THE LIFEGUARD

By Christian D Petersen

"The Lifeguard" is a heart-wrenching love story that brings together two people from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Sheldon Winters, an affluent and educated man, is a successful cardiothoracic surgeon and a former professional surfer. Melissa, on the other hand, is poor, uneducated, and physically

• Language: English
• Publisher: Excel Book Writing
• Release date: Mar 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869282446

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated with lots of love to my dear mother, Connie, and her mother, Nancy — both of whom lent me their shared understanding of the power of words.

The heart is deceitful above all things

and beyond cure.

Who can understand it?

"I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind,

to reward each person according to their conduct,

according to what their deeds deserve."

Jeremiah 17, 9-10

Prologue

Carl

Time is the greatest distance between two places. Memory swirls and swishes and connects me with the half-buried island of the past, with a time that can now be felt only ephemerally, in moments where everything comes back with full force. The years have kept piling on, and with each new year, my connection with the past has wavered and shifted but never ended. All it takes is a familiar smell, a smile, or a road, and I’m back to being sixteen, with the salty wind rummaging through my hair – brittle with salt –washing through each pore in my tanned skin, as the faint murmur of the waves fill my ears. Perhaps it’s memory that leads me down this road again. Perhaps it’s the past, with its full and potent force, that causes me to retrace my steps. I can’t know for certain. All I know is that I’ve driven down this road every day since I was sixteen. The journey that leads me to the beach is twenty-two miles long and takes no more than thirty minutes to complete. Over the course of these long years, I’ve come to know every inch of the road. The road is called Del Dios Highway, but I call it the path to Paradise.

The first time I drove it was from the Department of Motor Vehicles parking lot, a minute after getting my driver’s license. To be quite honest, every significant event in my life thereafter has always somehow revolved around this road. Every journey and every destination, it seems, relies on this road. Most of these journeys have been tender and brimming with joy. I wish I could say the same about today’s journey, but I can’t. Today’s journey is bittersweet. Every journey circling around the contours of the past usually is.

I drove down this road a little slower than usual, inhaling the smell of summertime as it changed slowly, morphing from the hot, burnt smell of the inland sage that covers the hills to the cool salty air of the Pacific Ocean. It’s amazing, the vast difference in temperature, smells, and tastes this short drive takes. Of all the years that I’ve driven down this road, of all the repetitive drives, this massive plethora of sensations hasn’t once failed to amaze me or catch me by surprise. I can navigate the road blind just by the change in temperature and smell, as it morphs and transforms, mile by mile.

At the end of the road, where the asphalt meets the sand, my memory begins.

A mix of circling faces roam in my mind and collide with my thoughts. These faces call out to me, speak to me in languages now forgotten and lost, until finally, out of the haze of the indiscernible, I can realize a face and attach it to the idea of a person that I used to know. Today, I recognize Sheldon. Or rather, Sheldon as he was when we were sixteen. Just like that, my memory chimes and rewinds itself, and there I am again, on the day I turned sixteen years old, headed straight for the beach. My face was flushed, and little white splotches of salty aridity clung to my face, marking the places where my tears had streamed forth.

Sheldon and I had been surfing together for a year or so. As memory flows, distills, and reworks itself, I remember a conversation we had while sitting on our boards in the water. The surf was bad that day— flat as a lake on a windless day. Both of us were patient and waited. We knew what lay ahead for us. The waves, powerful, potent, and mighty, were coming. But the day turned to auburn dusk, and we found ourselves laying down on our boards, floating on the calm and steady water.

Underneath the board, the steady water was what I had appreciated the most. My boyfriend just broke up with me, and I was feeling bereaved. It was nice knowing that nature could provide me with such stability, even as I bobbed up and down on the board. It was comforting to have Sheldon by my side, too. Sheldon knew about my heartbreak. I don’t know how because I didn’t tell him, but somehow, either by intuition or by observation, he knew. Out of nowhere, while both of us were on the water, Sheldon turned to me and said,

True love comes from the soul and is intertwined directly with your heart.

I paused for a moment and took a deep sigh. His words had impacted me a lot more than I’d care to admit.

How do you know? I asked. It was both inspiring and jarring how, at sixteen, he could just so casually say the most poignant things. 

Well, I just do, he shrugged his shoulders and continued. If it’s true love, it would affect you both mentally and physically. Your heart will beat differently, and your thoughts will be changed forever. If it’s that one love, that once-in-a-lifetime love, then it’s as dangerous as it is wonderful. Like anything else regarding your body, if you don’t take care of it, it can kill you.

Wow, I murmured.

Sheldon looked at me with a smile and said,

I think you’re gonna live, Carl.

It was at that exact moment we turned and faced a sunset so powerful, so beautiful, neither one of us spoke. The sun dropped into the water like it was falling from the sky. We caught the first glimpse at eye level from our boards, inches before it splashed into the water and drowned the light of day out. The sun shot a line of orange light reflected on top of the water. A single straight line, a few inches wide and miles long, expanding in width before ending with us still floating on our boards. It was an invitation or a question. I couldn’t figure it out. I was overwhelmed, like I had to do or say something, but before I could, the sun disappeared entirely and the moment was gone and faded into the sky.

I looked at Sheldon. It was obvious we were sharing the same moment of awe, witnessing something unexplainable. But his expression was not one of bewilderment, and he definitely was not feeling anxious like I was. I suppose the sting of the heartbreak was too raw for me. Sheldon, on the other hand, had a profound smile on his face and looked like he was experiencing pure peace.

The sun set, and the remaining light provided a faint glow on the horizon, the only evidence left of the miracle we just witnessed. Sheldon looked at me. He must have recognized my confusion because he gave me one of those consoling pats on the back before trying to paddle us back to shore. I grabbed the leash and stopped him. I didn’t say a word. I just looked at him. I could see the answer in his eyes, and I’ve remembered what he said to this day.

He said, Don’t ever tell me you don’t know what heaven is or where to find it.

That's the day I fell in love with Sheldon.

Chapter 1

The ferocious sun beamed down on a vast and never-ending sea. With each passing day, each moment that slid into the next, the summer of 1987 was proving itself to be the hottest and longest summer the city had seen in the last ten years. The rising heat meant an increase in visitors to the beach, with water-related incidents on the rise, too.

Standing on a post on the beach was Sheldon Winters, watching the rise and fall of the sea waves, entranced in its mesmerizing rhythm. He could not believe he was getting paid to watch the sea. He had just started working as a lifeguard, and he loved everything about it—the salty breeze in his air, the faint swishing sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and the light atmosphere around him.

Sheldon loved the ocean; he had surfed his entire life, which was what landed him the lifeguard position. All his life, he’d been bewitched by the waves.

The beach will always be my first love. He often thought to himself and smiled.

He loved how the waves carried a sense of mystery and unpredictability. Yet, once he became a part of those waves, he felt an irreplaceable calm wash over him. He felt like he belonged, something that Sheldon had been struggling with for a long time.

Sheldon was supposed to graduate the following year, yet he had no idea what he wanted to do. His mother had told him not to worry and that it—whatever that mysterious and incomprehensible it was— would eventually come to him, probably in a moment. However, without any college application requests, community college seemed like the only option.

Sheldon’s classmates, on the other hand, seemed to have their lives sorted. Apparently, they had a clear idea of how