Shane isn't sure whether or not he is hallucinating, being dragged through the current that he can feel is strong, and yet whoever is pulling him through seems to be cutting through the water with ease, the cold that has soaked deep into his bones seemingly not affecting the stranger. It's only when they're up on the shore that he's able to get a better look. Half-drowned, still coughing up water and struggling to breathe and he's seeing something impossible.
It's freezing, he could have felt the bite of the cold even before his clothes became water logged, but the other man is shirtless. Man? He must be seeing things, half-hallucinating. Had he perhaps truly drowned, and his mind was conjuring up comfort in these last moments? It made more sense than what he was seeing, but as his breathing evened out, his sight did not change.
"It was the ice." Ice, which Shane Hollander knew so well, had betrayed him in a way, but it could have been anyone. Would anyone else have been as lucky to have been saved? Is it a betrayal, when his rescuer is this…beautiful? Is that the right word? Or is he still groggy from inhaling the salt water? It seems that he isn't coughing it up anymore, though his stomach lurches, knows he has swallowed far too much of it by accident.
"Pretty?" The question, the answer to this mysterious savior's words, come far too late, because he is still struggling to catch his breath fully, still coughing up salt water and trying not to vomit it as well. Something, it seems, scares the other off, back into the water, as though it were easy to slip into freezing waters and vanish, which only makes Shane more confused. His ears then pick up on the sounds, and he remembers - his parents had been here, because they had come here to skate when he was a child, and the ice had been far more solid then. If anyone knew not to venture too far towards where the lake met the river, it was Shane Hollander, but he had fucked up.
He's frozen, shaking violently, and there's still the possibility of water in his lungs, that his parents insist on taking him to the hospital, and he can't argue, even if he's still looking out at the water, confused, especially because he knows this is not where he fell through the ice.
Whatever water was in his lungs he had seemed to expel before arriving at the hospital, but he had been freezing, trembling uncontrollably, soaked through, and they had placed warming blankets on his, gotten his temperature back to normal, before releasing him. He was tempted to go back, not into the water, but to see if there was any sign or what he thought he saw, what he was sure he saw and felt, but he would sound crazy. And there's no way he could convince his parents that he needed to go back - he was heading back to Montreal in a few days, so he could go back then, before he left.
Which is what he does decide on. Waiting a couple of days, before getting in his car in order to head home, but with a detour first. Back to the river, though staying off the icy surface this time, seeing from the shoreline where it has already broken in places, froze over again, but he can see where the river breaks off completely, where there are gaps. He stays on the shoreline, does not want a repeat performance. "This is so stupid." He mutters the words, because really? He was hallucinating after falling through the ice into the frigid waters. He kicks a stone off the edge of the frozen ground, watching it slide across the ice and into one of those broken divets where water hasn't frozen solid.
