One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper

Author:Jonathan Tropper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction, Azizex666, General
ISBN: 9780525952367
Publisher: Dutton Books
Published: 2012-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

Later in the pool, something happens. He’s floating on his back, looking up at the sky, when there’s a flash of light, and then everything goes dark. He is suddenly sinking, feels the water flooding his nose and mouth and then the roughness of the pool bottom, scraping his lower back. He is drowning in darkness and unable to move. This is how it ends, he thinks. Strangely, he is not panicked, just a little bit sad. He tells himself to pay attention. If this is death, it will only come once, and he doesn’t want to miss anything. Like he did when he was alive.

Then there are fingers digging into his forearms, hands pressed painfully into his armpits, and then he’s shivering in the air, being rolled on hard, gristly pavement. Flashes of color, and then moving shapes. It’s like being born, he thinks. He hears Jack’s voice: “Come on, Silver! Wake the fuck up,” and then Casey’s face comes into view, hovering above him, close enough that he can see the thin trickles of water catching the sunlight as they run down her face. “Dad!” she shouts. “Can you hear me?”

He nods, and coughs up a lungful of chlorinated water. He has a vague sense of an assembled crowd, and he is suddenly self-conscious of his flabby gut, hanging out there for all to see.

“I’m OK,” he says, rolling over and trying to sit up. He feels a pair of hands behind him, steadying him in place.

“Go slow.” He hears Oliver’s voice in his ear.

He sits up slowly and looks at Casey, who is fighting back tears. “What the hell happened?” she says.

“I don’t know.”

“You just went under.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Are you sure?”

She looks a little bit off to him, like he can’t tell how far away she is. He looks around the pool area, at the men standing around, the college girls, all staring at him. It’s like he’s seeing them all at a strange angle. In the distance he hears a siren, and by the time the ambulance shows up, he’s figured out that he’s gone blind in his left eye.

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