Stranded Anticipation

“You can’t measure a miracle. But you can sit beside it, fists clenched, trying not to scream.”

"Paul! Kain!" I called out, my voice cutting through the thick, oppressive stillness that had settled like a blanket over the camp. The cry was sharper than I intended, driven by a surge of urgency as Jamie and I wrestled with the weight of Joel’s limp body, dragging him from the dim, humid interior of the tent into the open air.

He was heavier than he looked. Not in mass alone, but in meaning.

My legs, trembling under the strain and weakened by the emotional toll of the past hour, finally buckled. The ground rushed up to meet me with an unforgiving jolt. My knees slammed into the dusty earth, the shock radiating up through my thighs and exploding in a sharp spike at the base of my spine. A hiss escaped me before I could stop it. Pain, sudden and real, grounded me in my body again—an almost welcome contrast to the numb abstraction of everything else.

For a moment, I stayed there, half-kneeling in the powdery dust, winded. My hands sank into the parched earth, the grit lodging under my fingernails as I tried to catch my breath.

But there was no time.

From the corner of my eye, I saw movement—heard the crunch of feet on dry soil. Paul and Kain came running, their faces drawn tight with concern, their urgency slicing through the stagnant despair that hung over us.

I pushed myself upright with a grimace, wiping the dust from my scraped knees. The skin there was already flushed and raw, a lattice of grazes forming beneath the grit. They stung, but it was a shallow pain—easy to ignore in the face of what we were doing.

"I'll take him," Paul said, his voice decisive, cutting through the tension with calm authority. He stepped in smoothly, not waiting for permission, and slipped his hands under Joel’s shoulders. There was no hesitation, no drama—just a silent agreement to shoulder more than just the weight of a body. His eyes met mine briefly, and I nodded, too exhausted to speak. That small gesture of shared burden meant more than I could express.

Kain didn’t need to be asked. He moved wordlessly, slipping into place at Joel’s other side. His hands moved with care, as if by lifting this body, we might lift the heaviness pressing down on all of us.

"Where are we taking him?" Kain asked, his voice low but clear. The question hung there, weighted with unspoken fears—Why move him at all? What do we expect to find?

"To the lagoon," I replied, the words falling from my mouth like stones. They sounded certain, but I wasn’t. Not really.

Still, it was the only place that made sense. The only place that had held any kind of significance in this nightmare. A place of transition, of arrival and endings—where Joel had become grounded. Where he had, impossibly, clung to life.

Maybe it was irrational. Maybe it was foolish.

But it was something to do.

And in the face of helplessness, doing something—even if it meant nothing—was the only act that still resembled hope.

As we navigated the uneven terrain, the three of us took turns supporting Joel’s flaccid form, the rhythm of our steps dictated not by coordination, but by necessity. The heat radiating from the ground wrapped around us, and every awkward shift of his deadweight was a grim reminder of our situation. His limbs dangled loosely, swaying with each footfall—a lifeless marionette animated only by our shared effort. Every movement reminded me of what we’d lost, or perhaps never had. The heaviness wasn’t just physical—it was spiritual. With each metre gained, a little more of my resolve drained into the dust beneath our feet.

The air was thick. Not just with heat, but with grief—unspoken, but ever-present. It sat like a stone in my throat, every breath tighter than the last. Around us, the silence of the desert stretched wide and indifferent, the dry wind stirring the dust in lazy swirls. The very earth seemed to absorb our sorrow without sympathy.

Jamie, walking ahead of us, became our unlikely compass. He moved with the driven pace of someone who no longer had room for fear. His gait was uneven, but unwavering, cutting a path through the dry sand like a man who had nothing left to lose. His silhouette blurred against the shimmering heat-haze, and then he was in the water—rushing straight into the lagoon with barely a pause, as if urgency alone could will Joel back to life.

I faltered, just for a moment, watching him.

The absurdity of it all struck me then, a dizzying rush of unreality that made the ground feel like it might vanish beneath my feet. We were in a place that should not exist, dragging a body that should not be breathing, toward a lagoon that shimmered like a mirage—beautiful, still, and utterly unbothered by our desperation.

The surface of the water glistened under the late light, its serenity a quiet insult to our plight. There was something almost cruel in its calm, as though it existed outside the gravity of our grief. A living painting, indifferent to the scene unfolding at its edge.

The sounds of our labour—shuffling feet, strained breaths, the occasional grunt—grew louder as we reached the waterline. They clashed harshly against the silence of the lagoon, disrupting its stillness with our clumsy urgency.

"Make sure he's on his back!" I called out, surprised by the sharpness of my own voice.

Paul and Kain lowered Joel gently, the water lapping at his sides as if unsure whether to accept or reject him. Kain, without a word, strode in, steadying Joel from the far side, his clothes soaking up the water like blotting paper.

The ripples spread out in widening arcs, but the lagoon remained otherwise still. There was no sign—no shift in light or change in air—that acknowledged the gravity of our act. It was just water. Clear. Cool. Silent.

Then Jamie’s voice rang out—firm, clear, and purposeful. "No!" he called, intercepting Paul’s instinct to join them. "Kain and I have got him covered."

"You sure?" Paul asked, his concern as audible as the hesitation in his step. I could see the reluctance in his body, his need to do something, anything, pressing against the edge of restraint. His question echoed my own thoughts—echoed them sharply.

"Certain," Jamie replied, his voice low but solid. He didn’t look back. His focus remained on Joel.

I watched them wade deeper, the water rising slowly around their legs, their forms becoming part of the reflection on the lagoon’s surface—a surreal tableau of desperation framed by an uncaring sky. And as they moved, a cold unease settled in my stomach. We had reached the end of action. Now we waited… and hoped. Or pretended to.

Turning to Paul, I asked, “Can you see?” My voice came out strained, thin from a tension that had threaded itself into every muscle of my body. My own gaze stretched across the water, squinting against the glare, trying to catch some sign—any sign—that Joel was still… there. Still tethered to us by something more than desperation. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, trying in vain to ease the persistent ache that pulsed through my knees. The earlier fall had left them smarting, bruised not just by impact but by the sheer absurdity of our undertaking.

“No,” Paul admitted, frustration colouring his tone. “It would be nice if they didn’t keep their backs to us. I can’t see much at all.” His words mirrored the unease clawing at me. We were bystanders now, spectators in something we couldn’t control, couldn’t reach, couldn’t understand. The inability to do anything felt like a slow suffocation. I kept flexing my hands, as if preparing for action that wasn’t mine to take.

The sound—sharp, guttural, and entirely impossible—cut through the air like a blade.

A gasp.

Not one of ours.

Joel’s.

My heart jack-knifed. I felt it seize in my chest and then leap to my throat, pounding wildly. “What’s happening?” I shouted, the words tumbling from me in a mix of panic and barely-suppressed hope. My instinct was to run—to tear into the water, to reach for him, to assess vitals, airway, circulation. To act. Not to stand here on the bank like an idle spectator of my own crisis.

Jamie turned, waist-deep now, the water rippling around him in silvery rings. His face—it was alight, transformed in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. It was the look of a man who had been handed something back from the void.

“He’s breathing again,” he called out, the words flying across the water like a thrown rope.

I exhaled—loud and uncontrolled—a rush of air I hadn’t realised I’d been holding tight in my lungs. Wie zum Teufel isch das überhaupt möglich? The German burst into my thoughts unbidden, pure instinct, the language of disbelief from childhood memories when the world felt just as confusing. De Mann isch tot gsi, dess bin i mir sicher gsi! He had been dead. I was certain.

Nothing in my medical training accounted for this. No textbook, no case study. I had pronounced him. Stared into the emptiness of his eyes. Felt the absence of a pulse. Sutured his throat. Yet now—this.

“What the hell is going on? How is that even possible?” Paul’s words, though spoken quietly, reached me clearly. They carried weight—not just of confusion, but of something close to fear.

I shrugged. It was the only gesture I had left. Everything else felt dangerously like speculation. “I’m not sure. But it seems there is something about the lagoon that is keeping Joel alive,” I said, my voice coloured with awe, though part of me couldn’t suppress the edge of scepticism. Or bringing him back to life… The thought sat heavily in my chest. Dangerous. Heretical. And yet… wasn’t that what we were seeing?

Paul’s face changed subtly—his mouth twitching into a smile, not of amusement, but of dawning curiosity—before settling into a thoughtful frown. “You mean he wasn’t actually dead when we first found him in the river?” he asked, eyes narrowing as though trying to conjure some reasonable thread through the chaos.

I didn’t answer immediately. His question wasn’t ridiculous—it was necessary. Logical. A grasping at the one explanation that might reconcile the impossible with the real. I bit the inside of my cheek, tasted copper, and then let the thought roll through me fully. I weighed it against every diagnostic certainty I’d ever held.

“I really don’t know,” I admitted finally, the words soft but resolute.

And that was the truth. The quiet, brutal truth. The lines I had spent my life trusting—the clean divisions between life and death, health and decline, reason and absurdity—were dissolving beneath the weight of this place.

Paul rubbed at his forehead, a slow drag of fingers across skin, the kind of motion a person makes when their thoughts refuse to behave. I recognised the look. I felt it too.

Standing there at the lagoon’s edge, with ripples stretching out from where Joel floated in Kain and Jamie’s careful hold, I realised we were somewhere utterly beyond the reach of our former understanding. The still water reflected the sky as if nothing were amiss—no boy suspended in defiance of death, no circle of people clinging to each other against the inexplicable. The world was the same. We were not.

As the bright sun bore down on us, merciless in its intensity, I raised my arm to shield my eyes, squinting hard against the dazzle. The glare off the lagoon’s surface shimmered like molten glass, making it near impossible to see what was happening beyond the rippling distance. The uncertainty gnawed at me. I tilted forward, narrowing my gaze, trying to distinguish shapes—Kain, Jamie, and Joel were there, but the water fractured their forms, cloaking the details in refracted light and guesswork.

"What's going on out there?" My voice, sharp with a mix of concern and impatience, leapt across the water. The question slipped out before I could temper it. I hated feeling cut off, reduced to an observer while something extraordinary unfolded just beyond reach. My hands, acting on instinct, moved to undo my laces, tugging my shoes free with jerky movements. Gravel pricked at my heels as I readied myself to wade in.

"It's okay," Jamie’s voice called back. It was steady but distant, the words floating like a leaf on a still pond—reassuring in tone but empty of real answers. "We've got it under control."

I didn’t believe him.

"But I really should examine..." My protest caught mid-breath, cut off as Paul's hand wrapped firmly around my forearm.

"Maybe we should just leave them be." His suggestion landed with the weight of a stone, unexpected and unwelcome. His grip wasn’t harsh, but it was solid—enough to stop me.

I turned to him, startled, and blinked in disbelief. The sheer absurdity of what he was saying took a moment to process. Surely Paul is not serious? I stared at him, frowning, my brows drawing together in disbelief.

This—this—was the most baffling physiological mystery I had ever encountered. A boy returned from the brink—possibly from beyond it. The rational part of my mind, trained over years of discipline and emergency work, demanded engagement. Every instinct I possessed cried out for assessment, for clarity, for answers. I wasn’t just curious—I was compelled.

“Just for a little while,” Paul said, his voice lower now, gentler. He was trying to talk me down. “You can examine him when Jamie has calmed down.”

“Fine.” The word snapped out of me, taut with frustration. Reluctantly, I lowered myself beside him, the dry, sun-baked earth scratching at the back of my legs as I settled in. The dust clung to the sweat on my skin, sticky and uncomfortable, but it was nothing compared to the restlessness churning inside me. I crossed my arms, shifting my weight impatiently. "But I'm not giving them too long."

"Fair enough." Paul’s reply was measured, but it did little to soothe the unease twisting in my gut.

Silence fell between us—not a peaceful quiet, but a tension-laden void, stretched thin by everything unspoken. I sat there, still and rigid, yet my mind spun in circles. Inside me, my thoughts rattled like a jar of marbles. Curiosity paced like a caged beast, scraping against the bars, waiting for a moment of release.

My eyes flicked again to the water. How much time had passed? Seconds? Minutes? It felt like hours. I clenched and unclenched my fists, the need to do something bubbling dangerously close to the surface. Several times I nearly rose, caught in the electric pull to be there, to see, to know. But each time, I grounded myself—fingers digging into the grit at my sides, jaw clenched tight.

It isn’t my time yet.

A lie I repeated like a mantra, over and over, hoping eventually I’d believe it.

"Why don't we head back to camp for a bit," Paul's suggestion broke through my internal struggle, his voice pulling me back from the growing restless anticipation. He stood, brushing dust from his trousers, the movement imbued with a quiet decisiveness. Then, he extended his hand towards me. "Jamie's got a loud voice; he'll yell out if he needs us." The words, casual in tone, belied the gravity of what we were leaving behind. His attempt to tug me along, to gently prise me from the edge of my own spiralling thoughts, was met with instinctive resistance.

I pulled away, yanking my elbow free with more force than I'd intended. It was reflexive—my body clinging to the illusion that proximity alone might somehow grant me control over an uncontrollable situation. But Paul didn’t push. He simply waited, grounded and still. His quiet persistence gnawed at the crumbling edges of my resolve, and I knew—he was right. Watching from the shoreline would change nothing. Joel’s fate, whatever it was now entwined with, lived beyond my reach.