The Maui Effect (Man-Made Trilogy #1)

On Drowning

Dane

They say drowning is peaceful. Dane felt anything but. He was somewhere dark underwater, choking and looking up toward the light. There was no surface, only lighter shades of white overhead. He went to kick and nothing happened. Desperate for air, he gulped reflexively to keep from sucking in the water. He used his arms to pull himself to the surface, summoning every bit of strength he could muster.

What scared him most was not the dreaded two-wave hold-down, or that his body might be coughed up on the rocks at any moment. What had him freaked was that his legs didn’t seem to be functioning. There was no sense of peace, only panic. People are wrong about that, he thought.

The surface seemed to be getting farther and farther away, and he was about to give up the fight when he broke through to the air. His mouth opened and he heaved and coughed and sucked in more water. Instinct had him searching for his board, but it was nowhere in sight. Then he felt around to see if his leash was still attached to his leg, but he could not find his legs.

Breathe, motherfucker!

Dazed and half blind from the sand-stirred water, he managed to make out that the current had pulled him up the coast and he was drifting toward the inside beach break. He wondered where Kama was. There should have been the sound of a jet ski engine. When a wave broke just outside of him, he tried to dive under but had no leverage. Instead, the wave plunged him beneath the surface. Lightning shot out from the middle of his back.

He went limp and descended into darkness again, thinking of ‘Iwa the whole way down. Her hard-won smile. Sitting on the rock at Waikula. How she always tasted like rainwater. How he hadn’t told her he loved her, even though he did, because for him those three little words were more frightening than a hundred-foot wave.

Dig deep, brah.

Unwilling to fade into seawater, Dane began to claw toward the surface again. He broke through, keeping just his face above water. Another one of these and he would be fish food. Then he heard an engine. He weakly held up an arm, but realized he needed both to stay afloat. A few seconds later, Hope and Yeti sped in. Hope came in fast, slowed as Yeti leaned down and reached out his hand. Dane grabbed on.

“I can’t feel my legs,” he yelled as Hope punched it.

With the momentum, his body swung onto the sled, proving his legs were still there, even though he couldn’t feel them, Yeti holding tight to his wrist. They went over a wave and came down hard. Dane screamed and as he put his face down, everything went black again. When he folded back into consciousness, Yeti was lying next to him, holding him to the sled with one arm. “We got you, bro. Hang in there.”

On the beach, Dane lay on the sled fading in and out as pain radiated from a point in his back. A crowd had gathered, some speaking in English, some in Portuguese. Someone placed a towel over him. Call 112! Can you feel your fingers? How about your toes? At some point an ATV drove up. Yeti shooed everyone back, and with help from a young fisherman, slid Dane onto a rescue board. Dane wondered where Kama was but was too exhausted to speak.

Yeti squeezed his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “You’re going to be good, mate. Hold that thought and don’t let it go.”

Dane could only nod.

Time had become as fluid as water, and at some point, Kama appeared and refused to leave his side, even though he was shivering so hard his teeth clattered. Two women brought them blankets and hot tea. He lay on the beach staring up at the sky. Clouds, seagulls, an airplane way overhead. And was that ‘Iwa singing? He tried to sit up to see where she was.

“Where is she?” he said to no one in particular.

Yeti gently held him down. “Who?”

“‘Iwa.”

“‘Iwa is on Maui, mate.”

That couldn’t be. “No, I just heard her voice.”

Yeti shook his head and Dane closed his eyes and faded out again, coming to as he and Kama were loaded onto a helicopter headed to Lisbon. Rotors whirred, and they lifted off.

Kama sat by his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

Rule one. No blame.

“The whitewater took over the ski and I lost power. I had to bail and swim in.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Kama said again.

This time his voice caught.

Dane opened his eyes and looked up at his friend. “Can you call ‘Iwa?”

“As soon as we get there.”

“Will you tell her I love her? Please.”

“Brah, tell her yourself, you’re going to be fine.”

The hospital was full of shiny floors, white coats and bright lights. The paramedics transferred Dane into the emergency room, where he was poked and prodded and hooked up to an IV, then sent for an MRI. They had him doped up just enough to not feel much without losing his awareness of what was happening.

A fracture at T11/T12. Neurologic involvement. Pinched spinal cord. Emergency surgery. Kama, Yeti and Hope were all in his room when the news was delivered. No one said a peep. Dane stared down at his legs under the sheet, willing them to move. They didn’t.

“Can I get an interpreter? I have questions,” he asked.

Yeti stepped forward. “I speak Portuguese. What do you want me to ask?”

Of course he did.

“Ask him when the fuck I’m going to be able to move my legs again.”

Yeti and Dr. Monteiro broke into a discussion, with the doctor repeatedly shaking his head. The balance of Dane’s life hung somewhere in that unintelligible conversation and he was scared. After years of good fortune, his luck had run out. The medication made him sleepy and he went down a rabbit hole. What if, in this lifetime, you were doled out a finite amount of luck? You could use it all at once, or you could spread it out to last until you died. Maybe Dane had been going about life all wrong.

“I fucked up. I’ve been overspending my luck,” he mumbled.

Hope came over and stood by his side, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Nonsense. Luck is something we generate ourselves. And the more you make, the more you’ll have. At least that’s what my grandpops used to say. So you actually are not out of luck, you are in luck. You survived.”

Dane felt a sting in his eyes. “You call this luck?”

Yeti held up a hand. “Hang on.”

Dr. Monteiro was pointing to the large image of Dane’s spine on the light box on the wall and rattling on about something.

Yeti went in for closer inspection, then turned to Dane and said, “The good news is your spinal cord isn’t severed, it’s most likely just badly bruised. But they need to stabilize this fracture to prevent the bones from moving, and that means surgery. He believes your situation will improve once the steroids kick in and the inflammation goes down.”

Kama jumped up. “Yes!”

“When will I walk again? Or surf?” Dane wanted to know.

The word surgery slinked around the edges of his consciousness and he shuddered at the idea of someone cutting into his spine.

“He says that nerves heal slowly, so it could be weeks or even months.”

“Months?”

Dane turned to the window, where murky shafts of light shone in. He wanted to close his eyes and drift off, change the dream.

Yeti loomed over him. “You sustained a hard blow to your back, mate. It’s going to take some time. But you will heal, we’ll make sure of that. Your biggest battle is going to be in your mind.”

Dane looked around at his salty-haired friends wrapped in blankets, a ragged, bloodshot crew, and felt a deep affinity for them. Still, he wanted nothing more than to tear this hospital gown off and run out the door. To rewind time back to the moment when he chose Nazaré over Maui. Over ‘Iwa.

Regret was something he had usually steered clear of. He had never seen the point. You might regret the thing you did or regret the thing you didn’t do, but you couldn’t go back and change any of it. In his mind, regret had always seemed like a way of not owning up to your choices, a sentiment for weaker-minded people than himself. Now he was assaulted by the force of it as he lay here in this sterile bed, and it was far worse than any two-wave hold-down.

The worst part was, at the time, a voice inside had told him he was making the wrong choice when he had bailed on ‘Iwa. But he’d made it anyway. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for love after all. Or maybe he was too messed up in the head to even know what love was.