Undertow by Callie Kingston Page B

netherworld, unable to escape.
    Sometimes she bobbed to the surface like a whale briefly coming up for air before sinking back into the watery depths of its home. Other moments were flooded with panic. She opened her eyes but was trapped inside a black cave. Paralyzed and lying prone, a muffled scream escaped her throat.
    “Shh, Missy.” A round face, framed in a cloud of tight gray curls, appeared in front of her. “It’s okay, doll. You’re waking up a little, that’s all.”
    Marissa identified the outline of a squat woman beside her bed, leaning on a mop in the blue glow which filled the room. She peered down at her benignly, an ordinary looking angel, if she was one.
    “You’ll be fine, Missy. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
    Her eyelids shut as she pondered her words, and she was caught again by the grasping abyss which refused to relinquish its prisoner. She tried to protest but was too exhausted to fight. Everything dissolved as she sank into the black world which had become her home.
     
      
    “Patients who have sustained a brain injury with coma don’t suddenly wake up.” The man’s voice was familiar, but Marissa couldn’t place it. “They emerge. Gradually. It’s an unpredictable process.”
    “How long will that take? Days? Weeks? When will we know if she’s okay?” Her mother’s voice was unmistakable: nasal and anxious.
    Marissa stirred, anchored to the bed, unable to break free from its moorings. Her mother was at her side, squeezing her hand.
    “Sweetie, are you awake?”
    Marissa strained to open first one eyelid, then the other; she kept them fluttering half-open for a moment.
    “Doctor, is she waking up?”
    “As I was saying, Mrs. Johansen, her recovery will take time,” the man said. “Your daughter is in a sort of twilight sleep, rising to varying degrees of awareness periodically. No one can determine how long her coma will continue.”
    Her mother was speaking, but her voice was so distant that Marissa couldn’t understand her words. The undertow tugged again and she railed against it. The man’s voice, its baritone tones strong enough to carry across the lurching waves of her consciousness, prophesied.
    “When Miss Johansen wakes up…”
    Losing the battle, she sank under the surface and was swept away.
     
      
    “Good morning.” A sharp rap on the door accompanied the greeting. When Marissa failed to respond, the rapping became more insistent.
    “Breakfast,” the voice called again.
    Marissa opened her eyes and blinked at the blurred edges of her surroundings. Her contacts must be gone. A tiny woman shuffled into the room. Plates with stainless steel covers and cups wrapped in plastic graced the tray she carried.
    Marissa shook her head.
    The woman frowned at her. “You need to eat, or you won’t get your strength back.”
    Gray light filtered in the room. On the windowsill sat a bouquet of yellow flowers and a stuffed animal holding a heart-shaped balloon. A narrow table beside her bed held the breakfast tray and a pink teacup; African violets rimmed the top like purple foam on a cappuccino.
    The realization struck her: she was in a hospital. It must be a mistake. What was she doing here, instead of in the ocean, with Him?
    Marissa focused on the wall beyond her feet, painted mint, or some other supposedly healing shade, while the woman slipped a blood pressure cuff around her right bicep and pumped, squeezing her arm tight until felt it would pop like a balloon. Marissa lay as stone through the requisite ear temp check. She bit her lip and counted down from five hundred, making it to seventy-four before the woman finally left.
    Another knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply, a tall man entered the room and strode toward her bed.
    “How are you this morning, Miss Johansen?” He scanned his clipboard and looked up at her. “I’m Doctor Spencer.”
    He was too young to be a doctor, she thought. His face was boyish, a little too round, and