Diver Down (Mercy Watts Mysteries) (12 page)

“Tired?” asked Todd.
 

“Just a little,” I said.
 

“So’s Tracy. Not sleeping well on the hotel bed.”
 

Frankie leaned forward. “Maybe they can switch out the mattress. Ours is great.”
 

Linda nodded and braided her long hair. “I’m sleeping like a rock.”
 

Alex turned the boat and we all leaned to the right. Then he cut the engine and we coasted to a stop. Mauro went around helping with gear and stopped in front of me, so close my chest brushed his BCD.
 

“I’ve checked everything,” he said.
 

“Twice?” I asked.
 

“Three times. No worries today.”
 

We queued and the line went fast. Lucia and Graeme were in first. She had no fear and I admired her for it. From my point of view, she had a lot to be fearful of. On that dive there was no lead rope and we all deflated our BCDs to descend together. The spot was beautiful but different than our previous dive areas. The coral was larger with lots of fanciful formations and big schools of colorful fish darting around them. We descended to forty feet and began to spread out. Mauro clinked on his tank and the sharp metallic sound echoed through the water. He made the sign for turtle and everyone got out their cameras. It was a hawksbill, if I remembered the dive book pictures correctly. The shell was at least two feet across with a jagged section at the back.
 

Mauro clinked again and made the sign for shark. Five feet from the turtle was a nurse shark lying on the sandy bottom between two walls of blue and yellow coral. He was maybe nine feet in length and reminded me of a catfish with its broad head. Mauro indicated that we should spread out and look for seahorses among the coral. Lucia was to my right, swimming behind Graeme. He pointed to some tall formations of coral, the kind that looks like crusty old vases. Around them were lots of fan coral, black and red, and brain coral that always made me want to touch its lovely swirls and grooves.
 

I followed Graeme and Lucia into the coral maze and we spent fifteen minutes looking before Graeme found a little yellow seahorse hanging on a fan coral branch. He had a long snout and spines running down his back. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He was so small and delicate, the size of my little finger.

Lucia took a picture and then swam deeper into the maze. I tore myself away to follow. There was a tug on my foot. Mauro gave me the okay sign and I gave it back. He asked how much air I had left. Plenty. Over fifteen hundred PSI. I turned back to where Lucia had gone and saw her drop down between the edge of the dropoff and a large area of brain coral. Lucia emerged again, twisting in the water, a cloud of red around one thigh. I darted over, my knees scraping the coral. Her hands were on her thigh. A shaft of white stuck out from between her fingers.
 

I yelled through my reg, “Don’t take it out.” But she yanked it out anyway and dropped it. I got a glimpse before it disappeared into the depths, a five-inch serrated piece of bone. Lucia shot up, headed for the surface through a cloud of red. I held her foot. She’d give herself the bends. Graeme was there. He gestured wildly. I didn’t think. I grabbed his hands and pressed them on the spewing wound. Then we started the ascent, painfully slow. I tapped on my tank with my fingernails. The noise wasn’t nearly as effective as Mauro’s bottle opener, but he heard me. His brown eyes were wide beneath the mask. I shrugged and made the sign for stingray. He made us slow down further and it took an extra five minutes to get up top.
 

By the time my ears broke the surface, Mauro was yelling for Alex. Then the boat was there. In the movies, they like to show things happening in slow motion as if that’s the way people see action. In my experience, traumatic situations happen so fast the brain can’t even track it. I saw Alex’s face. I saw the boat. Then it was there beside us. I swear I didn’t see it move. Alex took Lucia’s hands and hauled her onboard. A stream of blood coated her leg the instant Graeme let go of her thigh. He went for the ladder, but I shoved him out of the way and tried to climb with my fins on. Not going to happen. Alex grabbed me and I flew over the side, cracking my head on the bench and slipping in Lucia’s blood, which coated the floor.
 

“I need a belt or a strap!” I yelled.
 

Alex yanked off his belt and I wrapped it around Lucia’s thigh. The puncture was an inch in width and deep. Once I had the tourniquet in place the bleeding stopped and I looked up at Lucia’s white face.
 

“I didn’t even see it,” she gasped.
 

“It’s okay. It’s all under control.” Yeah, right. My voice was shaking like I was sitting on top of a dryer.
 

Graeme knelt beside Lucia. “What the hell happened?”
 

“Stingray, I think,” said Lucia.
 

Mauro yelled from the water.
 
“How is she?”

“The bleeding’s under control,” I said. “We have to get her to a hospital. I think it was a stingray.”
 

He gave me a look that said, “No way.” And then he told Alex, “Take them to shore and send another boat. I can’t leave. I’ve got divers down.”
 

Alex got on the radio and asked for an ambulance to meet us on shore. He turned the boat around and we sped off. Graeme lay on the bottom of the boat with Lucia. He cradled her, not noticing how his head banged against the spare tanks with every wave. I slipped on the blood and landed painfully on my scraped knees. Lucia’s pulse was racing, but she’d pinked up. I liked that. I wrapped her leg in my towel and said stupid things like we’re almost there and relax. Because telling people to relax always makes them do it.
 

We passed another La Isla Bonita boat going out at full speed and then landed on the beach like we were under a hail of gunfire. Spitball jumped into the water to tie us up.
 

“Who is it?” he yelled, but his eyes said he already knew.
 

“Lucia!”
 

“God damn son of a bitch fuck!”

Graeme gathered Lucia into his arms. He leaned over the boat’s side, every muscle strained to the limit, and gingerly gave her to Spitball. He carried her onto the beach and laid her on a towel. Graeme turned to me and I pulled back in surprise. His eyes were full of tears. “Is she going to be okay?”
 

“Yes. Absolutely.”

He jumped over the side and ran through the water to Lucia. Either he was one hell of an actor or Lucia was just incredibly unlucky. How many stingray attacks could there be a year?
 

Alex helped me off with my tank and BCD and I went over the side into the perfect water. I had a flash of the plume of blood flowing out from Lucia’s thigh. That didn’t feel like an accident. It just didn’t. A siren sounded in the distance as I sank down beside Lucia. Her face was twisted in pain.

“Did you get a glimpse of anything?” I asked.

“There was something there.” She gasped.
 

The ambulance pulled up next to us on the sand and two EMTs got out. Graeme and I stepped back, while they assessed her. When they were done, they each took an arm and started to pull her to her feet.
 

“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing?”
 

“Taking her to the hospital,” said the older of the two. He had the air of someone who’s seen too many accidents to care much anymore.
 

“Put her on a stretcher. She can’t walk.”
 

“No stretcher. We carry her.”
 

“What do you mean no stretcher?” I looked in the ambulance and sure enough there was no stretcher in the back and, frankly, not much else. “Where is it?”
 

“It’s on the other side of the island. Car accident.”
 

“Are you saying you have one stretcher and you share?”
 

The EMT narrowed his eyes at me. “This is not America. You don’t get everything you want all the time.”
 

Graeme put his finger in the EMT’s face. “She doesn’t want a stretcher. She needs it.”
 

Spitball pushed Graeme’s arm down. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get her to the hospital. ASAP.”
 

Graeme insisted on putting Lucia on the small pallet in the back of the ambulance. It was crazy. A patient lying on the floor.
 

“Mercy,” said Lucia, drool rolled down her chin and her words slurred. “I don’t feel good.”

“That’s not right,” I said, trying to get in the ambulance.
 

The EMT pushed me back. “It’s just a puncture.”

“Not with drooling. It’s something else. Let me in.”
 

Lucia slumped and her hand hit the floor. Graeme looked at me. “What is it?”
 

“I don’t know.” I tried to push past the EMT, but he knocked me aside.
 

“We have rules in this country,” he said.
 

“Oh, yeah,” I yelled. “You have rules, but no stretchers apparently.”
 

Graeme looked around the ambulance with increasing panic. “Is this okay?”
 

“They use clean needles,” I said.

His sides started to heave as he began to panic. “But what about the rest of it?”
 

“You don’t have a choice.”
 

“But—”
 

The EMT slammed the doors and the ambulance peeled out, spraying me with sand.
 

“Shit! Spitball, where’s the hospital?” I asked.
 

“Coxen Hole. I’ll take you.”
 

We ran through the alley between our resort and another, ending up next to a group of scooters.
 

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.
 

“Hey,” said Spitball. “I flew missions over hot zones. I don’t do slow.”
 

And he didn’t. I have no idea what he did to that scooter, but it went like a crouch rocket. We zipped through traffic, weaving around rusted-out vehicles and fruit stands. When we got to Coxen Hole I was glad I had a grizzled old guy named Spitball with me. That town made North St. Louis look like a retirement community. Grungy concrete buildings were packed together and the narrow twisted roads were filled with vehicles that appeared to be held together with baling wire. Some of the houses or shops were painted bright pastels, that only made them sadder with all the dirt and exhaust giving them a grayish tinge.
   

 
Spitball zipped around an ancient Toyota pickup with at least ten kids in the bed. They smiled and waved. I waved back and was struck by their faces, happy, full-cheeked, and bright-eyed. Would American children be so joyful in such circumstances? I doubted it. I wouldn’t have been. Actually, everyone on the street seemed equally cheerful. They moved about their day in colorful clothes, kicking up dust on the sidewalk and not noticing that the buildings they passed looked ready to topple over on them.
 

“There it is,” said Spitball as he braked hard.
 

I saw nothing that would pass for a hospital. Maybe it was on the other side of the prison ahead to our left. It had high concrete walls with razor wire on top.
 
I knew prisons as well as hospitals. Dad visited some of the people he helped to convict, usually women, but sometimes men. Dad didn’t look like he had any soft spots, but they were there. He understood circumstances make you who you are and he insisted I understand it, too. Mom didn’t know, but Dad took me on his visits sometimes. Some of the people I met when I was ten were still there, wearing orange and eagerly waiting behind plexiglass for Dad to appear.
 

We idled behind a late model Ford covered in scuba stickers. I tried not to look at the prison. There was no one to visit. No information to gather. But I still felt the heaviness settle on me. It came every time, that thick darkness, it said you go in, they might not let you out. Dad never asked me how I felt as a kid going in those places or how I felt as an adult going in to get some information for him. He said it was important to see what we do. How things end up. People don’t disappear. They go into a kind of stasis. It was important to know. I think he also thought it would keep me on the straight and narrow. I didn’t have any real criminal tendencies, so I think we could’ve skipped it.
 

Our tires squealed as Spitball hit the gas and we sped through a narrow opening between resort vans. He hung a left, pulled up to the prison, and stopped at the guard shack. A guard in a green uniform stepped out, carrying an AK47.
 

“Hey, Mr. Spitball. How you doing?” asked the guard.
 

“Can’t complain. Ambulance come in?” asked Spitball.
 

“Yeah. A couple minutes ago. It got one of yours?”
 

“Sure does. Stingray barb in the leg.”
 

“That’s some nasty shit.” The guard waved us in.
 

Spitball parked under an overhang and we went in the emergency entrance. There were dozens of people waiting in gray, uncomfortable chairs like any other ER. Spitball waved down a nurse in green scrubs and asked about Lucia. She was back with the doctor. The nurse didn’t know much, except she was conscious. I blew out a breath and leaned on the wall. Between Lucia and the whole in-a-prison feeling, my legs were shaking.
 

“She’s a nurse,” said Spitball. “Can she go back?”

“Family?”
 

I almost lied. “No.”
 

“You’ll have to wait out here,” said the nurse.

“She’s talking and coherent?” I asked.
 

“She was when she came in.” She looked down at her chart. “Stingray barb. Not serious.”
 

“She was drooling in the ambulance. I think she passed out.”