The Weird Travels of Aimee Schmidt: The Curse of the Gifted (18 page)

The body of a young man lay motionless. His white surfboard pitched back and forth angrily against the edge of the water, and a bungee cord, still attached to his ankle, kept it anchored from drifting out to sea. His body jerked towards the water slightly every time the water sucked the board into its hungry clutches.

As fast as she could, Aimee ran into the wind with it whipping salty pellets into her face. Within minutes she reached the young man and turned him over to his back, then ran her fingers across his jugular feeling for a pulse. Nothing. She frantically slid her fingertips across his neck searching for
something indicating a beating heart.
Am I imagining it?
She thought she felt something move. Aimee
leaned her ear across his face with her sandy-crusted cheek against his nose. She couldn’t feel any air escaping.

The adrenaline surged through her like heroin into the veins of a junkie. She flew automatically, methodically, through the CPR training she had last summer when she volunteered at the camp. Aimee
rushed through the steps of the test on the adult dummy.
Tilt the head. Check the mouth for anything lodged. Breaths.
Is it two, three, or five?
She couldn’t think straight, but she sealed her mouth across his and forced two long breaths. Her eyes focused on his chest.

Nothing.

She tried once more.
Reposition the head. Two more deep breaths.
Dammit, no rise in his chest. Something must be blocking the air.
Aimee straddled across his pelvis noticing for the first time a bloody, jagged bone protruding through his upper arm. She imagined other bones were broken, but at least it was the only one poking through the skin that she could see. Instantly Aimee exerted force against his diaphragm with her palms, pumping against his rib cage praying she had pushed with enough strength to expel whatever blocked
his air. No response. A couple more quick thrusts. “Come on, dammit.
BREATHE
!” screeched Aimee
through her teeth at the lifeless surfer. This time something purged. Water mixed with grit gushed from his mouth, but the young man showed no response. No sputtering. No wheezing. Nothing like she remembered in the CPR film.

She scooted back swiftly to check his airway
.
Nothing.
Reposition the head. Two quick breaths. Check for a rise of the chest. Pray to God.
Nothing. “Damn you, don’t you die on me!” she shrieked at him. Tears spilled out of the corner of her eyes soaking into her sandy cheeks.
Chest compressions. Do
them. Don’t stop. You can’t die. I wasn’t sent here for nothing.
One and two and three and four and five and six and…breathe…breathe…check.

Nothing.

She continued the compressions until she felt like fainting. An eternity passed. The young man’s skin turned from cool to icy cold. His lips and nail beds were pale blue. She leaned back on her heels and threw up her arms in the air shaking her fists at the evil colored sky. “Why did you
send me? To witness death!
WHY
?!” Her enraged voice vanished into the gale. She
collapsed on top of his body, no longer able to control the angry sobs inching up from the depths within her. The exhaustion of the journey consumed her, and Aimee lay there crying until her eyes ran dry.

The rain, pelting her back through her shirt, felt like needles being shoved through silk. The sting stirred her back to consciousness. Aimee reared up and looked at his face. Too young to die. He
was maybe a couple years older than Aimee
. Crazy fool! What was he doing out here by himself in a hurricane? Such a waste.
The anger turned to pity. But she knew she didn’t have a lot of time left, and
if she couldn’t save him, she wasn’t going to just let him lie here and get sucked out to sea when the tide pushed in. He was someone’s son, maybe someone’s brother, and perhaps someone’s lover. He deserved better than floating off to become shark bait.

Aimee jumped up and looked both directions. The storm was moving in fast. The beach was desolate. Even the seagulls were hunkered down. She looked back towards the dunes about a half mile
down course, and there it was. It had to be
his
truck; a four wheel drive with surf racks on the top.

She hesitated for only a second before diving into action first ripping off the bungee cord connecting him to the battered board. Immediately the board pulled out into the surf and bobbed around like a toy boat while the waves swallowed it, then regurgitated, shooting it through the curl. Aimee looked at his broken arm, grimaced, then grabbed his ankles. She tugged with all the strength a one hundred and twenty pound girl could muster. A second wave of adrenaline pumped through her, and she dragged his body through the wet sand like a feather across the surface of a pond. She had the power of four linebackers and within minutes they were at the truck. Aimee pulled the handle and it gave way. She peered into the cluttered interior and spotted a pile of clothes stuffed behind the driver seat, then craned in and snatched his shorts. They felt heavy, like the pockets were filled with items.

Her hand hit a lump in the pants’ back pocket. “Yes!” she exclaimed. Aimee yanked out a weathered, brown leather wallet and flipped it open. A Texas driver’s license was stuffed inside the slot with a plastic cover protecting it. The picture of a very different man stared back at her. This man wore a grin across his face. He had dimples, and his blue eyes were filled with life. The license said: Jack Reynolds, Brownsville, Texas, date of birth, January 23, 1960.

Aimee looked at Jack’s rigid body propped against the oversized tires of his beat-up rusty truck. The rain was picking up and really beating down on them. His front had been washed clean from the raging downpour. She had to do something, and she had to do it fast. Aimee figured she should have been gone by now. She had failed at saving him, but she darn well could preserve his remains as much as possible, and hope to God someone would stumble across his body. If she could just lift him into his truck, he would at least be protected from the crushing weather.

Quickly she plotted the mechanics of hoisting Jack into the truck, then inhaled a couple deep breaths. Within a minute she had Jack spread across the seats with his head propped against the passenger door. She placed his driver's license on the dashboard and stared at his lifeless face for a long moment before slamming the driver’s door.

Aimee didn’t know what else to do, where to go, or even how to get out of this forsaken stretch of the beach in the middle of a hurricane, and she wasn’t going to sit it out in a truck with a dead man. She grabbed hold of the mirror to keep the fearless wind from bowling her down. Suddenly a pain ripped across her right side, dropping her to her knees. A flying object ricocheted off her ribcage, and Aimee felt, and heard, something crack. She gasped for air, and instantly everything appeared snowy, like the pattern on a television after the cable goes off. She winced in pain and clutched her injured side. But before Aimee could suck enough air into her drained lungs to snap her mind back, she was gone.

The pitting sand, the slicing rain, the rusted truck, and Jack, his lifeless body…it all evaporated. And the warm, sultry air that had beat her around ferociously was replaced with the too familiar ice bath. The black tomb tightened its grip around her while Aimee spiraled through its inner depths. A crushing pain shot through her chest. For a fraction of a second she was acutely aware of the torture being inflicted on her body, and then it was gone. Her mind drifted away from her while she dropped through space. Nothing registered until the final second when her right side whacked against the Bug’s gear shift, then she flopped back against the driver’s door. She whipped back and forth once again before she slumped over the steering wheel. A horn blared loudly outside her window. Hysterical screams. The wailing of the horn again. More screams. And then Benny Cardenas stood beating on her window trying to get her attention. Aimee looked up. Blood was smeared across the steering wheel.

Aimee stared out the side window at Benny. His face was ghostly white, and his lips mouthed voiceless words at her. The window had blood spread across it. She reached up and lightly raked her fingertips across her head and felt wet.

“Ouch!” she cried. Aimee stared at her trembling fingers covered with red liquid.

Suddenly she realized what had happened. She had been in a wreck. Every inch of her body felt on fire. She forced open the door, and immediately Benny towered over Aimee, bombarding her with a million indiscernible questions. Voices, shouts, screams, and her name filtered into the cab, jabbing her confused mind. She pulled her feet out of the car and wobbly planted them on the ground.

In the background Aimee heard a siren wailing. Benny’s pickup was wedged into the back seat of her tiny car, the frame crushed in like a beer can that had been stomped on. Benny’s arms swallowed her and gently pulled her out in one tug.

“Aimee, I’m
soooo
sorry! I honked, but I guess you didn’t hear me. Are you okay? Oh, holy crap, man, I’m so friggin’
sorry...” Benny freaked after checking the damage. He kept muttering
senselessly while Aimee eased her weight against the side fender of his truck. Her brain couldn’t register his gibberish.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she muttered and winced through her lips. She clamped her arm across her chest to cushion her lungs. It hurt like hell to breathe, each breath felt like a knife being jabbed into her ribcage.

Benny backed away a bit, but left his hand on Aimee's shoulder securely pinning her against his truck just in case she started to pass out. Her head spun, but she was still upright. For the first time she
noticed at least a dozen set of eyes staring at her with shock and disgust.
Good, no one looks familiar.
She spotted Dr. Butler and Mrs. North tearing across the parking lot towards the huddle. The wail of
the siren was intensifying.
Must be heading this direction.
Damn, I hate this kind of attention. Why did I have to return inside a moving car?
She quickly surveyed the damage, both to her
little car and herself, and her stomach started to roll.
“
Mooo...ve!!!
” Aimee screamed at Benny and shoved him away as the contents in her stomach
from lunch emptied onto the asphalt.

“Ewwww,” groaned the crowd in unison.

Dr. Butler, with Mrs. North on his heels, weaved briskly through the spectators barking orders for everyone else to disperse but Benny and Aimee. A couple students obeyed, but the rest just hung back enough to give the approaching ambulance and patrol car room to slide in next to Aimee's dying Bug. Dr. Butler immediately started grilling Benny, who responded with a bunch of nods and shakes of the head. The cop stepped in and took over. Benny looked worse than Aimee while he was being interrogated.

Mrs. North checked from one point to another area on Aimee taking vitals and assessing damage. She heard Mrs. North asking questions, but she couldn’t answer. All she could focus on was the long stretcher wheeling her direction. Within seconds she had two more sets of hands checking the damage, and despite fervently telling them she didn’t need to go to the hospital, and nothing was broken, Aimee was promptly toted to the emergency room with Mrs. North holding her hand.

“So, Miss Schmidt…,” the rather cute young EMT started while he swabbed at the gash under Aimee's caked hair on the left side of her head, “…this might sting a bit. I need to assess the head wound before we get to the ER. It seems to be clotting well.” The yellow liquid soaked gauze turned dark brown when he dabbed at the opening.

Aimee was embarrassed enough being hauled off to the ER. She expected her dad would freak out, too, or at least have a conniption about the car. She bit her tongue to keep from yelling at the young man who continued to poke and prod. The other EMT, an older man, a little rotund around the middle and flushed in the face, had the blood pressure cup attached to her arm in a second, and began pumping unmercifully. The pain in her chest disappeared, and a new throbbing in her arm grabbed her attention. She bit her tongue harder, but it slipped. “Ouch!” she screamed.

“In pain?” the young one asked.

Of course I’m in pain, you good-looking idiot.
Suddenly the inside of the ambulance
started to change to a deep red to match her mood. The smell of the antiseptic he was swathing across her scalp seeped into her nose and her stomach started churning again. Before Aimee could warn him, the remaining contents in her stomach crept up and landed in his lap.
“God, I’m
sooo
sorry!” she exclaimed, turning from green to ten shades of red after she spit out
the remaining little chunks into the puke bag the older man stuck under her chin.

“Don’t worry about it,” he answered. “Occupational hazard. Should have seen it coming.” He chuckled at his own joke.

The spontaneous jerking of the body while she was vomiting caused the knife to poke at her chest again. “Ow…Oww…Owwwww!” Aimee moaned repeatedly.

“I think she might have a broken rib,” the plump EMT said to the cute one, surveying the raised, blacken splotch on the side of her rib cage. The two began moving in sync, and a slur of medical jargon started flying around the cabin. Mrs. North watched engrossed in the action of the two professionals while she tightly squeezed Aimee's hand.

The ambulance started to slow, and then suddenly came to a sharp halt. The back doors opened, and before they could wheel Aimee out, she heard a familiar voice. Even in its state of panic it sounded soothing considering everything she had been through today.

“Dad, how did you get here so fast?”

“Aimee, what happened?!”
The fear in his voice was nothing compared to the look on his face.
“My God, you don’t know how scared I was when I got the call from Dr. Butler!”