“Food.” He set three burgers and two cartons of fries on the bedside table and swiveled it over my lap.
I tore my eyes away from the white screen, now off, that labeled me as damaged. Decker hadn’t seen it. I smiled at him. “Who gets the third burger?” I asked. He grinned and inched the burger in question closer to his side.
“And, as per your request, homework.” He stacked three textbooks next to my feet. “For the record, I think you’re crazy. Nobody expects you to do your schoolwork.”
Decker was right. As the potentially dead, occasionally comatose, definite miracle, I was given more than enough slack. But I still had a decent shot at valedictorian. As of today, I was only one school week behind. I could catch up. “What’s the work?” I asked.
Decker shrugged and took a massive bite out of his burger. “Janna’s coming later.”
“Oh.” I was somewhat surprised it was her and not someone else from my classes. Janna and I had been in the same general social circle since elementary school and we sat at the same lunch table, but mostly we were friends in the way that people are when they’re friends with the same people.
She was also Carson’s younger sister. Janna shared her brother’s main features: green eyes, blond curls, wicked smile. Unfortunately for Janna, her eyes were smaller than Carson’s, her curls were unmanageable, and her front teeth were spaced too far apart. And unlike Carson, who was only in our class because he had to repeat third grade, Janna was smart. Really smart. Currently second-in-the-class smart. Which might also explain why we never became close.
Maybe now we would.
Decker said everyone I knew—and even those I didn’t know—came to see me when I was unconscious. They cried and hugged each other in the halls. Turned out I was much more exciting when I was technically dead. But when I woke up, my visitors were limited to the kids from the lake and the girls from my classes, and technically they only visited my parents, since I was busy getting scanned. Apparently, the novelty had worn off. I’d only been conscious for three days, and now it was just Decker. And Janna, it seemed. It was also the weekend. There were arguably more exciting ways to spend a Saturday than in a hospital room. Or with me.
“Decker,” I said. I put my burger down and waited for him to do the same. I’d been getting half answers and less-than-half answers for days. “What happened out there?” I gestured out the window in what I hoped was the general direction of home.
“You fell. I left you and you fell,” Decker said. He gripped the rail of my bed until his knuckles turned white, and then he left the room, abandoning his second burger.
Mom came in while I was finishing my fries and Decker’s second burger. “Tell me what happened,” I said. “At Falcon Lake.”
“You fell and Decker pulled you out,” she said, and then she shushed me and talked about home. Soon, she promised—tap, tap, tap—I’d go home soon.
There was this hole of time, and nobody would fill it.
Janna told me that evening. She sat on the side of my bed and held my hand. She held it tight. I’m not even sure she knew she was doing it. But I let her and she told me.
After I fell, Decker ran back onto the ice. But Kevin Mulroy, who is brave, and Justin Baxter, who is not, caught him before he got too close and dragged him back to shore. Decker screamed my name the whole way. He lost three fingernails resisting.
Janna called 911 and said, “Delaney Maxwell fell through the ice at Falcon Lake. And she didn’t come back up.”
Janna and Carson ran to the McGovern house, the closest residence, but no one was home. Carson threw a piece of firewood through the garage window, climbed in, and took the rope James McGovern brought as a precaution on his ice-fishing trips.
Janna wasn’t sure what happened while she and her brother were gone, but when they got back, Justin had a split lip and Kevin had Decker in a headlock. Kevin released him when Carson arrived with the rope.
There are certain things kids must know depending on where they grow up. When my parents took me to Manhattan last summer, I saw kids half my age navigating the subway while Dad squinted at the map on the wall, tracing the colored lines with his finger. Maybe kids in the desert can drain the water from a cactus. I don’t know. But here in northern Maine, we know how to treat hypothermia, we know how to prevent frostbite, and we know how to rescue someone who has fallen through the ice.
This is how it’s done: someone ties a rope around his waist and lies flat on his stomach, scooting out on the ice until he can reach the victim. In the absence of a rope, people make a human chain. That’s much more dangerous and takes a lot more people than are usually immediately available.
So Decker tied the rope around his waist and Carson, Justin, and Kevin held on to the other end, feet planted firmly on the shore. Only, Decker didn’t lie on his stomach. He didn’t inch slowly. He ran, like he was on solid ground. The ice didn’t hold him. When he got closer to the hole, it gave out. Decker fell.
My bright red parka saved my life. That’s the only explanation. Because the guys on shore didn’t wait. When Decker fell, they started pulling. They hauled him back to shore, tearing a path in the ice along the way. But he already had me in his arms. He found me in the few seconds he had before they pulled him back. That alone was a miracle.
Janna called 911 again. “They found her,” she said to the dispatcher. And then she cried. She cried in the hospital, telling me how she cried when she saw me.
I was blue. Not the pale blue of a crisp autumn sky or the deep indigo of a cloudless night. No, I was the muted, mottled blue of the corpses in the morgue. I was dead and everyone knew it.
But Decker, whether delusional or unreasonably optimistic, gripped me by the shoulders and shook. He ripped open my parka and started CPR, hands in the center of my chest, just like we learned in health. He didn’t stop, even though he was shaking from the cold. He didn’t stop when water seeped out the corner of my mouth. He didn’t stop when he broke two of my ribs. He didn’t stop when the ambulance came three minutes later. He finally stopped when the paramedics pulled him off and resumed compressions. And then he jumped into the back of the ambulance, daring anyone to kick him out. According to Janna, they probably let him in because he needed medical attention of his own.
I was dead. That’s what she said. My heart stopped beating. Blood sat stagnant. My body turned blue. But I came back.
Janna let go of my hand and fished her cell phone out of her bag. She scrolled through her call history. “Look.” She pointed at the two outgoing calls to 911.
Time between calls, time underwater, time without air: eleven minutes.
A lot can happen in eleven minutes. Decker can run two miles easily in eleven minutes. I once wrote an English essay in ten. No lie. And God knows Carson Levine can talk a girl out of her clothes in half that time.
Eleven minutes might as well be eternity underwater. According to the lessons from health class, it only takes three minutes without air for loss of consciousness. Permanent brain damage begins at four minutes. And then, when the oxygen runs out, full cardiac arrest occurs. Death is possible at five minutes. Probable at seven. Definite at ten.
Decker pulled me out at eleven.
“I shouldn’t be alive,” I told Decker when he came back later that evening.
“You were in ice-cold water,” Decker said. “It slows the body’s metabolism. So you don’t use that much oxygen. Or something.” Decker wasn’t in the running for valedictorian. He was a different kind of smart. Decker once joked that he would become a famous entrepreneur and I would be his best employee. I had smacked him over the head with my notebook at the time, but deep down I feared he was right.