She swam out to the spit and climbed up on to it and walked across to the other side, goose pimples on her arms and legs, and climbed right back into the water. Open, windy lake now, nothing ahead of her but horizon, two blues fading into each other at the seam. She pretended that she was Carolina Cho out in the middle of this great water.

She put her head down and swam, and when she turned her face to breathe, the air clawed through her system, inhalation rough and gritty. With heavy limbs she carried on; it wasn’t supposed to be easy to get to the other side of the lake. The cold crept inside and her blood shivered. She kicked harder. Battered a little by waves. She turned to look back and saw that she was further out than she’d expected, and that the waves had carried her a little way up the length of the spit. But she turned again, face down and arms trundling, to see how close she could get to being in the middle of nothing. To really see what it was like. As she took her next breath, a wave caught her in the face, and her throat and nose were swamped with cold, foul-tasting water. She swallowed some but inhaled some too, and so she choked and sputtered. Coughed. Coughed again.

Before it really began, the fit, she knew it was coming, and within seconds the cough was a live thing acting alone. Simultaneously it was of her and not of her, this millstone she had carried since birth. Each retch required the work of her upper body and so her legs had to keep her afloat. She began an awkward paddle back towards the spit, which seemed to have moved further away. Her head went under just as another cough came up and she inhaled what felt like all the water in the world. So she turned on to her back and drew her legs up and kicked like a frog, and with arms out straight, scalloped the water with cupped palms. This worked for a short time, but being on her back antagonized the cough so she spun again on to her front and paddled like a dog would, trying to keep her head above the waves. Every few strokes she had to stop, hug her body and let the cough come, beating her legs to stop from sinking. She paddled as much as she could between coughs, so that it felt like she was pulling the land towards her by a thin cord. But with each cough, the cord snapped and the spit, released, bobbed away again like a balloon. The calf muscles in her legs had balled tightly into iron cramps and she was very tired.

Panic, at first, sparked in the pit of her throat. It travelled through her body outwards, from her sternum to the tips of her fingers. No direction or control over her limbs. Her head went under, and when she resurfaced her face was angled towards the sky, mouth gaping. She went under again, into the murk, bubbles rushing and tight fists pale and was she actually drowning?