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After the tsunami hit Los Angeles, May would peruse the internet looking for videos of before and after, strangely curious about the moment the wave hit the city and the damage it brought. She wondered, never voicing this out loud, if she would have traded that misery for the blood on her sweatshirt. Sticky, red, staining her face and hands along with dirt and sweat. What kind of nightmares would haunt her later at night? Would the bleeding woman morphing into her mom, dad, friends turn into a drowning victim resembling everyone and no one at the same time?
She finds herself thinking the same as her reflection in the motel’s pool distorts into circles. It’s an okay place, a one night destination on a longer trip. Her and Ravi share a beach themed room with shells, as opposed to Buck and Eddie’s jungle with too many tall green plants and a fake taxidermied monkey haunting the bathroom. They arrived around five, didn’t unpack. May locked herself in the bathroom and tried to focus on the generic beach photo hanging above the door to just stop and breathe. If Ravi noticed something, probably has been noticing something as they have been spending more time together, he did not say. He was likely under the assumption May would come to him on her own. But while May knew the importance of healthy communication, participating in it felt more challenging by the day.
That is how she found herself by the water shortly after midnight, sitting with her legs crossed and smoking from a pack of cigarettes she borrowed from the guy at the reception (he was trying to quit, allegedly). She hates the taste.
“Didn’t know you started smoking.”
May slumps her shoulders, sighing not unlike an unruly teenager. “I haven’t.” She responds begrudgingly, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms as if there is not a cigarette between her fingers. Eddie sits down next to her, bare feet dropping into the water. She watches him from the corner of her eye, hair all over the place and the mustache that makes her smile a little. She remembers seeing it for the first time, watching as Buck brushed it for him with the tiny brush. The adoration between the two of them is palpable.
“I broke up with Darius.” May confesses into the silence. The clock turns one. Eddie, leaning back on his hands, raises one eyebrow in question. He was clearly not expecting the conversation to turn this way and frankly, neither did May. But for a while now, months, she’s been avoiding the topic like it might burn her. Here, in a motel in what could very well be described as middle of nowhere, she is drawn to it like a moth to flame.
“I broke up with Darius,” she repeats, “and nobody knows.” And so she recounts the break up. The story has been perfected and polished, months in making - the exclusive premiere with Eddie Diaz, her former coworker turned friend. May tells him of purposefully missed calls and cancelled dates, excuses tinged with lies of school work and study sessions. Everything well rehearsed. How once they fully settled into university life, May slowly discovered her interest in him dwindling and the immense guilt that came with it might have been drowning her like the tsunami she never actually experienced.
“I loved him, Eddie. I swear,” she chokes out, not crying yet. She’s hunched over the pool, hands folded in her lap. “He was my best friend.” Two months after May started avoiding him, they officially met up in a park, choosing a random bench overlooking the scenery. It was sunny for the first time in days. May apologized, but could not look at him. She was sitting up straight, looking ahead at the people walking by. Didn’t even tear up. Some three years together gone, just like that. What a waste of a beautiful day. She continues to drown in spite of it.
“But you weren’t in love with him.” Eddie supplies helpfully. Knowingly. He shuffles a bit closer, putting his hand on her shoulder. May takes a deep breath, something in her chest unraveling. She glances at him, big brown eyes filled with warmth and understanding. She turns back to the water, the familiar distorted reflection. It’s too soon.
When May started working at dispatch, she responded to far more calls about drowning than she expected. The protocol includes a shout-tap-shout technique. She’d tell the caller to shout for response, tap the victim’s shoulder and shout again. A while after the fire at dispatch May, ironically, felt as if she'd been drowning. Every time she’d hear the shout and feel the tap, the water would drag her down again. On and off sensation lasting for months, eerily resembling her younger years. She attributed it to change, stress, exhaustion. The blood from Vicky’s throat has been covered up by soot and debris but it was still there. A layer upon layer. May coped and moved on but sometimes she’d still wake up with something heavy pressing on her body.
A week after her break up with Darius she stumbled back into her apartment, tipsy and giggling. That night, the weight in her chest began to loosen. Pressed into her mattress by a classmate she vaguely recognized from campus, she dug something new from deep within. The taste of mango chapstick on her lips, soft hands roaming everywhere and dipping under her waistband. Enveloped by the girl’s braids, May felt both hidden and exposed, seen in a way she hasn’t before. Insatiable, she could not get enough of her. In hindsight, it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Three days later when she ran into Darius again, she tried to explain but there were some things she had yet to admit to anyone.
“I’m a lesbian.” May turns to Eddie, fully, meeting his gaze. “I’ve never said that to anyone before.”
“Oh May,” is all Eddie says before enveloping May in his arms, hugging her tightly. “I’m proud of you. We all love you so much.” May sniffles, wiping away the tears she pulls away slightly.
“I know. It’s just that, I have been this specific person for so long,” the only daughter, an older sister, somebody’s girlfriend. “I did not think I was supposed to be, could be, someone else.” She knows Eddie understands, remembers their conversation at dispatch. How do I get back to that person I wanted to be? She’s familiar enough with his and Buck’s story. Heard them gush about each other long enough to know their bond did not manifest out of nowhere.
Shout-tap-shout. May knows she can’t stay afloat long enough. Not on her own anyway. If she has Eddie, Ravi, her family holding her up, she might just manage to get to the shore. To hear the second shout. The tsunami water never reached her, the ocean never claimed her as its own. But it is possible she has jumped into the water over and over again, drowning. Ran back into the burning dispatch building to crawl under the debris and hide. May knows, they would pull her out again. Her mom will do everything she can so May can get out of the car surrounded by charged water. Bobby will cut through any wall that’s keeping her inside. And she would do the same for them, for Vicky and Claudette, anyone. It dawns on her then, in the dark.
Is it three yet?
“There’s something else.” May smiles wryly, finally putting out the cigarette she barely even smoked. It leaves a black spot on the pool tile that she decides to ignore. Eddie looks at her quizzically, he might as well hit his monthly confessions limit. The tension has eased, the general atmosphere has lightened with another passing hour. “I dropped out of college.” May can see this particular piece of information is the last thing he expected to hear today.
“I’m going to be a paramedic,” she says.” I want to be a paramedic. Like you and Hen, and Chimney.” The determination in her voice must mean something as Eddie nods, all soft. She has been pondering over it for a while, weeks, if not more. She thought quitting dispatch and finally starting college meant returning to normalcy. Maybe in another universe there is a May Grant that does exactly that. A May Grant who did not get stuck in a car with a dying woman, whose mom was never attacked and who never stepped foot in a burning building. But this May, the one sitting by a motel pool with Eddie Diaz at three in the morning, is swimming to the shore and by saving herself she’ll save others too.