Page 94 of The Deepest Lake

My wakeful periods have been extending and improving. I’ve gotten a better look at my lower leg. The entire shin is mottled purple and yellow, so swollen it’s like a natural cast, which I know can be a good thing.

I remember the gruesome chapter I read from runner Deena Kastor’s memoir, about her disastrous experience at the Beijing Olympics. How her foot broke suddenly in the first miles of her run, due to an extreme calcium deficiency she didn’t even realize she had. I think of that terrible moment anytime I turn an ankle, hiking or trail running. Kastor heard a sound “like a Popsicle stick breaking.” She watched as her foot ballooned, larger than her head. She stopped running but she didn’t get care right away. The doctors credited the lack of immediate emergency attention to saving her from surgery later, because the natural swelling pushed the fractured bits into place better than inexpert local responders might have done. That’s the takeaway I cling to: your body knows what it needs. Swelling isn’t necessarily bad.

Thank god I read Kastor’s book when it came out. Who says memoir can’t save your life?

What worries me, whenever I get up the nerve to look at my throbbing, abraded leg again, is one red and black line of scab, about two inches long, encrusted with bits of yellow. The first time I dare to touch it, the pain is so bad my entire field of vision goes dark and I have to lie back down, sweat breaking out over my forehead and upper lip.

The next time I can ease myself to a sitting position, I force myself to touch the spot again. Even through the swelling, I can feel the sharp bulge of a bone poking up, piercing layers of muscle, with the thinnest bit of flesh and a weeping scab trying to heal over it. Just thinking about it pushes me to the edge of nausea.

Fibula? Tibia? The shinbone. I think it’s the tibia.

I breathe, eyes closed, waiting for the urge to vomit to pass.

Deena Kastor’s foot bone didn’t break through the skin. Within a few days, she was receiving expert care and physical therapy back in the United States. Whereas, I am here.

I look around the round, dark, windowless, adobe-walled hut, trying to make sense of it. There’s a hole over my head, covered by a rusty, thick screen. The ceiling is darkened, unevenly so. That must be the temazcal’s smoke hole. Fires have been stoked in the middle of this room—but not lately. It’s been transformed.

“A healing place,” Eva says.

A holding tank.

“A retreat center.”

A cage.

In the beginning, I heard voices often, but never for long. Time was scissored into fragile ribbons. My naps were invaded by enormous rainbow-colored lizards. When I opened my eyes, the walls of the hut shimmered and undulated, like terra-cottacolored waves or curtains.

“Northern lights,” I said once, “but red and brown.”

“They’re pretty, aren’t they?” someone replied, possibly, unless it was only my own thought. I couldn’t always tell.

At some point I realized that someone changed my clothes following my near drowning. My jean shorts are hung on a clothesline strung across the room. The baggy overshirt I was wearing isn’t here; I only vaguely remember trying to pull it off, while I was thrashing and sinking. Later, I was stripped nude, dressed in soft yoga pants and a baggy T-shirt—admittedly, with care. I want to block it out, because the thoughts are such a mixture of gratitude and humiliation that I can’t make sense of them. I feel both violated and lovingly tended at the same time.

Whenever I woke fully during those first days, it was because Eva was holding my head or pushing something toward my lips. But now I frequently wake alone. I am trusted to drink liquids, to eat mashed banana and tamale. I am trusted to use the bucket, even if I’m not the one to empty it. I can’t, because I can’t walk steadily or lift anything. I have a fever that comes and goes, further clouding my thoughts, like a dirty window that obscures my time-sense and the ability to make even the simplest decisions, like when to get up and pee and when to just hold it, as long as I can, so I don’t have to put weight on my leg again. My jaw, at least, is healing faster, though eating or talking invariably results in a headache as powerful and obnoxious as a klaxon.

Maybe Eva is staying away because she is growing tired of my questions. Like the time I asked her, point-blank, why I wasn’t being taken to a hospital, given the fact that my leg is so clearly broken, swollen and infected. She refused to answer, but she did bring me antibiotics and told me I’d need to stay on them for twelve weeks.

Twelve weeks?

The antibiotics have helped with the fever, but the leg swelling hasn’t abated, the bruises haven’t faded, the scab keeps weeping. But I can’t just stay in bed.

On the first day that I’m able to stay awake and clearheaded for well over an hour, I spend my energy investigating the door system. I’m locked inside. There is a double entry—like an arctic entry, except we are far from the arctic—with a sheltered area between the doors. It’s a small chamber with built-in wooden benches. In the temazcal’s days as a space for steaming, that must have been the place where people who needed a break from the heat could sit, still protected from the sun or bugs outside.

I’ve heard the outer lock turn and the outer door open, then boxes pushed or stacked outside the inner door, followed by a quick knock, followed by the rasp of another sliding mechanism. I figure out that this unlocking is meant to allow me to retrieve the new supplies that are left in the in-between space. But at some point, the inner door gets locked again.

It’s a solid structure—the doors heavy, the adobe walls thick, no windows. I run through all the most obvious ways of getting out. None of them will work.

One day, from my bed, I hear a double rap of knuckles.

I call out, “Eduardo?”

He raps on the door again, like he’s trying to send a reassuring code. Then I hear quick steps away and the closing of the outer door, followed by the slide of the lock and a final knock to tell me he’s done and gone.

I limp to the door, wincing, and I pull the inner door open. There’s a wooden crate with some overripe papaya chunks in a paper bag, a single ripe avocado, tortillas wrapped in a warm napkin and more tamales. On top of it is a yellow notepad and two pencils—gifts from Eva, no doubt, to help me pass the time. Also, inside the tortilla napkin, is a tiny wooden cross not much bigger than two hand-whittled toothpicks. Someone working in the kitchen is feeling sorry for me. Someone besides Eva and Eduardo knows, or has guessed; someone who understands that unspoken communication is sometimes the safest kind. Mercedes?

I’m too tired to walk back to bed, so I sit, like a monkey pressed up against the glass in a zoo, and eat some papaya, trying to puzzle over my situation. It’s surprising what the mind refuses to concede. It’s like the thought of being dressed by someone when I was unconscious, too mixed up with overwhelming feelings of vulnerability. My jaw tightens painfully just thinking about it—a mixture of fear and fever sending me crawling back to bed, where I hide my head under the smelly pillow.

I keep seeing the image of Barbara, facing me in the rowboat with an oar in her hands. I keep hearing Eva’s voice in my head, whispering that I’m safe now. Safe from Barbara? Who still wants to kill me? I’m a worse problem for Barbara than I was at the beginning of this mess.