Into This River I Drown

I raise my right hand in his direction. A small wave. I ache.

Big Eddie nods slowly and raises his hand in return.

His smile returns and he lowers his hand, and with one last look, he turns away. Above the river, I hear him shout in joy. It sounds like he cries, “Abe!”

And then he’s gone.

I sit for a time, in the dark, watching the other side of the river. He doesn’t come

back.

Finally, I rise to my feet. “One day,” I say with a small smile. “One day.” One more time, I must stand.

I turn away from the river, and everything explodes in white.

the fallout

I open my eyes and I’m back in the White Room.

For a moment, I panic, sure I will be trapped here forever, that I was meant to cross with my father and since I didn’t, I am now in limbo. I’m sure, in that split second of rising terror, that I’ll be nothing but a burnt shadow on the wall, a vague mystery for all those who will follow my footsteps into this place.

“It’s okay,” a soothing voice says. “Benji, it’s okay.”

Is it? Is it really?

The confusion on my face must be clear, because the voice says, “Oh, baby. Oh,

sweetheart. You’re okay now, you’re fine. And I love you. Everything will be okay.” Then, quietly, “Go get the doctor. Hurry. Now.” The room comes into sharper focus. Not the White Room, but a white room. Soft fluorescent lighting overhead. Eggshell ceiling tiles. The subtle tang of ammonia. The hiss and beep of machines. A blurred face, hovering over my own. A cool hand brushes against my brow.

My mother. Lola Green. The most beautiful woman in the world. I have so many things I need to tell her. So many, many things.

I try to smile at her, but there’s something in my throat. My eyes widen. I start to panic. I start to breathe heavily. The machines beep loudly in warning. I’m gagging. My body starts to shake, and I can’t stop it. Pain rolls over me in crushing waves. I hurt everywhere. My body. My heart.

Cal. Cal. Cal.

I try to make her see with my eyes, try to tell her what my soul is screaming for. She looks scared and she’s yelling at someone over her shoulder, and then she looks back down at me, telling me it’s okay, to calm down, that everything will be fine.

Cal, I try and tell her. Cal.

But then I’m in the dark again.

I’m cognizant on what I’m told is my fourth day in the hospital. Apparently,

my right lung collapsed after being shot, hence the need for intubation to clear all the rising fluid in my chest. I was Life-Flighted through the storm and taken to Eugene, where surgery was performed on my lung and to remove the bullet from my chest. I woke up on the third day and had some sort of panic attack then collapsed back into unconsciousness for another eighteen hours.

My right wrist was shredded from the pocketknife. I am told I will have heavy scarring on my wrist unless I would like t

o consider plastic surgery. I wave the offer off tiredly. I don’t care what my wrist looks like. It’s now heavily bandaged. The stitches itch horribly. No one will help me scratch it.

My ankle is severely strained. I have contusions in varying shades of greens and yellows, blues and purples, covering my entire body. Cuts on my legs and arms. My nose is running, and I have a wet cough I can’t seem to shake.

And that’s the biggest concern, I’m told. The potential for pneumonia. It’s no wonder, the doctors say, seeing as how I was found in the river in the middle of a storm by a passing motorist who then drove me back into Roseland. They’d seen a flash of my clothing and had almost continued on but stopped. I say nothing to this, casting only a casual glance toward my mother, who looks away. We both know that’s not what happened. The risk for infection is quite high, though, the doctors say, and I’m not exactly out of the woods yet.

The path of the bullet was, I am told, miraculous. Aside from nicking my lung, it bounced off a rib, breaking it in the process, and embedded itself in muscle. It didn’t strike any other organs or any other bone. The doctors can’t figure out how a shot from a rifle didn’t cause much more severe damage at such close range. I’m told I must have a guardian angel on my shoulder.

The doctors leave, telling me I’ll need plenty of rest, though I have quite a few people waiting to speak to me.

The room is covered in balloons and flowers, stuffed animals and cards. My mother tells me it seems like everyone in Roseland has sent me something, and that there’s been quite the stream of visitors to the hospital here, though they’ve all had to stay out in the waiting room. There were always at least five or six of them, and they seemed to take turns. It’s a funny thing, she says, how close our town really seems to be. She grips my hand tightly as she says this.