The Hero

The Hero

Teenager Jess's life was in self destruct mode until she found a reason to live.

I scanned the table of envelopes, looking for the one with my name on. There. I plucked it out, turned away quickly, held it tightly. My heart was pounding. At home was an offer of a uni place to study medicine, grades permitting. As soon as I opened the envelope, I’d know if I’d worked hard enough, know if I’d achieved my goal which was more than a uni place but was actually redemption, for the life of a man who gave his to save mine: a hero.

          His name was Graham Pine and I never knew he existed until I was 16. I was going through a bit of a rebellious teenage phase at the time, wild parties and loads of booze, a boyfriend my parents didn’t approve of who then dumped me. It was just after I’d been dumped that I went to a party he was at and saw him making out with another girl. I hit the booze and don’t remember leaving the party because it was in an ambulance. When I woke up, someone was trying to shove a tube down my throat. Above me was a white ceiling and all around the sounds and smells of hospital bustle. I gagged on the tube, rolled over on the narrow hospital trolley and puked all over someone’s shiny shoes.

“Well that’s a good sign,” the someone said. “We can probably leave her to sleep it off now.”

          When I woke again, my throat felt sandpapered, and I could hear my parents hissing an argument beside my bed.

“Why did you even let her go to this party?” Dad wanted to know. “I thought she was grounded.”

“At least someone had the sense to call us when she passed out,” said Mum.

“Just as well. The doctor says she could have died. Again.”

“Sshh. There’s a chance she can hear us. She doesn’t remember anything about the dinghy. That poor man. It’s best she never knows.”

I must have drifted off again after that. When I woke again, properly, only Mum was sitting there. She put down her book and told me we could go home.

On the way I thought about the argument I’d overheard, tugging at it like a kitten with a ball of string. A dinghy. That must mean the beach. Aunty Sue lived by the beach. We didn’t go there often. I pictured myself in Aunty Sue’s front room. On a cabinet in the corner were several photos in frames. One of them showed my cousins when they were children sitting in a red and white inflatable dinghy on the sand. I remembered going to stay with Aunty Sue when I was three because Mum was in hospital having my brother, Ben. Aunty Sue’s kids are much older than me and Ben. I remembered going to the beach with them…

Unnoticed by the teenage cousins who are meant to be minding her, the child tugs the inflatable dinghy to the water’s edge and climbs inside. Gentle waves rock her up and down, a little further out each time. She laughs and lies down in the boat, riding the swell.

A woman screams. She’s spotted the child in the boat. The teenagers stop their conversation. One of them tries to wade out but the boat’s bobbing further and further away. A man hurtles down the beach and flings himself into the waves. With a strong stroke, he swims towards the dinghy. A crowd on the beach cheers him on. The boat bobs out of his reach. The crowd groans. He reaches once more, grabs the side, begins to swim back, tugging the inflatable craft behind him. Against the current it’s hard work. People wade out. As the man and the boat near the shore, they reach for the child, lift her clear. She’s laughing. Someone carries her up the beach. The crowd follows. Unseen, unheralded, the man slips under the waves. His body is washed ashore several days later, a few miles down the coast…

Graham Pine, the man who saved my life, was 28. He’d been on holiday with his family. I looked up the news report in the local paper for the week Ben was born and found a story: Tragic Hero Saves Toddler. A lump came into my throat as I read that he’d left a wife and two children: three year old Lauren and a baby, Zak. Was that why he’d dived into the water to save me? Because he had a little girl the same age? I wondered what happened to his family afterwards. Did my parents say how sorry they were? Did they send flowers to his funeral? Did the family just go home with one less person in the car?

The beach it happened at was not the one we normally went to when we visited Aunty Sue’s. Was that because of what happened? I told Mum I wanted to go to Aunty Sue’s at the weekend.

“Oh Jess, it’s not really beach weather is it?”

“I remember what happened with the dinghy,” I said. “I know about Graham Pine.”

So we went – just Mum and me. Aunty Sue was expecting us for lunch but we set off early and we didn’t go straight to her house.

We went to the beach – that beach. I stood on the sea wall looking out at waves that were sweeping diagonally across the sand. I walked up the zigzag steps to the top of the cliff. At the top, an old couple were just getting up from a bench put there for people to rest on after the climb or sit and admire the view. As the old man moved, the sun glinted off a brass plaque set into the backrest of the bench. I went across to read it.

In memory of Graham Pine. Husband, father, hero.

My legs gave way and tears pricked my eyes as I sat on the bench tracing the letters of the plaque with my finger. 

Reading the news report, I’d felt sad, but seeing his name on a bench like that, I realised for the first time, what a sacrifice a man who’d never met me made that day. The ultimate sacrifice.

“How can I ever repay a debt like that?” I said to Mum. I could hardly see her through my tears. “What can I do?”

Mum sat on the bench beside me. “Live,” she said. “That’s all you need to do. Life is the gift he gave you. Don’t throw it away.”

She didn’t need to tell me to stop drinking. I stopped taking stupid risks with my life. I worked hard. But did I work hard enough? I slid my finger under the stuck down flap of the envelope, eased out the sheet of paper. Squealed.

Mum looked over my shoulder. “Three A Stars! Well done, Jess.”

Some people described my results as heroic. I shrugged them off. They had no idea what being a hero really meant. 

This story was awarded 3rd place in the Henshaw Press short story competition in June 2014 and published in the anthology Henshaw Treats the following year