The water was cold, a deep crushing weight enveloping me, merciless black that
stole the air from my lungs and rational thoughts from my head. The frantic
symphony of the ship's alarm blaring in the background, the distant, muffled
shouts of my husband, the desperate, wrenching scream that felt like it was
tearing through my throat but only caused my last remaining precious supply of air
to leave me. I remember hitting my head on the rails when the cruise started to
capsize, the impossible speed of me falling overboard, the icy cold that seized
my body like a vise, dragging me down into a world of endless shadow. It wasn't
a quick darkness; it was a slow, agonizing suffocation, every moment a battle I
was losing, and couldn't fight back because i probably had a concussion .
Everybody says that in your dying moments your life flashes before your eyes…
My last, frantic thoughts really were not of salvation, but of their faces, a
beautiful, agonizing montage of my life with my husband, my six year old daughter's
smile and my three year old son's laughter, a vivid, cruel reminder of the life
I had and the family I was failing to get back to. The salt stung my eyes, the cold
burned my skin, and the silent, final embrace of the deep consumed me with my
last breath, leaving only the gut-wrenching despair of a mother who coudnt hold
on, couldn't save her own family, and couldn't even save herself.
For a moment, there was nothing.
And then, a different kind of
light over my eyelids.
It wasn't the salty air of the
ocean, but the clean, sterile scent of antiseptic. Even with my eyes closed, I
recognized that scent and those sounds, as I've spent years hearing them while
working as a nurse. I opened my eyes to the soft, rhythmic light of medical
machinery, the world coming into focus as a blur of white sheets and muted
sunlight. Panic, cold and sharp, shot through me. I tried to sit up, but the
jolt sent a wave of pain through my left arm. I looked down and saw my whole
forearm wrapped in a thick, white bandage, the gauze stained with a faint trace
of red vertically. I followed the line of the bandage, and my stomach clenched.
It ran almost the full length of my forearm. My hand, which I now noticed was a
little thinner than I remembered, trembled with the shock. Could I have hit
something underwater that cut my arm? Looking at myself laying down, why was I
so thin? Did I just wake up from a coma? But if so, why was the bandage still dirty
with blood?
The heart monitor connected to my
chest picked up on my distress. The rhythmic beeping sped up, a frantic,
electronic echo of my own terror. The sound grew louder, more insistent, until
a soft rythimic thudding on the floor, approached the room. The door slid open,
and a figure entered. But It wasn't a nurse.
My mind, a messy collection of
memories and thoughts at that moment—struggled to make sense of the sight
before me. It was a Pokémon, not a creature of a video game, but a creature of
flesh and bone. Its body was a plump, pink egg shaped, with small, red dark
pink pouch on its belly. It carried a single egg in it, and had a perpetually
gentle, maternal expression.
But I wasn't feeling gentle. I
was feeling the kind of visceral terror one feels when seeing the impossible,
and my breath caught in my throat. The heart monitor shrieked, a panicked,
multi-toned alarm that cut through my thoughts. My first reaction was to yank
on the IV drip and heart monitor cables, a desperate, irrational attempt to
run. The pink creature was too fast. It reached a red button by my bed and held
me down with its surprisingly strong, stubby arms while looking down on me with
a surprisingly gentle expression. I started to scream, but the creature was too
strong; I couldn't even lift my torso. Frantic footsteps began pounding down
the hallway, but the sound only made me more agitated. An old woman with stern
expression in a white medical coat and scrubs entered the room, her eyebrows
pinched as she looked at the creature seemingly for answers. It started to
frantically repeat variations of its own name.
"Chan, chansey, Chan!"
That just made me more scared.
The doctor came to the other side of the bed and helped hold me down, nodding
her head as if she understood the creature. She tried to talk to me, but my
panic was a roaring gale, and I couldn't comprehend what was happening.
"She doesn't seem to be
calming down," the doctor said to the creature. "Please, Chansey, use
Sing."
The pink blob began to sing a
soft, calm melody that reminded me of Mary Had a Little Lamb but without words,
and my eyelids started to feel heavy, my body relaxing against my will. The
last thing I thought was how that doctor wasn't affected by this impossible
lullaby, and what the heck was happening.