Gordon Drowning [GIF]

There had been a mission, as there always was; a fire in fact. They’d gotten as many people as were living out of the 30 storey building and there was not much more for the tired Scott and Gordon to do but watch, stood out on the quayside in their IR uniforms, as Virgil’s big green ‘bird had dropped a payload of water over the last of the blaze. The younger had been enjoying the sea breeze, commenting on the local, world famous crustaceans or something so equally Gordon and oceanic. A seagull had screamed. A child dropped an ice cream. Scott wanted to go for fish and chips after.

The man, in retrospect, had come out of nowhere; distraught and angry and big; screaming obscenities at the pair of them. He’d lunged, his eyes filled with tears for someone he’d obviously just lost in the blaze, and had tried, with flailing fists, to sock Scott squarely in the jaw because ‘you didn’t get here in time’. But Scott had side stepped him, fending off his attack with ease, and little Gordon, unsuspecting, had taken the full, powerful blow right across his temple.

A stunned Gordon gets shoved backwards, stumbling blearily with his feet gripless and sliding on the sea-damp boardwalk. Wide eyed and driven by momentum the aquanaut topples backwards over the guard rail with a startled cry; Scott’s fingers just brushing his as his eldest brother lunges desperately after him, shoving the man out of the way. Gordon’s name gets screamed; high and hoarse, but he’s plummeting the ten feet backwards off the bulstrade and Gordon hits the water hard, at a bad angle which snaps his head back and jars his spine and rips his helmet from his hand.

The water is like ice and, panicking in his disorientation, Gordon makes the rookie mistake of taking a startled, pained gasp of what should have been oxygen but, all too suddenly, simply wasn’t. The sea forces its way into his lungs, burning down his throat; black and salty and choking him. He’s got no air. He can’t breathe and all his limbs seem to have locked up. He can’t swim, he can’t feel. It’s like a hydrofoil crashing all around him and Gordon realises, disturbingly distantly, that he’s sinking.

The knowledge that he’s actually drowning takes Gordon completely by surprise. The ocean is his second home and if he could live in it he would. But right now it feels like there’s something heavy pressing on him; a twisting, pulling tug - like coiling tentacles wrapping around his legs and dragging him down into the lair of the bottom dwellers. Towards the monsters of the deep.

It feels like there’s an iron band tightening around his chest; crushing down and in on him and the light from the surface is fading, getting darker and colder and weaker,  just like his feeble, helpless kicks. He’s scared. His head is pounding. There’s a slow, building pressure in his lower back and spine and neck; growing and rippling through him. Gordon’s got ice lodged in his veins. His hand finds his own throat, fingers scrabbling. He can’t even work out how to close his eyes; he’s being forced to watch as he drowns. Unable to even scream to stop it.

There’s a blurred shape high above him. A body. Fingers tight on his wrist and a heavy hauling sensation, but everything has begun to grey out from the edges in and by the time Scott, frantic and terrified, gets his little brother to the surface, Gordon’s eyes have finally slipped closed and unconsciousness has claimed him. His body is limp and heavy in his eldest brother’s arms, the waves threatening to violently drag them both back down under and Scott, although strong, has never been a good a swimmer as his brother.

Gordon doesn’t get to feel them finally succeed in the struggle reach dry land. He doesn’t know about Scotty’s fingers trembling at his cold, wet pulse point or about how his brother had panicked, in a most un-Scott like way, when he’d found no breath, only water, in his brother’s lungs. He doesn’t hear Scott screaming for help. He doesn’t hear the sirens. He doesn’t feel the cold.

In fact, Gordon knows nothing until he claws his way back, forcing his way up through watery waves of pain until he’s blinking open heavy, salt crusted eyes and finding his entire family, even a pale faced John, crowded around his hospital bed.

Scott’s fingers are laced with his own, and Gordon, finally feeling them, tries to shape his shaking hand into a tight squeeze when his raw, scratchy throat fails him at his words of gratitude.