Electric Current

The pool at the YMCA was nearly empty at 11 PM, just as Elena preferred. She'd been coming here for months, since the miscarriage, finding solace in the rhythmic isolation of lane swimming. The water held her in a way that nothing else could anymore—not Mark's tentative touches, not her friends' well-meaning clichés, not even the antidepressants that made her feel like she was observing her life from behind glass.

Tonight, a storm was brewing outside. Through the skylights, she could see lightning fracturing the sky, illuminating the empty bleachers in sudden, stark flashes. Each time the pool reflected that electric white, she thought of the ultrasound monitor—how it had flickered with something that should have been a heartbeat but wasn't.

She wasn't alone anymore. A man had appeared in the lane beside hers sometime during her thirtieth lap. He swam with efficient, powerful strokes, his dark hair slicked back like ink against his skull. When they both surfaced at the wall during a break, she noticed his wedding band was on his right hand—European style, or maybe divorced.

"Storm's coming," he said, wiping water from his eyes. His accent was faint, maybe Eastern European.

"I like storms," Elena heard herself say. "They make everything else feel small."

He studied her face in the strobe-light intervals of lightning. Whatever he saw there made him nod, like he recognized the particular species of grief she was carrying. "My wife died two years ago today. Cancer." He said it simply, like he was discussing the weather. "I come here when I can't sleep. The swimming helps."

Elena felt something crack open in her chest—not healed, but breathing. "I'm sorry," she said, and meant it.

"I'm sorry too," he replied, and she knew he didn't mean his wife.

They swam in companionable silence for another twenty minutes until the lifeguard's whistle signaled the pool's closing. As they gathered their things at the bleachers, lightning struck somewhere close enough that the fluorescent lights buzzed and died, plunging them into darkness.

"I'm Daniel," he said in the sudden intimate blackness.

"Elena."

They found their way to the exit by the periodic flash of lightning, its ephemeral bridges stitching together the dark. At the door, she turned to him, really seeing him for the first time—how his wet hair curled against his collar, how his eyes held that particular flatness that came from surviving something that should have killed you.

"Same time next Tuesday?" Elena asked, surprised by her own voice.

Daniel smiled, and it didn't reach his eyes but it was genuine anyway. "I'll be here."

Outside, the rain had just begun to fall. Elena didn't run to her car. She let herself get soaked, feeling something shift inside her—not closure, never that, but the barest beginning of something else. The lightning flashed again, and for the first time in months, she didn't think of what she'd lost. She thought about next Tuesday.