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Our Paranormal Chernobyl C-Minus Five Years: Freya Sontag is giving her daughter a bath. The baby, Roya, sits in a blue plastic tub nestled in the sink, water up to her navel. She is a perfect cherub, a round-faced Gerber baby with ten pink fingers and ten pink toes. Freya lifts a sponge out of the warm water, squeezes, and water cascades over the baby's head and chest. Roya, who is four months old and has learned this game, laughs and slaps her tiny hands against the water in joy. Freya dunks the sponge again, and this time when she squeezes, Roya lifts her face toward the water. It splashes across her eyes and nose and mouth, and for a moment she is stunned by the gush of liquid, and she sputters. Gills sprout from the sides of Roya's neck, sudden as dove's wings. Her skin cracks and instantly hardens into glittering scales. Mucous gushes from hidden pores to lubricate the scales, and suddenly she is lurching out of the sink, instinctively diving for deeper water. The blue tub flips sideways, throwing water into the air. Freya lunges, but her wet hands slide over the coated skin, and Roya shoots out of Freya's grasp. The baby strikes the ceramic floor with a loud crack and slides slides half a foot across the tile. Freya screams: "Roya!" The girl lays on the floor, gasping through gills that can't process the undiluted oxygen. Her legs and arms are frighteningly still. She's unconscious. No one comes running. The nurse left for lunch only fifteen minutes ago—she won't be back for a half hour. Her daughter is going to die. The thought is a chasm opening up to swallow her. Freya grabs the towel next to the sink, holds it like a net between her hands. She lifts Roya, one hand under her neck, the other supporting her bottom, and turns to the sink. The tub is tilted sideways, useless. Freya knocks at the tub with her elbow, but it refuses to fall into place. She brings the baby to her chest, holds her there with one arm, and uses her free hand to grab the tub. She hurls it across the room, and it strikes the clear plastic wall that separates Roya's room from the nurse's area. Freya slams the blue handle all the way up, then flips the red handle halfway up, and water blasts into the sink. She stares at the sink for a moment, willing it to fill faster, then realizes that there's no stopper, water is going right out the bottom of the sink. She grabs the sponge and jams it into the drain, and the sink starts to fill a little faster, but so slow, so slow. Roya makes a croaking sound, unable to draw in air. Her tiny chest begins to tremble. She is going into shock. The water isn't high enough, but Freya puts the baby face down into the sink, towel and all. The spray from the faucet hits her on her scaly back, splattering in all directions. Freya deflects the jet into the side of the walls of the sink with her hand and watches the water level slowly creep above Roya's gills. The scales on the back of her head bulge outward, the flesh swollen where she struck the ground. The baby shudders, then her back heaves, and she inhales. In a few moments she is breathing regularly—as regularly as any human child with gills. Sometime in the next hour, Roya will change again, and most likely give herself lungs to breathe through, and heal her damaged skull. Freya is almost nauseous with relief. Her daughter is not going to die. Today. The chasm is still there. She is standing on the brink, holding Roya in her arms. |