Til Death Do Us Part

33

I resurface with less gusto, clawing at the air, coughing, spitting up water, and trying to inhale. It’s exhausting, my whole body is being thrown around like a wet rag, and I’m barely making it to open air to breathe before the river yanks me down again and rolls me over. I immediately realize I’m being tossed around before I’m tipped upside down by an undercurrent and have to fight all over again to find the direction of up.

I was always a strong swimmer, one of the few things Jyeon insisted I learn as a kid due to the number of pool parties and vacations our families had when we were young, but this is beyond hard. I kick and fight and try with all my might to get purchase somehow, and his voice filters through my head as though encouraging me to keep going.

“Sohlly Bolly, if you get caught in the water, take off as much of your clothes as you can. They’ll drag you down and twist you up. You have to be clever to survive.” Ten-year-old Jyeon being my wise instructor, that time we went to the kids’ camp and learned how to use canoes. He’s inside my head, telling me what to do.

I start fighting with my suit jacket impulsively, ripping it open and letting it be pulled off my body by the current. My blouse, too, as I bob up and manage another lungful of air. On autopilot and grasping to anything that might improve my chances, even the words of a ten-year-old in my memory. Under it, I have a satin camisole that I leave alone, but I wriggle at my wide-leg pants and manage to unbutton them somehow and kick them off while fully submerged. It's calmer just below the surface, but not entirely, and I’m still being flipped around and twisted up.

I free myself, kicking off the one shoe I still have on my foot, and I’m left in underwear, and a long satin underdress that reaches my upper thighs. Suddenly unbound by my clothes, I manage to make a beeline, untethered, for the surface. My limbs are starting to get sluggish with the freezing temperature and the exertion of fighting this endless battle against the current. I’m desperately trying to hold on and break through for the umpteenth time, grappling this time to stay up here. It’s sapping my life force and taking so much out of me even to try.

I turn, just in time to see a tree stump too late, floating in the water at eye level and coming at speed due to the rapids. I try to sink under, my arms up over my head as I plunge feet first to avoid it, but it sits below the surface like a giant submarine of rage, and I collide with it bodily. I’m spun as the impact knocks me for six and somehow end up face butting a protruding edge and almost taking out my eye in the process.

It must be a hard impact, as hard as hitting the steering wheel, because I see sparkling stars, and I lose sense for a second. I gasp in fluid in place of air and begin to choke, retching and spasming as my lungs reject it. Eyes springing open in panic, and I grab onto the branches and start trying to haul myself up.

It’s my assassin and also my savior, and I cling on, moving with it, using it to get up, breaking into the atmosphere, and coughing out the lungful of salty water that’s slowly churning me down. I don’t let go. Fingers are hurting and aching with numbness and using this wood beast to save my own life. I climb and scrabble even when its turns and rolls in the water and submerges me all over again, but it keeps going and pulls me with it to pop back up the other side. It torments me by giving me life and then rolling me around down to dunk me all over again. It does this twice more until I feel like I’m so dizzy I can’t see straight.

From behind, without warning, I’m smacked in the spine with an agonizing thwack, letting out a winded ‘oooft’ and crushed momentarily between two solid objects that knock the air out of me, and I lose my grip. Arms splaying and letting out a ‘eughhhhh’ noise into the chaos as I’m squashed again with two forces colliding from either side of me. Water rushing, wood groaning, while I’m splashing and choking of my desperate attempts not to die.

It’s an entire tree. Laying down in the water after being ripped from the roots and its twiggy branches get caught up in my hair and rip some out. It hurts like hell, yet it somehow acts as a force to pull my head out of the water and keep me there. Like decrepit fingers of an old witch, and she wants me in her clutches.

 I turn to try and push the two deadweights apart as my rib cage begins to get crushed for a third time with their rubbing together. Lifting my legs to force the stump away and instead see more stability in the entire huge tree that looks more like a boat than an offensive weapon.

I don’t know how I do it. Limbs almost unusable, shaking so badly my teeth are chattering, and my fingers won't grip. I know my core temperature is probably dangerously low. My whole body is going into shock, and I’m freezing and fighting with the last dregs of energy I possess. My eyes are stinging, not just from the salty water as I’m aware I’m being pushed out to sea, but the taste of blood in my mouth and the ache of my head tells me that I probably cracked my skull. I don’t know how I’m still fighting.

It’s one last effort to live. I scramble with the branches, being torn and poked and prodded as I fight the leaves and twigs and try to climb up from the worst end of a tree. I haul myself along, using the sharp, breakable pieces I feel out with hands as hold ons, parts snapping off in my fingers and sticking into me until I meet more substantial girth. I somehow get up, pulling out of the water from the waist, over it, and slide my arms through the intricate weave work of its branches. One leg up, and over, taking strength I don’t have, yet I somehow find it, and I’m almost out of the water. Like Rose on that f*****g door when she left Jack to die. I totally understand why she let him drown.

It's a stupid thought, and I let out an insane snort that’s like a laugh, but not at my predicament, and I know I’m losing it. My sanity probably sunk with the car, and I’m running on pure adrenaline and will to live.

My survival instinct is strong, and I give it everything from deep down in my toes to boost myself one last inch. I get up, with a heave and a cry out of ‘arghhhh’ screamed into the deathly night air like a warrior swinging the sword for the last time and knowing it’s the death blow. Splayed across a pretty fat trunk, my arms intertwined in its bushy sprouts, my hair still caught and tangled worse where water is moving it and twisting it into the smaller twigs.

I gasp in labored heaves and try to calm my breaths, vibrating so violently I can’t control it nor feel my limbs anymore, and my eyes are getting heavy. So relieved that I found a way to keep my head above water and seventy percent of my body. Even while being bashed and moved by forces beyond my control, I seem to stay perched and still, and I become so heavy I lay flat on my stomach to allow myself to catch my breath and rest. I know I’m far from safe, but I need a breather for now. I just need a few minutes before I try and get out of the water or look for something to help.

I’m just so spent.

I’m fading. I can feel it. Dizziness coming in at me, tiredness and cold pushing me to want to let go. My breath is no longer making steam clouds in front of me because it’s no longer warm, I know that’s not good, and I sniff and curl my fingers into sharp and leathery leaves. I shouldn’t allow myself to blackout.

“I won’t die like this. I won’t …….. I won’t die.” I mutter it to myself, a tiny voice that only I can hear, as a way to will myself to hold on. I have no idea where I’m floating, where I am anymore, or how far away the car is. Everything of me is back there, left behind, and no one knows where I am. I went in such a cocky and carefree manner, and now I’m regretting it all. A tear escapes my eye, and I laugh sadly at the reality of that. Every identifiable part of Sohla Park is sinking with Jyeon’s car…even his damn four-by-four keys.

I close my eyes and try to focus on staying calm, but the headache and nausea start to overtake, and the coldness of my body makes me want to sleep. I long to be home and warm and safe. I would give anything for that right now.

I try to visualize being in the lounge with my mom when I, Jyeon, and Yoonha were kids. It’s the warmest, coziest, and most comforting thing I can rake up in my mind to distract me from this hell. Sitting on the couch all curled up together, eating popcorn, sharing a duvet, and watching movies. Companionable silence as we used each other as pillows. She used to love having us all there for sleepovers and lavishing us with her maternal love and boundless warm energy. Those were days when I was truly happy, never knew what was coming or what would face me when Jyeon and I collided in another way. So long ago…. Yet right now, it feels like it was only yesterday, and I smile as darkness overtakes me and peace finally ascends.