End of a Day
Sample
Chapter 1
Sarah could not believe she survived the crash to feel the level of pain she now felt. Life vest supporting her head, she floated in the frigid waters just off the coast of New York, mind and body quickly succumbing to the numbing cold. Her training and experience as a nurse told her she would not survive to be rescued. Her internal injuries were too bad. She hoped Brad survived.Frantic splashes commingled a pitiful cry of “Oh, God! Oh, God! Help me, please…” not far to her right.
“Brad? Is that you?” She moved her arms through water she barely felt toward the sounds. Sarah gasped in agony when arms flailed from the water, grasped her waist, then her life vest.
“Mrs. Day!” It was Brad, the fifteen year old who was seated next to her on the flight. He clung to the right side of her vest, pulling her shoulder under the water.
“Brad, where is your vest?” Sarah spoke with effort; the cold slurred her words.
“It didn’t work! It didn’t work! I tried to inflate it, but it didn’t work! It kept getting tangled so I threw it off!”
Sarah could see the teen’s composure slipping, his eyes darted in horror from her to the water and back. Something bumped into them from behind.
A piece of debris about half the size of a door bobbed in the water. She fixed her eyes on Brad’s, her breathing labored, and panted, “Brad. Grab-the-debris.” He seemed not to hear. Sarah took the terrified boy’s face in her numb hand and squeezed hard. “Kick, Brad! Get on the debris!”
Sarah pushed with all her might, and her world narrowed to a tunnel. She watched through the tunnel as Brad kicked, pulled and flung himself up on the debris. She fought the blackness she knew was to come and watched as fingers she no longer felt unsnapped the buckle on her life vest. She slipped beneath the water and the vest and came gasping to the surface, salt water stinging her eyes. The icy shock to her face and head yanked her out of the tunnel of darkness. For now.
She willed the fingers of her left hand to close around the edge of the debris. Unable to feel her legs, she knew they responded to her brain's command to kick by the pain in her abdomen. Her breathing was faster, and shallow. Sarah shoved the vest to Brad.
“Put. it. on.”
He desperately snatched the vest from the water. She pushed off and floated away on her back, and saw puzzled realization on his face.
“But…what about you!”
Sarah glided on her back and gazed at him. She smiled and spoke what she somehow knew to be the truth. “You’ll be ok, Brad. And I’m a strong swimmer.” She rolled to her stomach and attempted what she hoped were four strong strokes of the crawl before the pain forced her to stop and roll to her back again, breathless. The boy didn’t need to watch her die.
Sarah licked her lips, and tasted salt and a lifetime of childhood memories. The pain
lessened and the tunnel returned. Her ears bobbed in and out of the water and she heard the muffled sounds of a helicopter. It passed overhead in the last bit of vision she had before she closed her eyes, her last memory Phil’s kiss; her last breath was his name.