Weee-wooo. Weee-wooo.
Another wave of putrid, freezing river water sluiced against the wall, splashing up to Josie’s shoulders and into her mouth.
“Puh,” she spit out the water but held onto Amber’s hand, continuing to pull on it as the water dislodged some of her weight. Amber’s body surged upward, nearly knocking Josie back off the wall. She tried to reposition herself to get a better grip on Amber but her body teetered, off balance. Her fingers crept down Amber’s hand to her forearm, nails digging into Amber’s skin. The sound of Amber’s skull knocking against the wall as her body jostled upward in the current made Josie’s stomach turn.
Josie hooked one knee back over the chute side of the wall, spinning her body ninety degrees, keeping her pelvis pressed to the top of the wall and dragging Amber up so that her head was above water, the rest of her body still submerged and being batted about by the frothy current.
“Amber!” she shouted over the sirens.
Her arm shook in Josie’s grip as her body spasmed with coughs. Josie was close enough to hear the sound of her retching. More water splashed over Amber’s head and into Josie’s face, stinging her eyes, pummeling her skin with cold.
How long did a water release take? It felt like she’d been trying to drag Amber up out of the water for an eternity. Between the cold numbing her fingers and the water making her skin slick, Josie’s grip on Amber began to slip away. She pressed her thighs into the wall, straining to keep herself in place so she could try to gain better purchase. But each time Amber coughed, Josie’s clutch weakened, until she was only holding onto Amber’s thin wrist, her hands like two blocks of ice.
“Josie!” came shouts from the riverbank. Noah, Mettner, and Gretchen had moved back down so that they were directly across from her, her view of them obstructed every few seconds by another swell of water, whitewater rapids separating them.
The alarms raged on. Weee-wooo. Weee-wooo.
Finally, she heard what sounded like the screech of the metal gate above trying to shut down the water release. She sent up a prayer to anyone who would listen that this would be over soon.
Josie tried to readjust her grip on Amber’s wrist but more water came sloshing down in their direction, its trajectory changed by the closing gates. It shot toward them, punishing, and for a split second, Josie imagined it as a living thing filled with wrath, bearing down on their tenuous connection.
The water slapped Amber right out of Josie’s grasp. Josie felt her fingers clutch at Josie’s wrist as she was swept away, pulling Josie off the wall and into the chute with her. She didn’t even have time to cry out. Her lower body plunged into the seething water, one knee and her other shin knocking against the boulders below. As she half slid, half fell into the crease she’d just dislodged Amber from, her fingers caught on another gouge in the wall. With both hands digging into it and one of her knees pressing down into the opening of the cleft below, she stayed in place just long enough for the gate to scream shut and the water to slow to a lazy swirl.
She bobbed, feet paddling to keep her head above water. She let go of the gouge in the wall and looked around, adrenaline pushing all physical sensation from her consciousness. Her eyes searched the darkness, the shafts of light cast by three flashlight beams wobbling in her direction. Noah howled as he threw himself into the water, half paddling, half rock-climbing over toward her. His arms circled her waist and she let him pull her from the wall.
“My God, Josie. What were you thinking?”
Her body fell into sync with his, moving without thought toward the riverbank where Gretchen and Mettner waited. Still she looked downriver, hoping for some sliver of hope, a lock of auburn hair somehow visible in the darkness.
But Amber was gone.
When they were firmly on the bank, Noah dipped down and slid his arm under her knees, scooping her up, and began carrying her toward the path. Josie didn’t protest. Both her body and her mind had gone numb. The only thing she could feel was the phantom touch of Amber’s hand just before she was sucked into the watery night.
Over Noah’s shoulder, Josie saw Mettner standing alone, arms slack at his sides, flashlight dangling. He looked up. Josie saw the whites of his eyes from the light of the torch.
“I’m sorry, Mett,” she said, throat raw, voice scratchy. “I’m sorry.”
Seven
It didn’t take long for the parking lot to fill with emergency vehicles: a marked police unit, two ambulances, and the marine unit truck with its rescue boat on a tow behind it. Josie even recognized Chief Chitwood’s black Dodge Charger. Flashing lights drove out the night. Gretchen had made her and Noah sit in the front of Noah’s vehicle with the heat blasting on them. Noah reached into the back seat and grabbed the blanket he used for when their dog, Trout, got extra muddy on an adventure and wrapped it around Josie.
She opened her mouth to offer at least half the blanket to him or to say something about their combined body heat being useful but her teeth chattered so hard, she couldn’t get the words out. From the window, she watched Gretchen talk to the other responders while Mettner leaned against the side of his vehicle, head hanging. Josie felt an ache in her chest, familiar and uncomfortable. She looked away, not wanting to think about those first agonizing steps on the journey of unfathomable loss that Mettner now faced. Noah wouldn’t look at her. She could tell by the set of his jaw that he was angry.
He didn’t get angry often.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. The smell of wet dog was welcome after her plunge into the river.
“Are you?” he asked quietly.
“Noah.”
“I know I promised I would always run toward the danger with you, Josie, but there’s danger, and then there’s certain death.”
Guilt pricked at her again. “I knew I could make it,” she tried.
“Knew? You could not have known. You could have died out there. You almost did.”
“I had to try,” Josie responded. “She was alive, Noah. She was still alive when I jumped across the chute. She was still alive when she got swept away. Maybe she still is—”
“I’m not sure anyone could have survived that,” he interjected. “All those boulders, the current… but Josie, this isn’t about Amber—”
She readied herself to launch into a spiel about the dangers of their job, about all the near-death experiences they’d already had and survived, about how this was what she did; this was who she was; that he had always known that about her; how he had never had a problem with it before, or at least he’d never verbalized that; but her energy was sapped. Again, she felt Amber’s fingers press into her wrist and then slip away.
A few moments ticked by with only the rush of hot air from the vents filling the silence between them.