Page 18 of Vitamin Sea

And then, just like in the movies, a montage of her life flashed before her eyes.

Her school birthdays, vacations with her parents, high school graduation, her internship, meeting Liam, sleepovers with her girlfriends, Liam breaking up with her, and finally, her elation at being in Costa Rica with her best friend.

The irony.

Suddenly she felt something grab onto her arm and pull her downwards. Or was that upwards? Underwater, she couldn’t tell.

Oh no, she thought, even worse than drowning or blunt-force head trauma—I’m going to get eaten by a shark.

The thought paralyzed her with fear and suddenly everything went black.

◆◆◆

Chloe’s eyes were closed but it seemed she was no longer in the water. In fact, it felt like she was on solid land. Hard, ocean-free, solid land.

But that was impossible.

Unless she had actually died, and heaven was a place with solid ground. That really would fly in the face of all the cartooncloud depictions she had seen.

Still, it had to be heaven—the absence of burning hot fires told her that, despite jokes she and her friends had sometimes made, she definitely wasn’t roasting in the pits of hell.

Her entire body ached, and her eyes still stung; her skin felt sticky, and her lips were parched. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her arm and, what felt like, hair, brush her neck.

“Hey!” a low male voice said urgently.

Chloe moaned softly, and the male voice urged her again.

“Hey! Wake up!”

She felt a hand on the side of her face.

“Are you okay?” the voice asked urgently again.

Chloe groaned and felt the rim of a plastic water bottle being gently pressed against her lips.

She lifted her head a bit and the bottle tilted so a trickle of liquid dribbled into her mouth.

“My friend has gone to get a medic.” The voice sounded concerned. “Stay with me.”

A medic. Hmm, she thought through a fuzzy haze. I must not be dead.

Which should have come as a relief and probably would have if she didn’t feel so awful. How had her morning of enjoying the sea, sand, and sun, and centering herself in the here and now turned into bruises, bangs, cuts, a near-death experience, and an apparent savior?

She didn’t know, but she thanked her lucky stars that someone had intervened.

“I . . . can’t . . . eyes,” she gasped hoarsely. “Salt.”

“Oh!” said the man. “Of course, yes!”

Seconds later she jolted as cold-water splashed over her eyes and rinsed out some of the salt.

There was a plastic clicking sound as, Chloe surmised, the man unscrewed the cap off another bottle of water before pouring it over the top of her eyes.

She squeezed them shut and then felt a rough fabric gently rub against them.

A towel, she mentally placed the fabric. She wasn’t sure if in the near drowning she had lost a few neurons or if the shock of it was just taking her brain a bit to process.

Finally, the burning ebbed and she slowly opened her eyes.

“Hey!” the man said, his voice sounding much happier at seeing progress with his patient.

Her body was not cooperating—she tried to move her limbs and fingers, but it didn’t seem like they wanted to cooperate with her brain. She wasn’t sure if it was due to shock or if being smashed into the rocks had done some permanent—read: spinal—damage.

She tried to lift her right arm and it trembled.

The man noticed and placed a reassuring hand on her arm.

“Try not to move too much,” he said coaxingly. “We want to make sure the medic gets you checked out.”

Chloe obliged and gave up the body-mind struggle and tried to get a better look at her surroundings without moving her head. Her tongue darted out and licked her lower lip—it was dry and cracked from to the salt water.

The man took it as a cue to offer her more water, which he trickled into her mouth, and she drank gratefully.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice still hoarse. She cleared her throat and then asked him what had happened.

“I was out here with my friend, we were taking a walk on the beach, and we saw you get caught up on the rocks. You slipped and the waves smashed you into the rocks. We got to you as fast as we could. We were yelling at you, but you probably couldn’t hear us because of the water.

It looked like you were trying to feel your way closer to the shore, but then a big wave swept you off a rock and dragged you under. ”

Chloe’s brain tried to process this.

She remembered climbing on the rocks in an attempt to see what was on the other side of the beach. And she had a vague memory of being in the water. But she didn’t remember being tossed around and pulled into the ocean.

Her body, on the other hand, definitely remembered; the stinging and throbbing of her bumps, bruises, and cuts made it very apparent that what he was telling her was true. Her brain was probably just traumatized.

“I didn’t think we were going to get to you in time,” the man said, somewhere between relief and concern. It occurred to her that he might still have adrenaline coursing through his system.

Not that she could blame him. She didn’t remember what had happened to her, but it was terrifying to hear about. It must have been more terrifying to watch it happen.

“Thank you,” she mumbled. The gratitude she sincerely felt didn’t translate into her tone because of the sorry state she was in, but she had a feeling the man would understand.

He patted her arm reassuringly.

“I’m just glad we reached you in time.”

Chloe had been squinting due to the bright light of the sun, but it was suddenly blocked out and she opened her eyes a little wider.

And holy hell was she glad she had.

The man positioned his head so he was blocking out the sun; he was looking at her with marked concern.

Her eyes focused on his handsome face. Skin tanned to a golden perfection? Check. Cheekbones that looked like they belonged on a Roman God? Check. Deep, soulful eyes that were framed by haughty dark-brown brows and a head full of beach-tousled softly curled brown locks? Check.

On second thought, maybe she had died and gone to heaven.

A small smile involuntarily spread across her lips and her saviour’s expression turned from one of concern to one of astonishment and then a mirrored grin.

“I’m glad you’re going to be okay,” he said sincerely.

“Thank you,” she repeated, starting to regain her composure. “What’s your name?”

“Jack.” He smiled.

“I’m . . .” she took a deep breath, “Chloe,” she breathed out.

“Chloe,” he repeated.

Jack’s head turned to the side and relief washed across his features. She saw him wave.

Seconds later she heard voices and noticed three more people had joined them. Two appeared vaguely medical, and one was clearly Jack’s friend.

“Miss.” A man kneeled next to her and looked into her eyes. His dark skin was lightly wrinkled, and he had salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m Doctor Vargas.” He pulled out a small pocket flashlight and shined it into her eyes, one eye at a time.

As he went about his doctoring business, Chloe was cognizant of a woman doing other medical things to her. The woman lifted Chloe’s left hand and placed a blood oxygen monitor onto one of her fingers.

“Do you know where you are?” Doctor Vargas asked her seriously after he instructed her to follow the movement of his finger with her eyes.

“Costa Rica,” Chloe said a little hoarsely.

“Can you tell me what your name is?” he prompted her.

“Chloe.” Her voice was a little stronger now. “Chloe Ryder.”

“Chloe,” the doctor repeated. “Okay, I’m going to do a quick test of your reflexes.”

Her brain function had almost entirely returned to normal, and Chloe braced herself for whatever Dr. Vargas’s reflex test would consist of. Seconds later she felt a short, sharp whack to her knee and winced as her limb jerked in reply.

She was aware of Dr. Vargas and the woman, probably a nurse, speaking to each other in Spanish.

Then she watched as the woman lifted up her left arm, wrapped a blue rubber band around it, and squeezed it tight.

A sudden coolness swiped across her skin, followed by a sharp prick and seconds later Chloe felt the bizarre cold rush of saline course through her arm and into her system.

The adrenaline in her body started to wear off then as her brain finally realized she was no longer in danger. Which was good on one hand, but also bad because she began to feel the full extent of her injuries.

They were superficial of course—Dr. Vargas hadn’t put on any tourniquets to stop any bleeding—but she had a vague notion that one or two of the cuts might require stitches.

While Dr. Vargas and the nurse tended to her injuries and made sure she didn’t have anything internal going on, Chloe could hear Jack and his friend murmuring in the background.

Minutes later two more people appeared with a stretcher board, which they helped Chloe, who was moving gingerly, onto before buckling her in. Her body hurt with every step the medics took through the sand as she bumped along while strapped to the stretcher.

In addition to feeling pain, she was also starting to feel a creeping sense of embarrassment.

She was grateful that Jack had saved her from imminent death and thankful for the medical attention and appearing to only have sustained superficial injuries. But there was something mortifying about being strapped to a stretcher and carted down a beach by medics.

Her head was turned away from the sun and she squinted at the people lounging on the beach as they stared at her in curiosity. She felt like a circus freak—a sideshow for people to stare at and wonder what had befallen the bedraggled woman.

Suddenly, Chloe remembered her phone. What had happened to it?

She had tucked it into the front pocket of her denim shorts when she set out on her walk.

What were the odds that it hadn’t managed to get dragged out to sea during her near drowning?

Her flip-flops were long-since forgotten—they had likely been ripped out of her hands the minute the wave had dragged her into the ocean.