Another story

believe it or not, this story is an encouragement. hope is never as far gone as we convince ourselves it is.

Hope

“Okay, now clip the harness in and hold the rope tight!”
There is a splash at his side. He attaches the harness and grips the dangling yellow rope with both hands and tugs twice like they told him. Surrounding him, the illuminated patch of turbulent waters cuts stark and unnatural into the moonless night. The helicopter propels a salty mist into the cold air.
He feels the pull of the rope and holds on tightly as his ascension begins. The sea allows his body to glide freely from its midst—a merciful captor. His drenched clothes begin to drain, and he watches each desperate, hopeless drop fall to its death.
“Hang in there! You’ll be home in no time!”
Liars. Home has drowned.
The rope begins to burn. His feet dangle a story above the surface, the helicopter still more than fifty feet up.
. . .
It did not happen “so fast.” It was agonizingly slow. An explosion in the engine compartment breached the hull and jammed the sliding door shut. He was on the stern; she was inside. All sound ceased but that of her muffled screams and the desperate pounding on the glass.
It wouldn’t break. Why wouldn’t it break?
He stayed for the next hour as the water seeped into the cabin. It surrounded her ankles, then her knees, her waist, her shoulders, her neck. Then the boat slowly tilted forward and disappeared into the dark water.
A current took him further and further away until he could no longer watch her last breaths bubble to the surface, and he knew it was hopeless. Her terrified green eyes blazed from behind the fogging glass in his mind.
Why wouldn’t it break?
. . .
The rope burns. His hands are too tired. The harness creaks and whines as if it wants to release him. What is there left to hold on for?
. . .
Her green eyes peek our from a huddled, shivering, blanketed mass.
“Is he okay?”
“Just ten more feet and he’s here.”
She breathes a sigh of relief. This day was full of miracles.
. . .
There is nothing left. All is lost, all is hopeless, all is gone. The searchlight stings his eyes. The rope cuts into his hands and the harness into his thighs as he dangles high above the water. I will never be home. His own tears join in the fate of the helpless droplets still falling by the hundreds from his clothes. He runs his fingers over the harness buckle that keeps him dangling, pulled toward a half-life. Tears and water roll off his body, falling—slow, soft, beautiful—into nonexistence.
. . .
“No!”
“What’s wrong?” she asks, eyes locked on the open door of the helicopter.
“I’m so sorry. He… his harness. It must have come undone. He fell.”