The Lagoon

“In emergency medicine, you learn to expect the unexpected—but nothing prepares you for the boy who shouldn’t be breathing.”

I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back.

My breath was shallow, a dry rasp in my throat as I tore across the brittle earth, driven by instinct more than conscious thought. My mind was a whirlwind of action and reaction, scenarios flickering like flashcards behind my eyes—none of them good. That scream had sliced through the morning stillness. It wasn’t fear or surprise. It was something far worse: raw, visceral panic. I’d heard screams like that before—on trauma wards, in war zones, in corridors where loved ones had just been lost. It was the sound of something irreversible.

It was an emergency. And every fibre of me answered the call.

The terrain underfoot betrayed my urgency. The dust was loose and dry, the kind that seemed to move on its own, shifting treacherously beneath each hurried step. When my shoe slid sideways in the grit, I pitched forward, arms instinctively outstretched. The impact jolted through my knees and palms. The sting of raw skin barely registered—there was no time for pain.

I swore under my breath, more in frustration than injury, and surged upright, the dust clinging to my trousers and streaking my hands. A breath, sharp and shallow, and I was running again. Faster now.

Each step became a blur of effort, my lungs burning, muscles tightening with strain. The landscape blurred at the edges, a palette of ochre and glare. My heart pounded—not from fear, but from the sheer demand of motion and the terrible anticipation of what I might find.

When I crested the last rise, my breath caught not from exertion but from the sight before me.

The lagoon opened up like a held breath, the stillness of its surface utterly at odds with the chaos that had brought me here. Water glittered, blue and indifferent, as though it hadn’t just swallowed a body. For a beat, everything seemed frozen.

Jamie and Luke were already there—two figures crouched low at the water’s edge, bent over a third that lay unmoving where the river fed gently into the lagoon. The body was half in, half out of the water, caught in the liminal space between currents. My stomach lurched. The sunlight played tricks on the surface, but the stillness of that form was unmistakable. Not sleeping. Not injured.

Motionless.

A sick weight settled behind my ribs, anchoring me to the moment. Sweat ran in rivulets down my temples, stinging the corner of my eyes, but I barely blinked.

On the opposite side of the mouth, Paul had come into view—his silhouette tall and tense, shoulders squared as he stared across the water at Jamie and Luke. He wasn’t waving, wasn’t calling out, which meant he hadn’t seen whatever they’d seen yet… or perhaps he had, and like me, he was trying to absorb it.

He looked uninjured. That small mercy was enough to let me breathe again, if only slightly.

I remained perched on the slope’s edge, boots planted in the loose dust, the wind teasing strands of hair loose from my face. My chest heaved with exertion, but I forced myself to inhale deeply—once, twice—pulling air into my lungs as if it might steady the thrum beneath my ribs.

I’d worked under pressure before. Cardiac arrests in cramped emergency rooms. Epidemics in remote clinics where resources ran dry faster than hope. But those moments were framed by structure—walls, monitors, teams. Here, there was only dust and breath and the cold logic of survival. The responsibility felt different here—more personal, somehow. More ancient. Like the land was watching.

The air hung thick with dust and heat, yet my body cooled beneath the sheen of sweat coating my skin. I flexed my fingers once, a small ritual—part grounding, part preparation—and let out the breath I’d been holding.

Then I moved.

The descent was steep, the ground loose and treacherous beneath my feet, but I welcomed the motion. Action, I could manage. It was the stillness that unsettled me. My boots crunched and slipped on dust and sand, each step deliberate, my centre of gravity low to avoid losing footing. Muscles burned in protest but my mind was clear now, honed to a point.

I broke into a jog as the slope levelled out, the rocky lip of the lagoon rising on my left, directing me towards the figures ahead—Luke, Jamie, and the body that lay at the threshold between land and water. The silhouette was unmistakably human, yet disturbingly inert. I resisted the urge to shout questions—distance and panic would only garble them. I needed to be close. I needed to see.

Then, from behind, a voice rang out, brittle with fear.

“Uncle Jamie!”

Kain.

His shout echoed over the water, raw and ragged. There was something desperate in it—too sharp, too full of everything unspoken. It pulled at me instinctively, a part of me wanting to look back, to make sure he was close, not lost in the dust and chaos.

But I didn’t turn.

I couldn’t.

My focus was already locked forward, narrowed to the three figures that held the centre of gravity now—two living, one unknown. Whatever was waiting at the lagoon’s edge, it needed me more than Kain’s fear did.

There would be time later—for reassurances, for explanations.

Right now, there was only this.

And I wouldn’t falter.

The scene that unfolded as I neared was one of raw emotion and chaos, erupting against the still surface of the lagoon like a crack in glass.

"What the fuck have you done, Luke?" Jamie’s voice rang out, high and accusatory, each word flung like a stone into the open air. The disbelief in his tone was visceral—palpable in a way that made my skin prickle. It echoed off the water, clashing with the soft lap of waves on stone, the incongruous calm of the setting only intensifying the violence of the moment.

I slowed instinctively, my breath catching in my throat as Jamie’s fury tipped him off balance. There was a flash of motion—his foot sliding, the awkward weight of the body in his arms pulling him forward—and then both collapsed to the ground in a tangle of limbs. My heart seized.

For a moment, all I could see was chaos and dust.

"Help me take him back to camp," Jamie’s voice broke through the noise—choked and sodden with tears, the words raw and unfinished. It tore through his previous posturing, his usual veneer of resilience stripped away, and for a second I saw not the hardened survivor he pretended to be, but a boy—young, scared, clinging to something he couldn’t control.

It made me falter.

Just for a moment.

I have a job to do.

The thought came fast, sharp, like a slap across my own face. I clung to it, wrapped it around my chest like armour. Emotion had its place, but not now. Not here. If I let it in, I’d drown with them. I couldn’t afford that.

"Wait," I found myself saying, voice steady despite the thudding urgency beneath my ribs. I raised a hand instinctively, the universal signal for stop, for let me handle this. "Let me check him first." The words held the tone of command—not unkind, but resolute. There were protocols, even here.

Luke’s nod came without hesitation—brief and tight-lipped, the kind of gesture born of understanding, or perhaps relief at being told what to do. His eyes were rimmed red, jaw taut, but he stepped back.

Jamie didn’t.

He stayed knelt at the body’s side, fists clenched and jaw locked, grief hanging off him like wet clothing. He didn’t argue, but he didn’t move either. His shoulders were rigid, and his eyes—wide and unblinking—fixed on the boy’s pale face with an intensity that seemed to hold the air around him hostage.

The scene felt suspended in time, like the air had thickened around us.

I stepped forward carefully, conscious of every sound—my breath, the crunch of gravel beneath my boots, the whisper of fabric as I crouched beside the still figure. Jamie’s proximity, his emotion, pressed in like a physical force, but I forced myself to centre—to let my focus narrow until the world became just the boy, and the wound.

He lay sprawled awkwardly, limbs askew, skin pale and speckled with dried flecks of blood and river sediment. The eyes were half-lidded, sightless. I forced myself to look past them, to catalogue what I needed.

The wound was unmistakable.

A single, clean slice across the neck—precise, deliberate, almost clinical in its execution. There was little raggedness, no hesitation in the line. Whoever had done this had known what they were doing.

My pulse ticked faster.

Not a random act. Not panic. This had been done with control—anatomical knowledge, perhaps. The carotid had been severed. There would have been no time for him to cry out.

Who would do such a thing… and why?

I blinked against the sting of sweat in my eyes, my mind racing ahead of the moment even as I forced my hands to remain steady, to observe, to analyse. The skin was cold now. Blood had congealed at the edges. No signs of recent movement.

He had been dead long before Jamie reached him.

Still, the brutality of it held me, rooted me in place. This wasn’t just a death.

It was a message.

But from who?

And to whom?

The questions rose like smoke, but no answers followed. Only silence, and the scent of river water and death.

Leaning closer, I locked my gaze with his, searching for signs that my medical training insisted could not be there. His eyes—striking, shockingly blue—seemed to meet mine with an intensity that sent a tremor through me. They were glassy, yes, but not vacant. There was something behind them, some flicker, some defiant echo of life that didn’t belong in a body this still. My breath caught.

A soft gasp escaped me before I could stop it, a sound torn more from disbelief than hope. That’s impossible, I told myself firmly, the words sharp in my mind, clinical. Dead men don’t hold eye contact.

And yet… there it was. A sliver of something I didn’t dare name yet—too fragile, too premature. My hand, moving on instinct alone, slid beneath the hem of his shirt and pressed lightly to his abdomen. I expected nothing. I braced for the chill of finality.

But then—there. Faint. So faint I thought I’d imagined it.

A rise. A fall. Another.

The rhythmic lift beneath my palm was almost imperceptible, like the breath of a sleeping bird—too shallow, too slow—but unmistakably real.

"He's breathing!" The words burst from me, cracking through the weight of silence like a flare. My voice sounded strange to my own ears—part exclamation, part disbelief—but it was true. The impossible was happening beneath my hand.

"Joel," Jamie whispered, the name slipping from his lips with a softness that didn’t belong to panic. His voice was raw with wonder, and his hand reached out to brush the boy’s forehead, fingers trembling slightly. The tenderness of the gesture—simple, human, intimate—clenched something in my chest.

Luke coughed behind me, the sound awkward and sharp, and when I turned to glance at him, I saw the same expression I knew was written across my own face: stunned, unsure, scrambling to reconcile logic with reality.

"But barely," I said quickly, grounding the moment before it ran away from us. I needed to bring us back to the facts, to the fragile thread we were following. "I think he may actually be alive, but I don’t understand how that is possible." The words felt too large, too slow to encompass what I was seeing, but they were all I had. I shook my head slightly, trying to sift through the clinical puzzle that was forming with every heartbeat.

"His colour suggests he has lost so much blood that his circulatory system has collapsed."

Even as I said it, my fingers moved again, assessing. Skin pale, borderline cyanotic. Pulse—if it existed—was too weak to find at the wrist. Every system in his body should have shut down. And yet here he was.

Alive.

Somehow.

My gaze lifted slowly to Jamie, searching his face for answers I couldn’t find in anatomy textbooks or emergency field manuals. What I saw in his expression was mirrored in my own: awe, confusion, fear, and something gentler threaded beneath it all—faith.

"You're right," I said, my voice calmer than I felt. I didn’t let my eyes waver from his. "I agree we should bring him back to camp."

There was no certainty now—only the clarity of purpose.

As we prepared to lift Joel, Jamie’s face lit up with an appreciative smile—brief, but unmistakable. In the midst of everything, it was like a flare in the dark. Gratitude. Real, unguarded, and entirely human. The warmth of the sun caught the side of his face just then, casting a soft glow that seemed to heighten the intensity in his eyes—determination, hope, and something fiercely protective. He’d clung to the belief that Joel could be saved, and now that belief had a heartbeat.

"What? Seriously?" Luke’s voice sliced through the moment, incredulous. The edge in his tone betrayed more than scepticism—it was disbelief struggling to find footing in this new, shifting reality. His expression wavered between suspicion and reluctant awe.

"Help us," Jamie said, and though his voice was quiet, it held the weight of command. His hands, gentle but purposeful, slid under Joel’s sodden form, careful not to jostle the neck or reopen the damage we still didn’t fully understand. The way he moved—the delicacy, the focus—struck me. It wasn’t just duty. It was care.

Luke hovered, caught in the brief vacuum that follows a plea before it’s answered. I watched him, breath held, willing him to lean into the logic of the moment. Be rational, Luke. See past the impossibility. This boy was breathing—barely, yes—but breathing nonetheless. That demanded action, not hesitation.

And then he stepped forward.

Without a word, Luke mirrored my position, slipping his arms under Joel. His jaw was tight, eyes dark with thought, but the action spoke for him. He was in.

"Ready. Lift!" My voice rang out, clear and certain, though I felt anything but inside. Still, it cut through the lingering tension like a scalpel through silk. And together, we lifted.

Joel’s body was heavier than expected. Dead weight. His limbs hung limply between us, water dripping from his clothes, soaking our sleeves and pooling in the dust beneath our boots. My arms ached almost immediately, the awkwardness of our grip forcing me to compensate with my legs and back. And then the cramp hit—sharp and sudden in my left calf.

A groan escaped before I could stop it. My body faltered a fraction, but I clenched my jaw and kept moving. Not now. Not here. I couldn’t be the one to falter.

We’d made it halfway around the lagoon, trudging along the uneven edge, when salvation came in the form of Kain. He jogged up beside us without fanfare, took one look at my face, and slid smoothly into my place.

"Thank you," I breathed, stepping back with a quiet gasp of relief. The strain in my calf pulsed like a bruise, and I pressed my fingers into the muscle, kneading against the ache. The pain grounded me more than it hindered. It reminded me I was still standing. Still useful.

As I straightened, my gaze travelled across the mouth of the lagoon. Paul sat alone on the far bank, a solitary shape etched against the pale dust. He hadn’t moved since we’d first spotted him.

"You coming, Paul?" My voice carried across the water, lightened by a breeze but undercut with concern. The last thing we needed was another injury—or worse, silence. The day had already frayed at the seams. Between Jamie’s emotional unravelling and Joel’s unfathomable condition, I wasn’t sure how much more the group could absorb.

Paul raised a hand, his reply reaching us over the ripple of wind: "I’ll meet you there soon."

I exhaled, unaware until then that I’d been holding the breath. It slipped from my chest like a held panic finally allowed to leave. He was okay. Still watching. Still aware.

We continued.

The three of us—carrying the fourth—moved through the thick dust, which clung to our boots and caked our trousers with every step. The sun beat down in silent judgement as we crossed the barren stretch, each rise and fall of the land reminding us how far we were from comfort, from clarity.

Joel hung between us like a question with no answer.

But we carried him anyway.