MAY 6, 1995
WHEN OUR FAMILIES BOARDED THE BOAT ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, I REMEMBERED thinking it was one of the best days of my life. Looking fancy in our First Holy Communion suits, Gibsie and I leaned over the side of the boat, watching the dolphins chase us as we sailed out to sea.
I remembered spending most of our time planning all the ways we could spend our fortunes. We knew we had made a lot of cash today. Our mothers had stacks of thick envelopes shoved into their handbags.
All filled with money and all for us.
It should have been the best day of our lives, but instead, it became our worst day.
One moment, Gibs and I were arguing with our sisters over a stupid toy laser beam, and the next, one of them had fallen overboard.
Everything happened so fast, and yet time seemed to slow down.
One minute, Bethany was there and the next she wasn’t.
Time seemed to stand still for a long beat before Sadhbh’s high-pitched scream shook the earth’s core.
It was the worst, scariest noise I’d ever heard in my life.
“Bethany!” Sadhbh screamed. “Joe, I can’t swim. Please, I can’t swim, Joe!”
“I’ll get our baby.” We were shoved out of the way then, and I watched as Joe Gibson barreled past us and jumped overboard, while screaming his daughter’s name. “Bethany!”
“Daddy’s coming, Beth,” Sadhbh continued to scream, and it made my skin crawl because it sounded like impending doom. “Hold on, baby girl. Daddy’s on the way!”
Panic stricken, I grabbed my sister and pulled her back from the edge, where she had been leaning over and crying hysterically.
Everyone was screaming and I didn’t know what to do. I was scared to look at Sadhbh’s face because the noises coming out of her were truly terrifying.
Instead, I kept a firm grip on the small, curly-haired girl and thanked Jesus he had spared my sister.
Because this was bad.
I knew it was.
Beth couldn’t swim, she was only a toddler, and the current was too strong. It wasn’t a swimming pool she needed to be rescued from—it was the wild Atlantic Ocean, and she hadn’t surfaced once since she fell in.
“Beth, hold on!” My attention snapped to Gibsie’s frantic screams, and I locked eyes on him climbing over the side of the boat. “Dad, I’m coming!”
“Gibs, no!” I roared, pushing past my sister, but it was too late.
He was already disappearing beneath the waves.
“Hold on, Gibs!” I called out, before sucking in a deep breath and launching myself over the side.
But I didn’t hit the water because someone grabbed me by the back of my shirt. “No!” My father’s voice boomed in my ears, as he roughly dragged me backward and tossed me in a heap on the deck. “Stay!” he ordered before jumping overboard.
“Dad!” I screamed, scrambling onto my hands and knees to get to him. “Dad!”
In a nanosecond, my mother was on me, wrapping her arms around me in a ferocious bear hug to stop me from following my dad.
“No, Mam,” I cried, pushing and lashing to break free. “Gibs can’t swim properly.”
“He can’t swim yet!” Claire screamed, repeating my words, as she barreled toward the side of the boat where our friend had disappeared. “You gots to do something!” She argued, pushing and slamming her small fists against Keith’s leg. “You gots to save them!”
“I can’t swim,” Keith cried, holding on to Sadhbh, who seemed to be in a state of delirium. “I’m so sorry. I can’t swim.”
Meanwhile, Mark stood to the side, with his arms folded across his chest.
Like a statue.
Like a devil.
Doing nothing.
Managing to free myself from Mam’s grip, I bolted over to the side of the boat and screamed when Joe broke the surface with both of his children.
Relief.
It flooded me.
Gibsie’s limp body was sprawled over his shoulder, while he clutched his toddler daughter to his chest. Neither one of them were moving.
Gibsie’s eyes were closed, and Bethany’s hair was draped over her face in wet, golden clumps.
Panic quickly set in.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no…
“Gerard!” Claire screamed, sounding more frightened than I’d ever heard her. “Just hold on, okay? I’m here, Gerard! Don’t go to sleep!”
“Are they okay?” Sadhbh continued to scream over and over, as she collapsed in a heap on the bed of the boat. “Are they breathing?”
“I’m coming, Gibs,” Dad called out, breathing hard, as he frantically swam out toward his best friend. “I’ve got ya, buddy.”
“Pete,” Joe called back, struggling to keep all three of them afloat from the relentless assault of wave after wave.
We shouldn’t have come out today, I thought to myself.
The water was too choppy. The conditions were all wrong. I’d heard my dad say as much to my mother this morning.
Still, I clung to the hope that everything would be okay.
Hope was quick to dwindle when, a moment later, a huge wave crashed over the four of them, causing Joe to lose his hold on Gibsie.
“Gerard!” Claire screamed, trying to climb over the side of the boat to get to him. Thankfully, Mam had a firm hold on her. “Daddy, you gots to find him! Please! Please! Gerard! Over there, Daddy.” Claire screamed in a feral tone, pointing to where our friend had been swallowed up by the merciless waters. “It sucked him down there, Daddy!”
“I’ll find him, Gibs,” Dad vowed, clearly the fresher of the two of them, as Joe was fading fast. “I promise I’ll find your son.” Dad glanced over to where my sister was screaming and pointing at and nodded. “I’ll bring him back.”
“Don’t let him die, Pete.”
“I won’t,” Dad promised. “Take Beth back in. I’ll get the boy.”
Another wave crashed over them then, and just like that, Bethany sank under the water like her brother had, followed by her father.
Swallowed up by the waves like a lifeless, floating doll.
The image of her pink dress was the last that I saw of her.
She wouldn’t come back up that day.
Neither would Joe.
“He gots him!” Claire screamed then, rekindling the dying flame of hope inside of me. “Daddy gots Gerard!”
I couldn’t look because I knew it would be bad.
I was too fucking scared to see him not alive.
My oldest friend in the world.
“Hugh, I need you to listen to me.” Turning me in her arms, my mother held my shoulders as she spoke. “I need you to be brave, okay?”
Blinking the tears away, I nodded. “I will.”
“I need you to do everything I tell you. No matter what, son.”
Sniffling, I offered her another nod. “I will.”
“I need to help your father now, and I need you to look after your sister, okay?”
I choked out a sob and nodded in understanding.
“Good boy.” Leaning in close, Mam pressed a hard kiss to my forehead and then climbed over the side of the boat and lowered herself into the choppy water.
“Mammy, no!” Claire screamed frantically when our mother went into the water. “Come back!”
Swimming out to our father, Mam battled against the waves pushing against her, not stopping until she reached my father.
Taking the lifeless boy from his arms, she treaded water, giving my father a chance to regather some strength.
And then, by some miraculous intervention, they managed to work together to bring my oldest friend’s lifeless body back to the boat.
“He’s dead,” Sadhbh continued to wail, collapsing in a heap on the floor in Keith’s arms. “They’re all dead.”
I couldn’t concentrate on her, though.
Not when my entire focus was on my mother as I waited for the instructions to come.
“Hugh,” Mam said, as she clung to the side of the boat, breathing hard from the effort it was taking to stay afloat in these conditions.
Handing off Gibs to my father once more, she looked up at me from the depths of the water and said, “I need you to hold your friend.” Her eyes were pleading when she added, “I need you to use all your strength and hold him for me, okay? Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” I promised through tears, as I leaned over the side and grabbed Gibsie’s shoulders. I tried to heave him over, but he weighed so much more than normal that I couldn’t.
“I’ve got you, Hugh,” Claire cried, wrapping her limbs around my legs. “I won’t let go.”
“Don’t let go,” Dad ordered as he heaved himself out of the water and onto the boat. “Good lad.”
“I won’t.” I hissed through my teeth from the effort it was taking to hold on, especially with the current pulling and the waves crashing over him. But if the ocean wanted Gerard Gibson, then it was going to have to take my arms with him because I would never let go of him.
Scrambling to where I was dangling over the side, Dad grabbed the back of Gibsie’s shirt and helped me heave him onto the boat.
“Gerard!” Sadhbh screamed, scrambling toward him on her hands and knees, while my father collapsed in a heap from exhaustion. “Oh, baby, breathe.” Trailing her hands all over his lifeless body, Sadhbh started pushing and shoving at his chest, desperate to make his heart start beating again.
But it wasn’t beating.
And he wasn’t breathing.
He wasn’t even the right color.
He was a grayish-blue color.
He was dead.
I knew it.
Ignoring the madness around me, I retrained my attention back on my mother, who was still in the water. Leaning over the side, I reached out both hands to help her back onto the deck. “My brave boy,” she panted when she was safely back on the boat. I wasn’t sure if it was the ocean water in her eyes or tears, but she gave me the saddest smile and brushed my cheek with her icy-cold fingers before rushing to Gibsie.
“Breathe,” Sadhbh continued to scream, pushing on Gibsie’s chest, while my father blew into his mouth.
“Come on, kid, breathe.”
It wasn’t working.
“Come on, son, come back to me.”
It didn’t seem to make a difference.
“Breathe, Gibs. Breathe, lad!”
He wouldn’t breathe.
“Move aside,” I heard my mother instruct as she knelt in front of my lifeless friend and began to resuscitate him. The proper way. Because my mam was smart like that. She always knew what to do.
Whatever hope Gibs had was in my mother’s hands now.
She was a nurse in the ICU.
She would know what to do.
How to make him breathe again.
“I’ll start the engine,” Keith declared hoarsely. “I’ve called the paramedics. They’ll meet us on the shore.”
“No, no, no!” Sadhbh screamed, pulling and tearing at her hair, as she dashed to the side of the boat where her daughter had fallen overboard. “My baby! My baby’s in there! We can’t leave her!”
“Gerard’s going to die if we don’t get him help,” Keith argued back. “We have to go, Sadhbh, love.”
“He’s already dead.”
“Shut up, Mark.”
A few moments later, when the sound of the motor running filled the air, and the vibration rattled through my body, a pair of small arms came around me, and I didn’t hesitate to fold her into my body, holding on for dear life to my baby sister.
“Joe!” Sadhbh screamed, sounding feral. “Joe!”
“It’s okay, love. They’ll give you something for the shock when we get back to land.”
“Bethany! Joe! No, no, no, don’t do this. Don’t leave them behind!”
I felt more gratitude for Claire in this moment than I ever had in the five years since she’d arrived into my world. Because she was here, on this boat, with her heart beating. “I love you, Claire,” I heard myself cry, holding her so tight, I was sure I was hurting her skinny, little body, but I didn’t care. She was alive and I had to feel that in this moment. After holding Gibsie’s lifeless body, I had to touch something alive. “I love you. I love you. I love you!”
“I loves you, too,” Claire sobbed, clinging to me just as tightly, smothering my face with her wild curls. “Don’t ever go away, Hughie.”
“I won’t,” I whispered, burying her face in my neck, needing to protect her from what was unfolding around us.
The hopeless feeling that was festering inside of me continued to grow and inflate and consume me until the sound of a choking cough filled my ears.
“That’s it, lad,” my father cried out. “Come on, come back to us.”
Another choking cough filled my ears, but I didn’t get my hopes up.
Because what if I was wrong?
What if I was imagining the sound?
“Quick, roll him onto his side, Pete, he’s asphyxiating,” Mam instructed. “That’s it, Gibsie, love. Good boy. Cough it all up.”
“Quick, warm him up before his body goes into hypothermia.”
“Gerard,” Claire cried out, and it was only then that I dared to look.
That I dared to hope.
Scrambling out of my lap, Claire crawled on her hands and knees to where our friend was lying on his side, in the recovery position, facing us. His eyes were blank, but they were open and focused entirely on my sister’s face.
“We’ve got you, Gerard,” she continued to tell him, hunched down close to his face, with her small hand touching his hollow cheek. “You came back to me.”
He was a deathly bluish-gray color and trembling violently beneath the bundle of coats and blankets the grown-ups had thrown over him, but his chest was moving.
He was breathing.
In that moment, I vowed to never sit back and do nothing.
I would never be a statue like Mark or incapable like Sadhbh and Keith.
For the rest of my life, I would help.
I would save people.
I would bring them back to life.
Like my father brought Gibs back from his watery grave.
Like my mother brought his heart back to life.
