The Bridge                

by sloanranger

 Part 1

The young woman waited until she heard the nurse leave the room and opened her eyes. She turned and looked out the window. It was still there...the swan.

When they found her on the shore after the accident, they had thought her babbling was from hypothermia and exhaustion. How had she managed to swim so far in the frigid waters of the lake? She tried to tell them it hadn't been the distance but the darkness.  "White," she'd tried to tell them, "it was...so white."

And when she'd finally gone silent, "It's a coma," Doctor Hemming had said. "We must hope that she comes out of it."

The storm came upon them late that afternoon. Her companion, Henry, had been swept overboard and must have been hurt by the rigging, because he never resurfaced. The boat foundered immediately after, but Lizzy had managed to hold onto a piece of broken spar and kept herself afloat. Thankfully, the wind left as quickly as it had come.

But it was pitch black; she couldn't see anything, not even the shore. Even in early September, the water of Lake Champlain was cold and she knew she had to begin swimming or the temperature would overtake her. Lizzy was a strong swimmer, her father insisting his daughter learn as a young girl. He'd lost a distant cousin, John Jacob on the Titanic years earlier.  

"The man might be alive today if he'd ever learnt to swim properly."

"Papa, that's foolish. It was the North Atlantic For heaven's sake, there were icebergs."

Impossible, of course, but her father stoutly maintained that had his cousin been a better swimmer he might have survived.

The thought flashed to her now, as she looked all around her frantically, about how cold the north Atlantic must have been. Here in Lake Champlain, the cold and the black were everywhere; Lizzy still could not see the shoreline it was so dark. She might have begun swimming farther out into the lake, when she spied something white in the distance.

She remembered the swans that had been flocking near the shoreline for the past week. She knew they did not feed in deepwater and rarely went far from the shallows.

Fearful the bird might leave, she whispered, "Please, God," and began swimming towards it. She reckoned later it was the better part an hour that she kicked and swam, holding onto the piece of mast. But the swan stayed visible until she reached the shoreline.

When she crawled, gasping onto the beach the bird shied upwards for a moment but returned several feet away. He kept its distance, observing her. There had of course, been a search party out looking for Lizzy and her companion and when the voices were heard, the swan spread its huge wingspan and flew away.

Lizzy was found shivering and babbling incoherently. She had been very ill, developing pneumonia soon after her rescue. In and out of consciousness, the coma had been a kind thing. For three days she had lain still, nothing required of her but her dreams.

She sighed. All she really wanted was to go back there, to her dreams of Amrit - Amrit, with his dark, shining hair. His eyes were the color of strong coffee - skin, the color of weak tea - and he made eighteen-year old Lizzy's knees tremble.

(To be continued).

Author's Note - my story was based on the picture prompts of the swans, and of the couple silhouetted on the bridge.  I stand corrected - the word count is about 1650 words.