The Depths We Go

Nina could hear her daughter’s breath. It had been three minutes since the rescue team was alerted of the catastrophic failure. Another fifteen minutes before they’d reach the submersible. She shouldn’t be alive right now. She knew the type of impact she’d experienced should have crushed her instantly, but here she was, somewhere between life and death. Everything felt like a dream as she talked to her daughter through the emergency radio.

“You have to stay awake.” Lynn tried to keep her voice steady as the rain continued to beat against her window. “They’re coming. You just have to hold on.”

“I’m tired, baby,” said her mother from 20,000 leagues under the sea.

“I know. Just try.” Lynn didn’t want to picture the state of the submersible as it descended uncontrollably.

“I’m so sorry,” Nina said. 

“No, it’s okay. I know why you left, why you went down there.”

There was only static on the other end.

“I talked to Paul. He told me what happened, why he did what he did. Things can change now. It’ll get better. I just need you to stay here with me.”

“I’m here.”

“Okay, keep talking to me. How bad is it?”

“It’s bad, but as long as I don’t move, it doesn’t seem to be getting any worse.” 

“That’s good. You can do that. Just keep talking to me.”

“I’m really tired, Lynn.”

“I know, mom. I know.”

The groaning and clicking of compromised material continued to echo around Nina as she closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m glad you let me hook that radio up to your computer.”

Lynn looked at the strange device in her hand but couldn’t remember having it installed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t use it more. Maybe we could have talked about what happened.”

Nina scoffed. “You’re my daughter, not my therapist. It was never your job to rescue me.”

“But I’m not a kid anymore. You could have leaned on me.”

“I don’t know, I was so afraid of turning you and your sister into the same kind of haunted house I became. How could I lean on you when I messed up so much?”

Lynn could hear the howling of the storm as another flash of lightning lit up her room.

“I hated when you yelled at me, and I couldn't stand your taste in practically anything, but when it came down to the big stuff, I couldn’t have asked for a better mom.”

“You’re just saying that because I’m probably going to die down here.” 

“No, I’m saying it because I love you. Because you don’t have to be perfect to deserve love or kindness. You taught me that.”

“I love you more,” Nina said, snapping them instantly through space and time.

Her throat tightened; she could barely speak. “I love you the most,” she said, never more desperate to hear her mother’s next words.

“Aw, you got me!”

Lynn could picture every bedtime, every tuck-in, every kiss on the cheek, every time they said that silly little back-and-forth that never made much sense at all but always made her heart swell with significance and belonging, and what an anchor in gentle waters it was. Together they laughed.

“That was always so special to me.”

“What was?”

“How you only said that to me, like it belonged to me. You never did that with Elle or dad. Just with me. And now? I finally do get you.”

She could hear her mother crying, and the immeasurable distance between them made her heart ache. 

“Everything’s going to be okay. You know that, right?” Lynn whispered into the radio.

***

Nina blinked. Her eyes still swollen, her face still wet, but instead of the steel walls and endless black of the ocean’s depths, she was surrounded by the beige and brown of a small three-bedroom home. The only remnants of the fate awaiting her were the salty tears dripping onto her t-shirt. 

“Everything’s going to be okay. You know that, right?” Paul said.

She nodded, and he wrapped her in another hug. It was only the second time they had ever touched, the first being thirty minutes earlier as she sobbed in his driveway.

She pulled back from his embrace and held herself instead. 

“I’m having a hard time,” she said.

His face crinkled in confusion.

“It’s just, every time someone has offered to help me, they take it back the moment I accept. Pull the rug right out from under me. Now I struggle to trust, well, anyone, but,” she stopped and studied his face with its concern etched into every crevice, “I trust you. Just know that this is really hard for me, but I do trust you.”

She couldn’t quite read his expression. 

“I understand,” he said. “It’ll get better.”

“I hope so.” 

They said their goodnights before he walked into his bedroom to sleep beside his family and she went to the guest-room to sleep beside what was left of hers, wrapping her arms around her youngest daughter as Lynn slept on the couch with Paul's dogs. 

Her life had always been crumbling away, seemingly as fast as flash fiction and in pain-staking slow-motion, yet, this time, for the first time, she felt like she’d found a safe port in the storm. It was almost too much to ask for, and when she finally fell asleep, she dreamed she was someone else. She dreamed she was happy.

***

Lynn woke to someone pounding on the door. She was at her desk, holding her phone in her hand, and when she answered the door, she found her sister, soaked to the bone from the raging storm outside. 

“It’s mom,” Elle cried, reaching out for her.

“I know.” She clutched Elle tightly. “I was just talking to her on the radio. I must have fallen asleep. Did the rescue team reach her in time?”

Elle’s body went rigid.

“You what? What are you talking about?” She took a step back, holding Lynn by the shoulders. “There was an accident a few hours ago. I don’t have all the details, but mom’s…mom is dead.”

Lynn’s head started to swim, and she felt dizzy. “But we were just talking. She was okay, she was waiting for the rescuers, I just…”

“They called me when they couldn’t reach you. You were listed as mom’s emergency contact.”

She looked down at her phone to see countless missed calls. “The radio?”

“What radio?”

Lynn rushed to her computer, but there was no radio. Just a photo from her mother's deep sea voyage and the computer with the email from Paul about how sorry he was for breaking her mother’s heart.