped his head back. I placed my lips on his. They were so cold. Blood oozed from the cuts on his face, on his arms, blood everywhere.
Breathe, I thought, forcing the air through my mouth, into his. Pumping his chest, maybe in the wrong place, maybe too light, maybe too hard, I didn’t know, but pumping, once, twice, three times, thirty times, just like I was supposed to. I paused, I waited, I listened. No change.
I breathed for him again.
And again.
He coughed.
Water spurted out of his mouth, spraying me in the face.
“Auden.” I cradled his face. “Auden!”
He didn’t say anything. But he was breathing. I could hear him. I could see his chest rise and fall. He was breathing.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I laid my head against his chest, listening to his heart. Night had almost ended; the sky was turning pink.
He was still breathing when help arrived. They shifted him onto a backboard, immobilized his neck and spine, gave him an oxygen feed, loaded him into an ambulance. I got in after him, because no one stopped me.
It was only when someone wrapped a blanket around me that I realized I was still naked.
No one would tell me if he was going to be okay. But I promised him he would, over and over again.
His eyes opened.
“You’re okay,” I told him, holding his hand. His fingers sat limply in mine. “You’re going to be okay.”
“I hope not,” he croaked, his voice crackly.
For a second I was so happy to hear him speak that I didn’t register what he said.
“They’ll make me like you,” he whispered. “We can be the same.”
“No,” I whispered back, fiercely. “You’re going to be fine.”
That’s what I said.
That’s what I wanted to believe, about him, about myself.
I didn’t want to be a person who hoped he was right, that he would not be fine. I didn’t want to hope that he was hurt so badly that there’d be no other option, that he would die, only to be reborn as a machine, just so that I wouldn’t have to be alone.
I reminded myself what it would mean. I pictured him, even though it hurt—because it hurt—lying still on a metal slab, pale and cold, the white sheet draped over his skull, where his brain had been scooped out, carved up, replicated. I pictured him trapped in the dark, stuck in a frozen body, thinking he might be dead, then wishing he was.
I didn’t want that for him.
Or at least, I didn’t want to want that for him.
But truth? Sordid, pathetic truth? I think I did.
If Auden were a mech, if we could go through it together, everything would be different. I would no longer be alone.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said again, uselessly. It was better and less complicated than the truth, and maybe if I said it enough, it would come true.
“Liar.” His eyes rolled back in his head.
Somewhere, an alarm sounded, and one of the men pushed me out of the way.
“Flatline,” the man said, pushing on Auden’s chest, fiddling with a machine, as the alarm droned on.
“What’s happening?”
No one answered me.
The ambulance sped toward the hospital, and the men pounded on his chest, and the alarm beeped, and Auden’s chest lay flat, his lungs empty.
Flatline.