In Sickness and In Love (Keep Beating Remake)

Prologue

Prologue

(POV: Charlotte)

"Swimmers take your marks!" I stood upon the diving block, goggles adjusted over my face, heart pounding in anticipation of the icy water to pierce my skin, and chill my veins. The pool was completely still, not even the wind disturbed it. Flat, like an abandoned bottle of Sprite. It stared back at me, ready to welcome me into it's sweet, liquidy embrace.

"Get set!" I bent down, leg going back, preparing to dive in. The water looked even more enticing now, and even on this cold saturday morning, sweat still dripped from my pale skin, hitting the pool and causing tiny ripples to break the surface. It was a beautiful site, which would soon be ruined by the 6 swimmers ready to start their race. Behind me two familiar voices cheered me on.

The buzzer whaled, signaling the 6 of us off of our blocks. I dove in, slicing the water like I was a knife, and it was butter. Under the waves, I was like a mermaid, moving my hips to thrust myself through. At the halfway mark of the pool, I break the surface, already to a good start. Any nervousness that had graced me before was now long gone. No thoughts, just me, and the water.

I glide through the waves, easily making it to the other side of the water. I'm getting ready for the wall, but I take it too fast. I flip, much farther from the wall as I should have been, and just barely touch it. Instead of cheers, I hear silence, and suddenly I'm no longer in the water, but thrusted face first at the dashboard and window. I don't hear any shattering of glass, but I feel a sudden stab in my heart, and it's way too hard to breathe. My world washes to a state of black, as the last site i see is my mother striking her head along the window.

The black fades into a painful red, and sirens blare all around me. I barely make out of the figure of my mother, and I hear voices all around me. Not the words of encouragement from my friends and family, as I try to stay afloat in the water, but the voices of strangers, shouting orders at each other, as they worked over me. I can't even call out for the people who raised me when I had nowhere to go, as my heart throbs, struggling at every second to beat. The red, turns to white, and water clogs my ears once more.

Swimming is like life. You start your life fresh, no weight on your shoulders, like the perfect dive. You glide through the first 10 or so years, like you do after that dive before breaking the surface. At middle school, you start to loose some childhood innocence, so you have to work to push yourself through life, as you have to do your stroke to get to the wall. And then there's the flip turn, the turning point into adulthood. That's where I fucked up.

I have no idea what went wrong though. For years, I have practiced and practiced my flip turns. Once Coach Brendon taught us how to do a flip turn, when I was 8 years old, we were meant to practice it all the time.

Of course we hated him for it at first, but as I got older and began to realize that the flip turn would push me forward. A perfect turn would make me faster. But after all these years of hitting the wall and propelling myself off of it wish such a force that I practically glided to the finish line, I nearly drowned myself with the horrible turn into independence.

Sorry, I know I'm rambling, but I'm bored as hell here, stuck in a hospital.

And now I just made you even more confused, maybe I should start at the beginning. My name's Charlotte Wattson, and I'm one of the star swimmers on my high school swim team, well I was. That was before I landed myself in the hospital, after getting in a car accident with my parents. My mom and dad lost their lives pretty quickly. I was told they never really stood a chance. Well isn't that a nice way to tell a hormonal teenager the people who raised her are dead? I mean to be fair, I did ask them to be blunt with me. The cardiologist was equally straight-forward when she explained to me how I had damaged my heart in the crash, and that while I got a pacemaker to help my heart continue to pump blood, I needed to stay there as I waited for a new heart.