You'll never make it, not with Hank. Let him go, or you'll both drown.

But I didn't let go, not because I wanted to be a hero, not because I actually believed we would make it, but because, at that moment, I knew in my heart that his life was more important than mine.

My lungs seemed on fire, my beating heart the only sound I could hear.

Was I even making progress? My legs were lead… were they even kicking?

Scenes from my adolescence flashed before my eyes. My inner voice took over the play-by-play: This should be the last play, Princeton down by four. Here's the snap, the quarterback pitching to Wallace. He escapes one tackle, then another, and he's heading for daylight.

The light… so precious. Get to the light.

He's across mid-field… he's at the forty…

Get… to… the… light…

Wallace's at the thirty… the twenty …

The liiiiii…

He's at the ten, with just one defender to beat …

Shadows closed in on my peripheral vision. I saw death's dark hand reach for me… reach for Hank.

Oh, no! Wallace's tackled at the goal line as time expires.

Out of air, out of strength, out of heartbeats, my willpower gone, I slipped out of my body, and drowned.

Again.

It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

—SALLY KEMPTON

Chapter 2

FLOAT.

Just float to the light …

Mmmmmm. So soothing, when all of life's pain and stress and fears finally wash away. In the vacuum of existence, the soul floats …floats along heaven's silky stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream …

Was my life a dream?

More like a bridled storm, its fury long overdue to be unleashed.

My winds of despair could be traced back to Loch Ness and my ninth birthday—the day of my first drowning. That's right, I'd died once before, dead as a doorknob… until my savior had come in the form of my best friend's father, Alban MacDonald, the only man I knew who could scare death away. Since the moment I'd been revived, my mind had harbored a dark secret, bottling it for my own protection. It was always there, following my existence like a shadow, but since my child's mind had created this false reality, how could I have known it was all a lie?

Seventeen years later, everything was about to unravel.

* * *

I never actually felt the jolts of electricity delivered by the medic's paddles, only the thunder that roared in my ears and throttled my nerves with an excruciating pain that welcomed me back to the living. Every cell in my body burned with pins and needles, and each breath hurt, my chest feeling as if it had caved in upon my internal organs. A fish out of water, I convulsed upon the Manhattanville's frigid deck, vomiting seawater, alone and insane as the medic worked me over.