Fish Out of Water

Scene Four (Brendan)

I sit up, coughing, my lungs feeling like they're on fire.

Yet it's not fire I'm expelling from them, but water.

Finally, it's out, and I'm breathing oxygen again to replace the new vacancy in my lungs, but the air feels like fire, too.

What. Happened?

Lifting my gaze from the sand, I see the ocean being tossed back and forth by a storm that darkens the world.

Storm. I was on my ship. Now I'm here. Where's my ship? And where's that woman I saw in the water?

My head hurts, and I reach up to rub it as I turn to see where on the beach I am.

The part of the beach, apparently, that includes a half-naked girl lying unconscious beside me.

I blink, trying to figure out how I got from point A to point B.

And then I realize what I should have realized right off the bat- shirt falling above the knees of the most shapely legs I've ever seen or not- the girl isn't breathing.

All my summers as a life guard hit me at once, and my training seems to take over.

Checking the girl's pulse, I'm relieved to find that her skin is still warm. But something is keeping her from breathing.

Her mouth is tilted slightly open, mid-gasp, and I press my lips over hers to breath some air into her. Then I pull back, press my hands to her chest, and push. Push again.

I feel like a version of me in the past is praying over her life right now. Which is a strange, out-of-body experience- but obviously it's from the past. It's been a long time since I prayed.

And I don't have time to string any sort of coherent sentence together anyway as I compress and breathe. Compress and breathe. Compress and-

Suddenly, the woman whose life I'm trying to save pushes me off of her with surprising strength. Especially surprising, because I was beginning to give up hope she would ever move again.

I pull myself into a sitting position and grin. "That was a close one, huh?"

Her answer is a slap to my face.

Stunned, my head twists back, my skin stinging like I fell on concrete.

Then I turn back to my assailant to find her pushing herself to her feet like an infant learning to walk. The moment she's on her soles, her legs wobble, and she starts to topple.

Instinct gets the better of me, and I dive forward to catch her.

Her eyes fly open in touch at my shock, and she pushes at me. We both lose our balance, and topple to the ground, her on top of me.

I blink, not sure what to say to this woman, whoever she is, as she lies on top of me. "Um, I don't normally cavort with strange women in the sand."

If looks could kill, her gaze would have lasered through my head as she awkwardly pushes at my chest to get away.

Gasping at the contact, I'm helpless to keep her from rolling hard onto the sand.

The girl doesn't seem to register any discomfort, though. But she does take the climb back to her feet much more slowly, like an infant still learning how to stand.

I wait to see how this episode will go, and watch as she takes equally babyish steps on the soft sand. She is terribly unsteady at first, but grace seems to grow in her with each moment of practice.

What on earth am I doing just lying here and watching this mute girl walk off to who-knows-where when she's probably injured?

As though she can sense my thoughts, the girl stops walking and glances back at me. To my surprise, the expression on her face seems to be asking 'aren't you coming?'