The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (ebook reader online txt) 📗

and Clair was surprised. She enjoyed it. The youngest member of the group, she nonetheless found a deep companionship with these people, mostly women, many of whom had been coming for years. Mary was the reason. Perpetually cheerful, she sang tunes from musicals, while, even at seventy-five, she set the pace for the entire class. She learned they had parties for any reason: a birthday, anniversary, new house, and sometimes, a memorial for one of their group who died. Standing around in their Speedos, looking like a group of friends from for ever, who had wandered into a parallel universe where time stood still. Other than the gray hair and wrinkled skin, they were fit and engaged in life. Claire loved them.

Fatigue hit her like a train towards the end of class. She had been warned about this side effect of chemotherapy, unlike any normal tiredness. This must be it, she thought. Several people had already left the pool, sitting in the adjacent hot tub. Clair waved at them, as she left, feeling as though she had found a group of friends. As she walked down the long, darkened, empty hall towards the women’s locker room, that tiny flutter in her chest, a lightness to her step, a momentary feeling of happiness startled her. At first, pushing it away, then allowing the warmth to spread through her bones. As she entered the locker room, Clair felt herself hit the wall, sliding down, until the rough brown carpet met her cheek.

Time drifted past. She heard voices, like birds warbling in the morning dew, trilling and light. Hands were on her, lifting her up. Sitting her on the bench, telling her to take sips of orange juice the receptionist had brought down, after being alerted by one of the ladies.

‘Here, Clair, take this,’ Pat said. ‘You probably have low blood sugar. A collection of voices, all talking at once, brought her back.

‘Are you OK now? Do you need to go to the hospital?’ JoJo asked.

‘Oh no, not the hospital,’ Clair said, standing up. ‘I’m OK. I got really dizzy. Thanks for the juice. I didn’t eat before coming in this morning.’

‘You can’t do that, you know. Even just a bite of something, or keep some juice or candy with you. But do eat some protein and a carbohydrate, at least first thing. You know why it’s called breakfast don’t you? Because we break our fast. That means you are on empty, girl.’ Nell, the retired nurse in the group spoke with authority.

‘I know, I know. I promise, I will from now on. Ah, did any of you see a woman leaving just now? Or before?’

The women looked at each other, then back at Clair, shaking their collective heads, no.

On her walk back to the housing, Clair couldn’t forget the odd woman who reminded her of a selkie. Wondering if it had in fact happened or if it was all a hallucination brought on by low blood sugar. And there was the water; it had felt different to her, like a second skin. The lights illuminating the bottom of the pool had danced like strobes, like the rays of sunshine cutting through the dense darkness of the Pacific, that morning when she had walked into the ocean, the last time she had seen Devon.

The realization that she had seen him hit her like a thunderclap. She had forgotten that. The memory emerged like a diver coming up for air, too fast, leaving her dizzy and disoriented. The woman in the locker room. She hadn’t imagined that. Clair felt swallowed up by these images and feelings. She longed to be home, to lie in her bed, and sleep. Not the sleep of restoration, but the sleep of dreams. Lucid dreaming, she knew it was called, and she had found the way in. She would find Devon again, in her sleep, and through the uniting of their energies. The early morning mist was drifting down through the rising fog off the ocean, a wind picking up, mixing the two, creating sea smoke, a nearly impenetrable curtain of dense moisture, sky and cloud come to earth, as Clair hurried to her new, temporary home at the cancer center, using dead-reckoning as her compass.

Chapter 21

Clair

The black Mercedes was parked in front of the cancer center, adjacent to the apartment complex for residential patients. The sight of it caused her stomach to tighten, her throat to constrict. She felt dizzy again. Seeing Adam’s car parked so close to her home, this safe place where she could focus on healing, felt like an invasion. Breathing in, I am calm, she said to herself. Breathing out, I smile. Over and over, she practiced the techniques Naomi had taught her as ways to ride the waves of change her body, mind, and it seemed, spirit were passing through. Slowly lifting her head, she leaned against the outside of the building, eyes closed, waiting for the light-headedness to pass. Waiting for her heart rate to slow, and a normal beat to emerge. Not flight, not fight, not freeze she said to herself. Just ride it out. It will pass. Breathe in, breathe out. Eventually she was able to open her eyes, look through the rain, now falling hard, towards the door of the cancer center. He was probably in there, asking about her.

She knew they wouldn’t tell him anything, patient privacy laws protecting her. She hadn’t signed a release for any information to be shared, not with Adam. She had allowed Ben and Jodie to receive information, in case she died or got sicker, and couldn’t speak for herself. They were her health care representatives. Adam, he was nothing to her now. And her earlier hope for some form of reconciliation or new beginning felt like an adolescent daydream.

Rain was coming down now, a soft blanket. Its sound drumming on the parking lot transfixed her, freeing thoughts back to the water. Like a tidal surge, the desire to return pulled her out