The drop seemed to take forever. She watched Aiden hit the water first, damn near facedown, with a slap that made her cringe. The river drew him under. The surface’s swirling currents raced up to greet her.
She straightened her legs, breathed deep and covered her nose. She still hit the water so hard she felt her ankle twist in a decidedly wrong direction. She stifled the scream that pain demanded. Her body sank like an anchor. The ice-cold river made her heart skip a beat. She snapped her eyes open. Feet away, Aiden drifted down into the gloom, lifeless.
She was on him in two panicked strokes. She reached and her fingers grazed his sinking collar. The top of Aiden’s head passed into darkness.
Her lungs screamed for air. Every impulse in her quickly cooling body commanded that she swim for the diminishing light.
She dove into darkness.
Absolute blackness enveloped her. She saw nothing, but felt everything. Everything important, everything cherished, everything worth anything floated ahead of her. Some maternal sonar pinged that the only thing that made life worth living was just inches away. Air bubbles spit through her lips as her body demanded oxygen. Water pressure squeezed her skull like a vise. Her head spun.
Better to not surface at all, she thought, than to surface alone. She gave one more kick.
Her outstretched fingertips touched cloth. She gripped, turned and kicked for the dim light above. Another stream of bubbles slipped past her lips. Kick. Kick. Aiden’s numb weight threatened to drag her back into the deadly darkness. Survival instincts begged her to let him go. Cloth slid against her numbing fingers.
She tightened her grip. One more weak kick. The light brightened. Her lungs overruled her clenched jaw. She belched a mass of bubbles into the river. Water rushed in. Salty, fetid, poisoned. She choked.
Her head broke water. She spit out a mouthful of rank water and sucked in a deep lungful of the crisp winter air. She pulled Aiden to the surface. He didn’t move.
The current had dragged them downstream, but closer to Q Island’s shore. She rolled onto her back, tucked her arm around his chest and kicked for land. Just as she was certain her numb legs would fail, they scraped the river bottom. She stood up on a tiny riverbank hemmed by houses. The cold froze her to the marrow. She shuddered as she dragged Aiden ashore and laid him down on the sand.
Her son’s face was concrete gray, his lips a pale blue, his chest still.
CPR. He needed CPR. She tried to remember the routine. She couldn’t focus. Her body shivered violently, out of control. The edges of everything went black. She was going into shock.
No, no, she thought. I have to save—
A man appeared from one of the houses. Fuzzy and indistinct, but she was certain it was a man. He started to run toward her.
Her head swam. Was he infected? Was he a criminal? Whatever he was, he wasn’t touching her son.
She tried to stand, and the world spun like the view from a merry-go-round. She dropped to her knees. In a last desperate act, she draped her body across her son. She looked up to see the blurry face of a man in glasses staring down at her. She tried to shout at him to get away. Before she could form the words, she passed out.