Hugo was still sniffling. "Enid... go somewhere higher. Climb onto something..."
Before he could finish, an urgent voice cut in.
"Who are you talking to this late?"
"My sister..." Hugo wiped at his tears. "She's still in a cabin at the resort. She didn't come out with us..."
"What?"
The man's voice shot up.
"There's still someone at that resort? What the hell were your parents doing? A flash flood's about to come down the mountain! Don't you understand she could die?"
Chaos erupted on the other end of the line.
Voices crashed over one another. Someone was urgently trying to reach a search-and-rescue team. Someone else was shouting as they checked the evacuation list.
The uniformed staff member's voice rose above all the noise.
"Where are this boy's parents? Get over here! What were you thinking? How could you leave a little girl in a death trap?"
Then Mom's cold voice sounded in the background.
"She's fine. That girl's tough. Nothing can kill her."
The call was abruptly cut off.
At the same moment, the signal dropped to zero.
The phone screen slowly went dark.
"She's fine. That girl's tough."
Those words played over and over in my head like a curse.
The water reached my waist, then my chest.
There was less and less room left to breathe in the bathroom.
I clung to the metal pipe beneath the sink, my fingernails digging deep into the gaps between the bricks.
It was so cold.
The water felt like ice, the wind like knives. My body was going numb.
I remembered a winter when we were little. Hugo refused to wear his coat and caught a cold.
To punish him, Mom made me stand in the yard in nothing but thin pajamas in the dead of winter. She didn't let me come in until I'd developed a fever of 104°F and Hugo was on his knees, crying in terror.
But this cold brought a despair 100 times worse than that freezing winter night.
The icy water had reached my neck.
My fingers were numb. I couldn't hold on to the pipe anymore.
'Let go. Stop putting yourself through this.'
Mom always said I was tough.
'But Mom, I'm not nearly as strong as you think.'
My ears began to ring. My mind went blank, and my body felt weightless, as though I were about to float away.
Just before my consciousness slipped into darkness, frantic voices rang out nearby.
"Found her! Over here!"
After a rescuer pulled me onto a kayak, the team gave me several rounds of CPR. At last, I coughed up a mouthful of filthy water and barely started breathing again.
When they brought me to the city hospital, a doctor took one look at me and said, "Severe drowning injuries and oxygen deprivation. Her lungs are full of water! Prepare to intubate! Contact the OR!"
He shouted down the hallway, "Where's her family? We need a guardian to sign!"
Slow, unhurried footsteps sounded at the far end of the corridor.
Mom walked over at her own pace and gave a contemptuous snort.
"Who told you to stick your noses in and save her?"
Aksara