This trip to the Amazon was my idea. Shoving me overboard from the second deck of the riverboat was my husband’s.
As someone forces me upright, soaked and bleeding on the deck, I hack water from my lungs with a throbbing at the back of my skull. I remember only those two hot palms against my bare back and the jarring impact of my head against the edge of the boat.
The wound throbs, and I feel a wetness gathering at the base of my skull that has nothing to do with river water. Blood, warm and thicker than the river. I reach back, touching my scalp gingerly, and draw my hand into my field of vision. The amount of blood shocks me, tunneling my vision and making me nauseated. I roll to the side and vomit onto the deck.
“Breathe, Steph.” My name sounds strange, like it’s coming to me through a tunnel. Waterlogged ears make it hard to hear clearly, but I recognize the voice.
Steve. My husband.
My eyes shoot open and I look at him, unsure what I’m going to find on his face, knowing that he pushed me. But he looks down at me with concern, sheer terror in his eyes at the prospect of losing me. An interesting dichotomy of emotions since he just tried to end my life.
I recoil from him, scooting backward against the uniformed deckhand holding me upright. It’s a feeble attempt at putting distance between us, and Steve kneels at my side, taking my hand. Fighting the urge to pull back and reach for the perfect stranger holding me up, I let Steve have it and look into his eyes, searching them for meaning.
But when Steve looks at me, relief floods his face and his concerned mouth breaks into a smile. A smile I’d know anywhere. The same smile he gave me at the altar on our wedding day. The thought is chilling.
I stare back, unblinking, my face expressionless, hoping that he can’t discern the terror I feel.
Is he just going to pretend like everything’s fine?
It’s an idea so suffocating that I gasp for air.
“Breathe,” he repeats, squeezing my hand.
I shake out a nod that seems to go on endlessly, my head waggling before him, desperately trying to show that I’d never consider anything else.
“We need to take her to the infirmary,” a woman’s voice rises above the chaos.
With a slight French accent, she takes command of the scene and two deckhands show up with a narrow stretcher with the boat’s name embroidered on it. Jaguar. The tagline from their brochures hangs below in finer print. The trip of a lifetime.
Indeed.
They shuffle me onto the stretcher and carry me down the hallway, Steve following behind. We go below deck and arrive in a tiny white room with a small cot on one wall. Beside it is a stool and a small set of cabinets with a desk below. Thank God I’m not in need of emergency surgery. Or at least I don’t think I am.
Internal injuries could make me hemorrhage rapidly. I try not to think about it as they deposit me onto the bed. Steve rounds the corner into the room, his hand lingering on the doorframe and his shirt partially unbuttoned and hanging loosely against his chest. When he approaches, I notice the top button is missing.
“Mrs. Silkwood,” the French woman’s voice breaks my train of thought. She enters the tiny room and claims the stool next to the cot, forcing Steve to take a step back. I’m grateful for that, but I want a moment alone with her. I want to tell her what happened, but he seems hellbent on staying by my side. If the tables were turned, I’d do what he’s doing now. “Roll over onto your side for me.”
I do as she says, following her gesture to turn myself to face the wall. She snaps on a pair of gloves and examines my scalp. Cringing at the first touch, I contort my face with pain as she looks it over.
“You’ll need stitches,” she says.
I say nothing, unable to find my voice at that moment.
“Is that alright?” she asks me.
When I don’t answer, she turns around, her voice more distant, and repeats the question for Steve to answer. I assume he nods because he says nothing, but the woman returns to her work at my scalp.
“I won’t be able to numb you, so you’ll feel some pressure and possibly a little pain,” she says.
My body tightens, each muscle tensing in anticipation of the suture needle’s first prick. I think about the moment right before I went over the railing into the water. Inhaling, I feel the spot below my rib cage that’s sore from the impact against the balcony. Concrete proof that I went over the railing of the boat from the second story, as if the bleeding at my skull isn’t enough.
I wonder if she can see the palm prints on my skin. If Steve’s large hands bruised me. Did he push me hard enough for that to happen?
I search my mind for the moments just before he shoved me.
We flew from Los Angeles to Peru and boarded the riverboat. I’m not sure of much else. There’s something I’m forgetting. I can feel it like a piece of popcorn stuck between two molars. I worry at the spot with my tongue, coaxing it out, seeking relief and unable to leave it alone until it’s out.
What is it?
I feel the poke of the needle and the searing burn of the surgical thread passing through my skin. I stare at the white wall in front of me, feeling Steve’s presence in the room even though I can’t see him. His eyes bore holes into me, or maybe that’s just in my mind, but I swear I can feel his gaze on my back, tracing the lines of his handprints. I dread being alone with him. The nurse can’t leave.
My breath quickens.
“My name is Helene,” she says. I only nod, unable to form a coherent sentence. “I’m sorry for the discomfort,” Helene says. A word, along with pressure, that doctors and dentists use as a euphemism for actual pain. The needle feels huge and the split in my scalp is raw and tender. It feels like the thread zips through the needle hole, singeing my flesh with its speed. With each stitch, I grow more acutely aware that Helene is going to be done soon.
Thinking back on the last few days, I search for what might have happened before I went overboard. Did we get into a fight? We never fight. Our marriage is almost boring with how little conflict we have with each other. The beginning of our marriage blazed hot, though.
Passion can only take you so far. It burns fast and bright, but God, it’s like heroin. Instantly addictive, coursing through your veins and making the edges of your vision fuzzy. Everything takes on a pink glow. You don’t see the red flags that you should.
Helene tugs at the thread running through my skin. It burns as it moves against the wound. Squinting my eyes, I grind my teeth until they squeak against each other and I’m afraid I might crack a tooth.
Forcing myself to relax, I slow my breathing, still aware that Steve is just behind me.
What happens now?
How do we proceed?
Do I roll over and ask him why he shoved me off the boat?
Do I run? Where? I can’t.
Everything is fuzzy. I only remember the feeling of two palms against my back. Hot, someone else’s blood flowing near the surface of them as they contacted my skin, and a little damp with the sheen of sweat that’s unavoidable in the Amazon.
A memory comes to me like lightning striking the tin roof of a barn.
It’s the moment when I struck my head against the edge of the lower deck before I hit the water. I heard the thud before I felt it, and the impact rocked my brain inside my skull. I’m lucky to be alive, I realize.
There’s something else.
Something brushed against my leg in the murky water as I sank.
Scales. Mass. The threat of ancient muscle.
I try not to think about what it was, even though I know. I’m overcome by the idea that I should make sure something didn’t bite me.
“Do I have any bites?” I croak as Helene works on my scalp.
Her hands are still, shocked by the sound coming out of me.
“You don’t. You’re alright,” she says. “I looked when they brought you onto the deck. You are lucky. A woman once fell, and the caiman got to her before we could.”
I’m dazed by everything, unsure if she’s joking or being serious.
Steve doesn’t laugh, but I hear him sigh.
The same way he sighed when I gave him an ultimatum.
Leave her or lose me.
That was a lifetime ago. Jane’s ghost dances at the edge of my mind. The wife before me. The wife I stole from. Our love was born out of deceit and our trust has always been brittle.
I don’t want to roll over to face him, but before I know it, Helene tells me she’s done and rolls me onto my back. I glue my eyes on the ceiling until he moves into my field of vision, craning his neck out over the table and leaning so close that I smell his breath. My heart stops.
I hear Helene fussing with instruments on a counter against the opposite wall. I need to scream. He’s going to finish the job right now.
Finally, he speaks, his hot breath fanning across my face.
“My God, you could have died,” he breathes.
I exhale as he leans in and wraps his arms around me. Steve hugs me tight, pulling me up from the cot and my body goes limp. Dead weight in his arms, I hang there like a rag doll. Partially because I’m probably in shock. Partially because sometimes animals play dead to evade a predator.
And right now I feel like prey.
