Sympath

Chapter 1-2

‘Have a drink of water,’ Annie offered, handing Lucas her bottle. It was an automatic reaction. Drinking water made you feel better when you were sick, or tired. It was her mother’s solution to everything she ever complained about, so it was comforting just to hear the words. ‘Have a drink of water’ meant that someone knew what to do. ‘Have a drink of water’ meant that you couldn’t possibly be about to see a complete stranger fall down dead on the beach right in front of you. Didn’t it?

Preoccupied with staring at his foot, Lucas took the bottle and gulped down a few swallows. Then he frowned, and peered more closely through the clear plastic at the brownish water inside. She’d forgotten about that. He probably wasn’t expecting to be offered Nalong River water. Snatching the bottle back and hiding it behind her, Annie tried to look casual.

‘Er, thanks. I think,’ he mumbled. He glanced at Kelly, who was hovering nearby, fiddling with her necklace and chewing her lower lip, and then looked back at Annie. ‘Really, you don’t need to stay. I’ll be fine. This is all just a precaution. It hardly got me.’

Kelly crouched down to look him in the eye, as if assessing his state of mind. ‘I think we’re the ones who are supposed to be keeping you from panicking, not the other way around. Perhaps we should move you to the shade while we wait for the paramedics?’

Something flickered in his eyes as he followed Kelly’s gaze towards the nearby tree line, and Annie felt his stab of alarm.

‘I don’t think we’re supposed to move him, Kelly. I’m sure it won’t take long for the ambos to get here, but do you think you could race home and find a bandage? If octopus bites are anything like snake bites, then we should probably use compression.’

Kelly didn’t hesitate, racing for the sandy track that rose between clumpy shrubs and tussock grass, and Lucas watched her go with a look of irritation. It was all starting to get a bit serious, and he clearly didn’t find that very comforting, so Annie tried to soothe him with her gaze the way Harry’s dad used to do when she was little. He didn’t look very soothed. His breath was getting heavier, like he’d been running, and he kept rubbing his lower leg.

‘Don’t do that,’ she admonished, pulling his hand away. His skin felt unnaturally hot, almost electrified. It reminded her of the time she’d grabbed at the wrong strand of wire to climb through a paddock fence. The jolt of electricity had squeezed her muscles even tighter, despite her reflexes trying to snap her hand away. ‘Just let it go numb,’ she said. ‘If you massage it, the poison will only spread faster.’

His eyes widened at that, as if saying it out loud had suddenly made it all real. The look he gave her was fierce, and held a generous dose of shock, but she knew he wasn’t angry with her. It felt more like he was primed for a fight he didn’t expect to win and yet was committed to anyway. His emotions were an open book to her now. Mostly because she had forgotten to let go of his hand. She dropped it awkwardly and looked away, trying to look calm and patient, which didn’t last long. He was scared. More than scared—panicking, and she was helpless to block it out. That surprised her because she’d been practising a lot in the past year and thought she had it under control. She no longer flinched when people got upset and their negative feelings spiked into her. She had learned to block her empathic gift almost reflexively. She’d had to. But as Lucas started to lose all feeling in his left leg, his fear slammed through her defences like a tractor through a spider web. Before long his right leg went numb too and he couldn’t move it, and she had to grab hold of his right hand to stop him from slapping and pinching at himself.

After a few more minutes, Paddle Pop Dave returned, gasping for breath after his sprint, and assured them that help was on its way. Practically on his tail, Kelly raced across the sand with a first-aid kit cradled under her arm, panting far more heavily than she had in all the years of PE Annie had shared with her. Full of impatience, Annie watched as first David, then Cam tried to bandage Lucas’s foot. Both attempts ended with dangling loops of crumpled bandage interspersed with sections so tight she thought the poor guy’s toes were going to pop. Cam dropped the roll as he tried to unwind it to start again.

‘Okay, my turn,’ she said, snatching the mess away from Cam’s trembling fingers. It was full of sand so she shook it out and began to roll it back into some semblance of usefulness. It only took a minute to apply the bandage properly, with even pressure from his toes to above his knee. Dave looked like he wanted to hug her.

Lucas breathed a sigh of grateful relief too. ‘Wow,’ he said, plucking at the dressing to test the tightness. ‘Do you keep your bedroom as meticulously tidy as this?’

‘Why are you interested in my bedroom?’ No no no no. That was not what she’d meant to say. Now he was blushing. Annie cleared her throat and tried again. ‘My bedroom floor still has so much Lego on it I can’t make it to the loo during the night without bruises, and I haven’t played with Lego since I was nine. I do vacuum occasionally so I have no idea where the Lego keeps coming from. Maybe under my bed. I only know how to do this because my horse ran through a fence last year and copped a gash that ran from below his hock almost down to his fetlock. I had to dress it every day for a month. The trick is to extend the bandage much further than you think you need to and keep the pressure consistent. It also helped that you weren’t trying to kick me.’

Sometimes, when she opened her mouth, random babble fell out.

‘You have a horse?’ Dave asked, craning his neck to squint through the scrub at each car that appeared from around the bend in the road, and scowling at each one that stubbornly refused to be an ambulance.

‘Four of them. And a turtle, sixteen chickens, two cats, four cows and a few hundred sheep.’

‘Oh.’ He squinted at another car, and said nothing else.

So much for a conversation starter. Dave was too busy fretting to really care about the answer to his own question. He stood guard with his arms crossed over his chest, clearly at a loss as to what else to do. Cam wasn’t much better, prodding at the octopus with a stick and throwing nervous glances at both his friends. Lucas smiled and lay back as if he wanted to sun bake, and asked Dave what he thought they should buy for dinner, but Annie wasn’t fooled by his casual attitude. Worried, she gave up trying to block him out and allowed herself to feel what he felt. Tears welled as his distress overwhelmed her, but she blinked them away before anyone noticed. He wasn’t going to die, and he wasn’t alone. Kneeling next to him, she took hold of his hand again and looked him right in the eye, ignoring Kelly’s raised eyebrows. I will not leave you alone, she promised silently. Lucas stared right back at her as if questioning her boldness, and yet he didn’t pull away. His fear was sharp and icy and enormous. Too big to hold back, and far too easy for her to classify. Annie couldn’t read thoughts, but his fears were so specific, and each one was clearer than words on a page. The heavier his bones became, the more his panic grew as he wrestled with his disobedient muscles, lashing out with every ounce of his strength only to have his efforts smash back at him with terrifying nothingness. No movement. Every breath a conflict as dire as Armageddon, and each one harder than the last. He was feeling as if time itself was trying to pull him under, slowing his movements, his breath, his blood, as if it wanted to drag him behind the rest of the world. And if time slowed too much, the ambulance would never arrive …

If only she had a different gift. If only she could talk him into trusting her, the way Harry could, or better still, calm his fears the way Harry’s dad had been able to. What was the point of being able to read his emotions if she couldn’t soothe them? Still, whatever she was doing seemed to help. She could tell, because the more of his fear she allowed in, the less he seemed to feel. So she swallowed it all, bit by painful bit, and squashed it into a tiny ball inside her chest. He watched her the whole time with eyes the same deep indigo as the warning colouration of the doomed octopus, and she wondered in passing if maybe it meant the same thing.

Within a few minutes they were surrounded by a crowd of well-meaning onlookers offering all sorts of advice. Someone suggested that they move Lucas onto his side to make it easier for him to breathe, and Kelly spread her towel out so they could roll him onto it. Cam gripped him under his shoulders while Dave grabbed his knees, but the moment Annie let go of his hand, his sudden burst of panic sent her reeling.

Lucas convulsed, and then vomited, barely missing Cam’s feet.

‘Mate. Try harder next time. You missed,’ Cam joked, but the look he threw Dave was full of worry.

‘Sorry,’ Lucas whispered.

‘For missing?’

‘For the mess.’

Dave pushed Cam aside and then got to work. ‘No biggie, Lou. That’s the beauty of sand. Look. All buried.’

‘Sorry you all had to see that,’ Lucas said. His face was very pale.

Kelly gave him her best sparkly laugh. ‘Hardly your fault,’ she assured him. ‘It was probably Annie’s revolting river water that caused that.’

Lucas looked up at Annie, like he wanted something from her. Perhaps some reassurance that Kelly was right. There was sweat running down his face.

‘Try to relax,’ Annie told him as his friends arranged his limbs to make him more comfortable.

‘Can’t move anything,’ he gasped, ‘so I can’t get much more relaxed than this, can I?’

He was smiling and it must have sounded like a flippant wise-crack to the others, but his glazed eyes kept seeking hers, pleading for a genuine answer as if he knew she’d done something unusual. So Annie took his hand again and drew his panic away … which was when he passed out. The heavy ball of emotion she was holding for him unravelled in an instant and flew out of her mouth with a small sharp cry that thankfully went unnoticed among the swear words Dave was yelling as he tried to get Lucas to wake up. She let go and sat back, letting the sand warm her suddenly chilled fingers. There was nothing else she could do to help him, and she was too drained to even block out the anxiety and dread emanating from everyone else. That was not good. What if he died right there in front of them? What would everyone feel, and how could she possibly defend herself against such strong reactions? Annie had been there before. Feeling her own smothering grief, and then being crushed by someone else’s. She glanced around. So many people. If she didn’t protect herself from this, she would sink back into that abyss and never come out. She found herself scuttling backward through the sand, away from the sticky web of emotions that swirled faster and deeper than the nearby water currents, and yet she couldn’t stop staring at Lucas’s pallid face. He’d been so afraid of being alone, and she’d made a promise, even if he hadn’t heard her say it. He was surrounded by caring, concerned expressions, but not one of these people understood what he felt. Not like she did.

This time when she took his hand in both of hers, no one looked at her strangely. Like her, they could only watch and wait to see if he would live or die. Nothing could feel stranger or more disturbing than that. No one spoke.

Everyone seemed to be studying the rise and fall of his chest. The way the rhythm slowed. The way it became harder to tell if it was moving at all, even though he was bare-chested. Dave swore again, and Annie noticed a tear rolling down his cheek, accompanied by a bursting bubble of despair and fury that she couldn’t shield herself against, so she had to shut her eyes to hold in her own tears. She shifted her grip until she could feel Lucas’s pulse with her little finger, and her heart thumped harder as if it could show his heart how it was supposed to beat. Strong and fierce, not fluttering like a butterfly newly emerged from its cocoon.

All her attention was focused on the unsteady flow of his blood as she willed his heart to fight the poison. Willing the butterfly to test its wings and fight free from the chrysalis it was trapped in. It had a job to do, a life to live. All it had to do was to fight for it. His pulse fluttered again. One beat, two … three, four, barely there. One wing free, the other dragged behind the ongoing flow of time. The fluttering slowed, and then stopped.

One second. And another. Still nothing.

That happened sometimes, didn’t it? Annie had watched lambs being born, the ewe straining and pushing and just as it was time for the final effort, she would stop for a rest. Chicks did the same thing, pecking with soft beaks at hard shells and then the long pause, as if giving up, or deciding whether this life business was really going to be worth all this effort.

Three seconds. Four. Five. Come on, Lucas.

Annie bit down on her tongue to stop herself from crying out. This wasn’t happening. His pulse would return, he would wake up, and she would feel something from him again. Better to feel his anguish and fear than this complete numbness. Everyone else’s emotions beat against her, and her only method of blocking them out was to focus everything she had on feeling for his pulse, but it was gone.

Six seconds, seven …

She bit down harder, tasting blood, wanting to feel something to offset his paralysis, wishing she could use her pain to fight the poison that blocked his.

One fragile wing fluttered against her fingertip. The barest beat.

Annie crushed her tongue with her teeth. Feel something! her mind screamed.

Another flutter.

Wake up and feel something, she ordered, wishing she had the authority to command this stranger with the bright eyes and crazy hair who had smiled at her instead of watching where he was walking.

A soft thump, and then another, and with the flow of blood came a surge of warmth into cooling flesh. Warmth and life.