THE SILENT SINK

A FIRST RESPONDER, DROWNING IN GUILT, STRUGGLES TO BE THE HERO IN HIS OWN LIFE Glancing at his watch, Bob the realtor waves to the station wagon rolling slowly up Arkana Lane. Either the driver is very old, or doesn’t know where he’s going. “Hi Mr. and Mrs. Hatch!” he exclaims brightly to Dave, who exits the driver’s side, and Beth, his attractive young wife, who practically springs out onto the sidewalk. Dave walks around the car at a pace more befiting his thirty-two years as Beth leans into the back to unbuckle their six year old son, Roger. “I really think you’ll like this one” Bob says, pointing to the ranch style home. “It’s got everything your family needs and it’s affordable enough that it won’t break the bank. The floor plan gives you plenty of space to grow, and it even has a pool to keep you cool through those hot summer days. Come summer, the kids will love it!” he gushes, eyeing the little boy now clutching at Beth’s skirt.

At the mention of the pool, Dave looks uneasy. “A pool… I didn't know the house had a pool,” Beth said, turning to Dave, “I know how you feel about pools, honey. Let's keep looking.”

The realtor felt his fish getting away.

“Dear, every home in this neighborhood has a pool. There is hardly any getting around it.”

Beth's face turned to stone. “My husband is a fireman and has seen too many drowning victims. A pool is not for us, right Dave?”

They’d gone over this. He’d seen up close, tragedies that befell children with pools. It was a risk he wasn’t willing to take with his. “Honey, let’s just look, as long as we’re here,” urged his wife.

  Grudgingly, Dave followed them up to the front door. Once inside, it was clear it was exactly what they’d been looking for. In the back yard, he’d had to literally pry his wife and child away from the pool’s edge and he too, was mesmerized by the cool, blue water. Visions of barbequing by the pool with Beth and Roger filled his head. He could protect them. Accidents happened to foolish people, not to those who knew how to avoid them. “We’ll take it.” He told the realtor.

 ****

I’m ‘gonna race dad to the end of the pool today!” chirped Roger. “You’ll probably beat him!” Beth snorted, “He’s pretty old!” Dave looked around the breakfast table at his little family, savoring the sound of their laughter. His was the perfect life. They’d settled in just fine. He had a challenging job with the Winston Valley Fire Department, a beautiful home, and a beautiful family. He was smiling with satisfaction, when in the background, a TV announcer droned, “Thousands line up at Apple Stores across the country waiting for the release of the new Apple iphone! People have been camped out for days to be the first in line! Apple expects projected sales in the millions in the first week alone.”

“Look at those idiots,” Dave remarked, “bad enough they can’t keep their noses out of their regular phones, do they really need more stuff on them? Society’s going to hell.” Cell phones were Dave’s one pet peeve… an indication that the culture was in decline. He hated the idea of being a slave to a little box, and refused to let it interfere with his time, family, or anyone else for that matter. While he always answered for work and son Roger, his wife knew to use her cell phone only for emergencies.

“Well dear, I’m sure the iphones have some redeeming qualities or so many people wouldn’t want them,” she replied patiently.

“If people would just get off their damn phones,” Dave railed, “They’d notice what’s happening right in front of their noses!” Dave had a working theory as a first responder that most of the accidents he attended might have been avoided if people just paid closer attention to real life. He walked over and snapped off the set.

He thought back to a day at the city pool before they’d bought this house. Roger was practicing cannonballs at the deep end, when a toddler, who’d been playing quietly near a trio of women, ambled over and launched herself right off the edge behind him. The women chattered away, pecking at their phones, as the child sank straight to the bottom with barely a splash or a sound. Nobody noticed. Dave had launched himself into the water and hauled the choking, sputtering child to the surface, handing her over to her mother… but no sooner had he settled back into his chair than it happened AGAIN.

 The girl’s mother, already back on her phone, failed to notice her toddler waddling over to fling herself into the deep a second time. Incredulous, Dave dove once more to the rescue. “Time to GET OFF THE PHONE!” he snapped, as he handed her back again, to a shaken, and very chagrined mom, who quickly tucked it away.

Back home, Beth was incredulous as well. “What people don’t know,” Dave told her, “is that drownings are quiet, intimate affairs. People don’t thrash, except in the very first few seconds, and they never scream or call for help, because once your lungs take on water, you lose the ability to do any of that! That’s how children drown… silently… in seconds. I call it ‘the silent sink’.” Dave laid it out in no-holds-barred, graphic detail, the days near tragedies so fresh in his mind, they had actually struck a terror inside him. He wanted his wife to feel that terror so she would remember to be extra vigilant. When their conversation ended, he felt sure she understood his urgency.

It was the beginning of summer and Beth and Roger had their heads together at the kitchen table when Dave got home from work. “Look Daddy! Mommy and I fixed the cell phones so we have special rings! I’m ‘gonna call you right now so you can hear, ok?”

“Ok, sport,” Dave laughed, as Roger dialed the phone with an excitement only very young children can manifest. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” tinkled softly from his pocket. “I guess I’ll always know who’s calling me now, huh?” he chuckled, ruffling his sons blond hair.

“My teacher said the new phones have even more stuff,” Roger told his father, “stuff for eNergencies too!”

“Well, ours are good enough for all that.” he told his son. ”If you have an emergency, you can just call me.”

“Ok, Dad.” Roger said

“Know the number?” Dave asked.

“7-2-6-4-4-4-5-0-0-1” Roger recited.

“Good Boy!” exclaimed Dave and Beth in unison.

The Winston Valley Fire Department covered a wide area. Engine Company 18 was kept especially busy that summer, part of that had to do with the ability to reach help more quickly with new smartphone technology. Dave accepted this, but still viewed it all as a breakdown in real face-to-face communication. He was working dispatch with his Captain, Chief Daryl Raines, and was elbow deep in paperwork when a call crackled out over the speaker;

"Dispatch to Rescue 18. Respond code 3 to a 421, drowning, possible 419 at 52729 Arkana Lane- meet subject in back yard of this residence. Do you copy?”

For an instant, the address didn’t even register… but it registered with his chief, who’d enjoyed enough barbeques there…

The chief snatched the handset.. “RESCUE 18 ENROUTE!” he shouted, then ran like hell for an EMT vehicle without waiting for Dave to come around. Dave was off the big rig before it screeched to a halt in front of his house, hitting the yard at full bore. Two figures knelt over the body of his baby boy, lying poolside, in a darkened circle of concrete.

There was his Captain, mouth to mouth, counting silently, while concentrating on forcing air into the lungs of  the limp child, and Beth, who alternated between a low moan, and the words, “No no no…please…no…”

Suddenly there was a frenzy of coughing and movement. The sound of his little boy vomiting was the most beautiful sound Dave ever heard. The captain scooped up the child and rushed past him to a waiting ambulance. The tension Dave had been holding let go in a rush, and he lost his lunch on the lawn, as the true reality of what had almost happened flooded him. Beth looked at Dave with eyes that had seen the depths of hell and wailed, “Oh my God…I almost lost... oh my God...I don’t know wha…I was standing right…right…there, just potting a …I was looking right at….I don’t know how…it… hap…hap...!” She hiccupped, leaning toward Dave’s sturdy shoulder, aching for the comfort of his arms, but instead, she felt a subtle stiffening of his body, almost an electrical current, which made her flinch, as if she’d been slapped.

Dave stood there, crazy with emotion, “How could this have happened?...Beth KNEW better…He’d made sure she knew every detail about how to avoid a tragedy like this…he’d told her over and over…drilled it into her…drownings happen in the blink of an eye…she KNEW that…he’d made SURE she knew that!” Suddenly he was consumed with a kind of blind fury. “How could she have been so CARELESS?”

Her incompetence had almost cost him his son. Beth looked up at him with huge, tear-filled eyes, “I tried to dial for help…” she choked, “but the numbers…. if it hadn’t been…for…neighbors…” A part of him knew, in that moment, she needed all the comfort he could give, more than any other time in their life, but he had none to give. All he had to do, was open up his arms, tell her everything was all right, he could rescue her from guilt, but instead, he let her drown.

In the weeks that followed, ripe with the understanding of what they had almost lost, they doted on their little boy, but they did it separately. Each time Beth attempted to bridge the gap between them, Dave retreated, anger burning like a lit fuse in his brain. While doting on his son, he treated Beth with a contempt he barely understood, as if having tasted the bitterness of blame, it served to keep it away from himself. He longed for life as it was before.

Months passed until Beth approached him timidly, “Honey, please talk to me. I don’t know how to reach you anymore. Please… forgive me. I’m so sorry. I can’t live like this. I don’t understand how you can be so cold?” she cried.

“I don’t understand how you can be so stupid,” he snapped, turning away. He was folding a tee shirt when the door closed quietly behind him. Dave shut himself off, going to work now with only muscle memory getting him through the days and nights, and ignoring Beth altogether.

His theory on the isolationism of present society became incensed by every smartphone advertisement he stumbled upon. He imagined the world to be drowning in disconnected chatter, a non-stop tidal-wave of verbiage with no end in sight. He raged against the world in general, “One of those high-tech phones would not have made any difference at all… would it?” The more he focused on the submersion of society at large, the more his personal world seemed to become intertwined with catastrophic events involving water.

Most involved water and alcohol, driving home another warning he’d repeated many times, “If you’re going to drink, even a little,” he’d told Beth, “stay the hell away from water! Drinking and drowning go hand in hand.” Recent cases proving this theory involved a rock musician, a dentist, a stripper, a boat captain, a bride, and a group of foolhardy teenagers- (more children, breaking their father’s hearts). Each and every one in the end, he knew, had suffered ‘the silent sink’.

Dave found solace in his small acts of heroism, but he still could not be the hero for Beth. Finally, she took a stand and ordered him to go. She was doing a good job of beating herself up on her own. She didn’t need extra gut punches from him. “By the way, she told him in parting, I intend to call your cell phone whenever I fucking want.”

  Dave moved into a little guest house with a small back yard hot tub, which he thought might help him unwind. The very first night found him thrashing in bed, his sweat-drenched body vibrating with adrenaline.

He braced for the re-run, in which he would relive, wide-awake, the terrifying, re-occurring nightmare. In it, he is fighting his way upward from under the water, limbs pumping, lungs on fire, toward a glistening surface, when his sodden lungs finally cause his body to quit. In a final realization that he will drown, he wakes, to find himself hyperventilating in his own bed. Startled back to the present by the strains of his son's ringtone, he gropes for his cell, attempting to come back to center.

“Hiya' Roggie,” he says with the kind of forced brightness reserved only for children and bosses.

“Hi Daddy!” chirps Roger.

What’s up little duck?” He asks, borrowing words from his estranged wife.

“I miss you Daddy,” says the little boy “Miss you too, Monkey,” Dave says. I’ll pick you up after school tomorrow, ok? Tell your mom.”

"You can tell her Dad, she’s right here…”

“That’s ok Sport. You tell her for me,”

“Ok Dad,” Roger replies, a sprinkling of loss settling softly on the last word.

Dave's nightmares grow to include water torture. Awake, he notices water all around him. (Hell, even his wife’s ringtone, “Moon River” smacks of moisture.) All he longs for now is sleep, knowing it will bring renewed strength and clarity, but he’s afraid to close his eyes at night fearing he might drown. With sleep, he might save his marriage… put his family back together… if only he could sleep…
He pours himself a glass of wine, and it begins to do the job of easing his body into a compatible mode for slumber. He’ll soak, then call Roger to say goodnight before going to bed, maybe even talk to Beth. Outside, the hot tub glints in the glow of a street lamp. Too tired to heed his own warnings, he guzzles the wine and walks outside to test the water.

His defenses are down, the water not so terrifying. Stripping naked, he sets his phone aside, and climbs into the steaming liquid. “No need to worry about dead children tonight...” Leaning back against the slats, he savors the feeling of the tension falling away, his eyelids begin to droop, his head lolls forward, and his breathing becomes deep and relaxed. At the intersection where alcohol, and finally, sleep, collide, his languid body loses purchase on the tub’s narrow ledge, and sinks, silently, beneath the water’s surface. From the tubs edge, the tinkling melody of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” begins to chime.


- by taree Belardes (c)3/2/13
NYC MIDNIGHT SHORT STORY CONTEST 2013
Genre: Historical Fiction
Subject: Drowning
Character: A Fireman
word limit: 2500
Time limit: 7 days