Part I - August
Exercise makes you tired. Your muscles run out of energy, then your nerves lose the ability to keep moving those muscles and then your body sleeps. Vesper ploughed another few lengths through the water, cutting it up only slightly less smoothly than she was used to. She hit the wall, exhausted, and pulled herself out breathing hard. The big clock hanging over the pool calculated her time - good, but not good for her. She slid in again and pushed off, trying to ignore the fact that only a month ago she would have dived in with no effort at all. Her legs ached and she was pretty sure she could sense her muscles deteriorating with every stroke. Vesper had never been good at perspective, that's what her dad had said to her.
"Put it into perspective, Ves"; put her times into perspective, put her strength into perspective, put what she perceived as minimal achievements into perspective. Vesper hated perspective. The swim was a ritual, and if she got up thirty minutes earlier, she could get to the pool and train long before any of the morning classes started. Vesper never had any issues getting up early. After all, wasn't this some kind of therapy for her? Or at least that's what she told her mum when she had been convincing her to let her keep swimming. If she still had to go to school, Vesper had decided, she was allowed to keep swimming. Sixth form college will always be more damaging to you than anything else. Swimming on the other hand was still a stress relief - weightless, no pressure on her from any direction and floating through the water without a care in the world. She snorted and water went up her nose making her cough. Okay well maybe that was fanciful thinking. But she felt okay today, her exhaustion level was resting at a solid forty percent and decreased as she trod water more out of habit than need - she could've just held onto the side.
She let her limbs work off of muscle memory, her legs gently sculling under her to keep her head out the water so she could catch her breath. She glanced up at the large clock over the end of the pool and waited for the thin red line of the second hand to make its way back to zero. When she used to train, she always felt like that second hand dragged itself to the top of the clock to signal the start of her length, but now if she blinked, she'd miss it. She gasped in a lungful of air, the clock hit zero, and she pushed off again dolphining her legs under the water letting a stream of bubbles out of her nose. One stroke – two stokes – three strokes – breathe. She tilted her head to the side and inhaled a lungful of cold air. One stroke – two stokes – three strokes – breathe. She tilted her head to the other side and missed her mark slightly catching the wash from her stroke up her nose. One stroke – two stokes – shit she had to breathe. She changed her pattern taking a gulp of air trying to finish the hundred meters. One stroke – two stokes – breathe. One stroke – two stokes – breathe. No, it felt wrong now, she felt like she didn't have time to exhale properly before she was taking another breath. One stroke – two strokes – OW - OW – OW – OW cramp – cramp in her leg. She stopped, trying to tread water again trying to relieve it but the pain running through her muscle was white hot and momentarily blinding. Vesper flipped over onto her back and lay there blowing water out of her mouth in a little spout like a whale and panting, trying to rub the knot out of her muscle.
She used her hands to scull herself carefully over to the side and held on until the pain from the cramp passed. Although it was embarrassing, she had got cramp at training all the time too, a lack of warm-up normally to blame. If she closed her eyes Vesper could kid herself into thinking that the reason for her lack of breath and aching muscles was the same as it had always been – a lack of warm-up and a refusal to wear a jacket outside. The one perk, Vesper decided, of her particular state of physical issues was that she didn't look sick. She had dark circles and was a little pastier than she perhaps would've liked, but what vitamin-D-starved swimmer wasn't? She was never asked if she needed help or what was wrong, so she could go about her business. She inhaled in once more, and pushed off again. One stroke - two strokes - three strokes - breathe and turn; tucking in her head and flipping her legs over in a tumbling motion - repetitive and ritualistic.
Did you know that if you focus on one specific part of your body you don't feel the pain in the rest of it? Vesper had discovered this years ago at a swimming competition - four hundred metre butterfly to be exact. Vesper always swam butterfly, mostly because no one else wanted to, you only swim four hundred metre butterfly if you're clinically insane. Vesper remembered clearly the burning of her right arm worse than anything. Her arms had always had an annoying strength differential between them. No matter how much she'd trained she couldn't compensate for the years she'd spent as a child being left-handed - curse her early years. She had focused all of her attention into her left ankle, keeping it clinging to the right, kicking at exactly the right time. The pain of her right arm had faded into the back of her mind until long after the race had finished, it was only when she reached the podium she realised she couldn't raise her arms to celebrate and then she had just laughed. For teenage Vesper, any sign of her weakness was funny because she simply wasn't weak. Looking back on those moments she wondered if there'd been signs. If there had been, she was very happy she hadn't noticed them at the time and that a sore arm was allowed to simply be sore.
"Vesper?" The lifeguard, a poor soul who was stuck at his post solely for her. He tapped the tiles by her head and she glanced up, pulling up her swim cap from one ear so she could hear him despite the violent popping sounds echoing through her skull.
"Huh?" she managed to splutter out, far more out of breath than any nineteen-year-old without severe asthma should ever be.
"Just letting you know that's nine am now kiddo," he smiled at her and headed back to his seat.
Of course, swim lessons started any minute and she had absolutely no desire to see her old club mates. Vesper dragged herself up and out by her arms, that familiar twinge in her shoulder was long buried under the aching of her entire body. She stood in the shower, letting the warm water wash away any aches for the moment and stretched her arms up into the flow parting it over her head so it didn't splash in her eyes. She always stretched off after swimming now, a little ironic considering she was barely even scraping the times she used to be able to swim. However, a part of her knew it was still necessary, that if she treated her morning ritual as important it would help her cling to a sense of normality a little longer. She gathered her towel and phone off the side of the pool and pried her goggles off her forehead leaving the familiar stupid red indentation across her skin. Just for a moment, she vaguely saw herself out of the corner of her eye, jostling with her friends and running along the pool edge with no regard for the large 'Don't Run' sign plastered on the wall. She had strapping on her shoulders and a huge litre water bottle in one hand that she was whacking her friend with. It briefly coaxed a smile to tug at the corner of her mouth, but then she looked again and that memory was gone, and with it, the feeling of warmth that it had brought.
As she pulled on her swimming club hoodie and jeans – a process that involved more strength than swimming the four-hundred metre butterfly - she considered the bittersweet taste that every happy memory she had was now interlaced with. Vesper's memories were simply a deep tank of wasted potential now that swirled around her mind and infiltrated her thoughts when they were empty. She yanked at her jeans again and swore, she thought she would've learned in a decade of swimming that it was impossible to put jeans on wet skin. The moment of contemplation passed, Vesper scrambled to get her things and bounced up the stairs with relative ease ignoring her hair soaking through her clothes leaving a darker patch on her already dark navy hoodie. There could be nothing worse than having to talk to her old clubmates on their way in, the very idea made her shudder.
The walk to the hospital was brisk even with the heat of summer only just fading out of the air, and with wet hair, it brought an extra nip that forced rather than encouraged Vesper to attempt to pick up the pace. She was regretting taking those steps at the pool as quickly as she had now, the acid in her muscles felt as though they were dissolving them with every step. The nip in the air which turned the tip of her nose red and made her wish that she had both dried her hair before leaving the pool and potentially brought a scarf distracted her from the dull ache in her calves. Her legs were dragging and the leaves on the pavement squished beneath her boots, not in that crisp satisfying way, but in the way that let you know your boots would be stained with red berry juice by the time you got home. If only she was going home, she could've done with some breakfast around about now. She blew on her hands and shoved them in her pockets, she never used to get cold, now it felt as though the autumn air chill was seeping into the fibres of her bones. She crossed across the street and ducked into a coffee shop that was enroute between the pool and the hospital. She shifted through her purse digging out a crumpled five-pound note and set a croissant down on the counter.
"Hot chocolate please," she said quietly to a spot somewhere over the barista's shoulder. She smiled and nodded at her - Vesper wasn't quite a regular here but she was certainly a familiar face. The barista handed her a takeaway cup with foam and cinnamon on the top and she inhaled happily into her lungs and handed her the cash. She dunked her croissant in the hot chocolate as she walked down the road balancing carefully along the curb and chewing. The warmth from the hot drink and pastry momentarily drove back the shiver in her fingers and shoulders.
The occasional car swung past but she managed to make it the couple of blocks to the hospital without having to make eye contact with anyone else, spare a cat that stared at her on the corner of a road as she passed. She paused her route-march for a moment cutting her stride short and crouched down to pet it, the cat purred and rolled over lazily, but it brought her mouth to a begrudging smile nonetheless. She sat with the cat as she finished her breakfast and the stood up, immediately rubbing her legs that were already cramping from the brisk air and squatting down for more than a minute. It seemed like cosmic comedy that the pool and the hospital were barely fifteen minutes away from each other. A cosmic comedy that at this precise moment in time Vesper wasn't find particularly funny. As she rounded the corner into the hospital car park she reached into her bag to dig out her ID and found only empty pocket. Frustration coursed through her and she swore momentarily under her breath but after a moment of debating walking all the way home and back she decided to try her luck, it wasn't like she wasn't here once a week.