[After]

My body is still in shock, or the memory of it, when I stagger and catch myself with one hand against a palm. My breath is pulling raggedly in my lungs and throat and every part of me feels raw, wind burned or frozen or scraped. The enormity of what we just went through is already slamming into me with the same kind of force as the waters of the North Atlantic and I feel such a powerful surge of nausea that I have to clench my jaw, breathe through my nose, and stay half bent against the tree.

Eventually my breath works itself free of the place it was coiled up and constricted in my chest and, eyes burning, I gasp, "Oh, God."