WITH A QUICK PULL on a black strap, the life raft from the Hail Mary box inflates before our weary eyes.
Thank God we’re getting out of this water, at least. No more dog-paddling. No more sharks.
Mark and Carrie climb aboard first and then help Ernie on. I’m next. When they see my leg—or should I say, the white of my shinbone jutting out from my leg—the kids all fall deathly silent. It just about takes something like this to shut them all up, especially Ernie.
“Is there a doctor on the boat?” I joke, trying to lighten the mood.
The bad joke doesn’t work very well. In fact, the raft only becomes more silent—if there is such a thing—after they struggle to pull Jake aboard.
He’s in even worse shape than I thought. Almost his entire body is covered with second and even some third-degree burns. His skin is like Bubble Wrap with every bubble popped.
Carrie can’t bear to look, and obviously she’s feeling extra guilt because of what happened earlier, when she tried to drown herself and possibly Jake.
Back on land, in the burn unit of Lexington Hospital, there would be a host of available treatments. Out here in the middle of nowhere is a different story. There’s virtually nothing I can do for him.
“Hand me that first-aid kit,” I say to Mark, gritting my teeth over the effort to speak.
The rest of what was packed in the Hail Mary box is scattered about the raft. In addition to the first-aid kit, there is a surprisingly large amount of bottled water and food, though the food is mostly dried fruit, crackers, and nuts, all vacuum-packed in plastic.
In total, it’s not a lot, but it’s certainly better than nothing. And nothing is something we’ve got covered in spades.
We have no motor, no shade, no sunblock, no radio, and no satellite phone.
No fair!
We also no longer have a flare gun, but no one’s about to get on Carrie’s case for that after she saved our butts, and every other edible part of us, with one very timely shark-skedaddling shot.
“Here,” says Mark.
He hands me the first-aid kit. I find some antibiotic ointment and gently dab it over the areas on Jake that run the highest risk of infection. Then I slowly pour as much water as I can into his mouth, until he can’t swallow any more. With his head resting on the side of the raft, he doesn’t move or say anything. I think he’s drifted back to being unconscious, or just doesn’t have the strength to talk.
“There,” I say after applying a thin layer of gauze around his arms and legs, which will still allow his skin to breathe. “That will have to do until help arrives.”
“What about you?” asks Ernie. “Your leg.”
“For now it’s okay. It needs to be set, but there’s about a twenty-four-hour window before there might be any permanent damage,” I explain. “By then I’ll be safely in a hospital bed having you all sign my cast.”
“You really think they’re still coming for us?” asks Carrie.
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t they be?”
LIEUTENANT ANDREW TATEM slammed down the phone in his small office at the Coast Guard base in Miami. His lieutenant had just given him the latest update on
The Family Dunne.
The news wasn’t good. In fact, it made no sense at all.
Bolting out into the hallway, Tatem made a beeline for the Sit, short for Situation Room. Millcrest had just called him from there.
“What the hell’s going on?” Tatem demanded, pushing through the Sit’s double doors. “This isn’t tracking for me. Not one bit.”
No one in the room said a word. Not the land-based mission supervisor. Not the radio specialist. Not the petty officer whose sole responsibility was charting the location of the SAR helicopter searching for the boat.
Instead they all turned to Millcrest.
It was one of those rare moments when the lieutenant wished he didn’t have such a good relationship with his commanding officer. It was just assumed he’d do the talking to Tatem.
“Well, it’s like I said,” began Millcrest slowly. “The chopper reached the coordinates of the
Dunne
’s EPIRB, only there was nothing there. Not even the EPIRB itself.”
Tatem immediately wanted a cigarette.
Badly.
“Give me the SAR team,” he ordered. “I want to hear exactly what they
didn’t
find.”
Millcrest turned to the radio technician, who nodded with a crisp snap of the head and quickly announced the helicopter’s call signs into a microphone. The entire wall where he sat was lined with monitors and maps.
Within seconds the head pilot responded over an annoying burst of static.
“This is Rescue WOLF, one-niner-one, we copy,” he said, his voice filling the room. The technician had put him on the loudspeaker.
Tatem walked over and grabbed the microphone. His voice was booming. He didn’t ask, he demanded: “What’s the story out there, John? This isn’t making a whole lot of sense yet.”
The pilot explained that he’d done three fly-bys over the given coordinates and there was absolutely no boat, no crew, no sign of anything in the water. They were beginning to search the immediate area, but their fuel level would limit how much surface they could cover before they had to head back to base.
“Any chance your coordinate readings are off?” Tatem asked.
“No, sir,” came back the pilot. “We double and triple-checked already.”
Millcrest shrugged again. “Perhaps it was the EPIRB, Andy. Maybe it malfunctioned before it went dead, broadcast the wrong coordinates.”
“Maybe,” said Tatem. “If that’s the case, we’d better hope the numbers are off by only a little. Otherwise, our search area is as big as that storm and then some.”
“Even with multiple SARs, that could take us over a week,” said Millcrest.
“Exactly. Which means we’d better get started.” Tatem folded his arms, half talking to himself as he turned to walk out. “Let’s hope this Dunne family has some fight in them.”
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET. How ironic is that?
If only we could enjoy this incredible orange glow dipping toward the horizon, the blue of the ocean seemingly melting into the purple clouds fanning across the sky. Instead, rocking endlessly back and forth on this raft, all we can see is the darkness that awaits us. Nightfall. And the numbing chill that’s coming with it.
Never will a couple of blankets have to work so hard.
“I think Carrie was right,” says Mark, his voice sullen. “They’re not coming for us. No one is.”
“We can’t think like that,” I say. “We have to stay positive, and that’s not a cliché, guys.”
It’s as if Mark doesn’t hear me. “If the Coast Guard has our coordinates, don’t you think they would’ve been here by now?”
“Yeah, something’s wrong,” says Carrie.
Ernie nods in agreement, sage little Buddha that he is.
“Listen, all we can do right now is stay here and wait for them to come,” I say.
It’s not exactly the most persuasive argument I’ve ever made, but it succeeds for a reason I didn’t intend. All because I said the word
wait.
It makes Mark stare down at my leg. As he looks back at me, his eyes do all the talking. There’s one thing that
can’t
wait. At least, not much longer.
Nothing like an open grade-IIIB tibia fracture to change the subject.
“It’s time to do something about that, isn’t it?” he finally asks me.
He glances at my leg again, and I do the same.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I’m going to need some help with it, though.”
“Count me out,” says Carrie immediately. “I’m sorry, Mom. I told you I couldn’t do pre-med.”
Mark shoots her a look. “C’mon. After all you’ve been through today, you’re telling me you’re afraid of a little broken bone?”
“When it’s a bone I can
see?
Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”
Alas, my superhero daughter has met her kryptonite. Squeamishness.
“It’s okay, Mom, I’ll help,” offers Ernie.
Wow. He says it in a way so incredibly sweet I want to cry. Still, cramming a bone back into my exposed flesh and setting it isn’t something for a ten-year-old to experience, no matter how mature he is.
Hell, it’s not something for this forty-five-year-old either, but I don’t have much of a choice now, do I?
“Thanks, sweetheart, but I only need your brother for this,” I explain.
Your brother and a whole bunch of morphine,
I should add.
That’s when I watch Mark dig into his shorts. Our clothes have been dry for hours, although I’m thinking that whatever he’s got in his pocket must still be a wet mess.
That is, until I see the plastic bag and the Bic lighter.
He dangles the bag from his fingertips, giving it a shake before smiling. “Hey, what do you know, dry as a bone.”
I suddenly don’t know whether to hug him or hit him. Either way, “You were supposed to give
all
of it to Jake.”
“I know. What can I tell you? I always carry a spare doobie,” he says. He removes the already rolled joint and hands it to me. “Think of it as medical marijuana. Perfectly legal, right?”
A few seconds pass as all I can do is stare at the joint.
Am I really about to smoke my son’s pot?
That’s when I gaze down at my leg again and consider the godawful pain that awaits me. It’s amazing how much your world can change in one day.
“Hand me the lighter,” I tell Mark.
THE POT WORKS. Kind of, sort of.
It does reduce the pain a little. Instead of sheer agony, it’s more like a mild form of torture.
All I know is that when I get off this raft and back to the hospital, I’m going to hug all the anesthesiologists. It’s not that I ever took them for granted. I just never gave them enough credit for what they do.
Anyway, as far as I can tell, the “operation” was a success. Mark was a real trouper, never once flinching as we reconstructed my snapped shinbone.
You see a lot worse in those stupid chainsaw movies,
he told me.
Now I have to keep my fingers crossed that the wound doesn’t become infected.
In the meantime, I’m dealing with a side effect that I never anticipated. The munchies.
Here I am, four hours post-op, with the kids all huddled together asleep, and I’m wide awake, doing everything in my power not to eat every last calorie of our rations.
Oh, and did I mention how damn cold it is? And windy?
I can’t help wondering what’s taking the Coast Guard so long. Is it the storm? Has it reached land, wreaking havoc with their rescue missions?
Or what about the EPIRB? It was working, wasn’t it?
Yes, it was. I’m sure of it.
I’m also sure we haven’t drifted that far from the wreckage of the boat. All afternoon we’ve been paddling back against the current, trying to hold our coordinates. Even if we’re off by a mile or two, we’re still well within sight of any plane or helicopter.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
I lean back against the edge of the raft, looking up at the stars. Millions of them, it seems. I think of my father again and his telescope in the backyard. I even hear his voice, so calming.
We’re all Big Dippers, part of something much bigger than ourselves.
Suddenly there’s another voice I’m hearing. It’s faint, barely audible, and I think it’s one of the kids talking in his sleep.
Then I realize—
it’s Jake.
I quickly scoot over to his side. I see his eyelids flutter—he’s barely conscious.
“Jake, can you hear me?” I whisper in his ear.
He lets out a slight moan.
“Jake,” I try again. “It’s me, Katherine. Jake?”
He turns his head now and sees me. The words form slowly. “What happened?” he finally asks.
“There was an explosion on the boat, a big one. Do you remember anything?”
He doesn’t. I can tell by the look on his face, the confusion in his eyes—and the fear.
“You were chasing us around the deck, throwing us in the water,” I continue. As I say the words, it dawns on me. “That’s why we’re still alive . . .
because of you.
”
“I was —”
Jake stops, wincing in pain. It hurts for him to talk, so I tell him not to. But he keeps talking anyway. Jake is always Jake, no matter what’s going on around him. Even this.
“I was . . . at . . . the bow . . . with you,” he manages. “Now I remember.”
“That’s right, that’s when the explosion happened. You were the only one still on the boat. That’s why you were burned.”
Damn. Where’s my bedside manner? He didn’t need to know that, not now.
Jake struggles to look down at himself. That hurts him even more than trying to talk, and his face contorts in agony. “How bad?”
I take his hand in mine. “It’s going to be okay.
You’re
going to be okay. The EPIRB—you set it off, remember? They’re going to come and rescue us.”
I watch him trying to remember. He’s breathing harder. I tell him he needs to rest.
“I can . . . still hear him,” he says.
“Who?”
“My . . . brother.”
It takes me a second before it clicks. He’d told me about hearing Stuart on the boat—seeing him, even—although he said he knew it hadn’t really happened.
I squeeze Jake’s hand. “I’m sure he’s not laughing anymore,” I say.
Jake’s tan face is now white as a ghost’s. His breathing grows more labored, and it scares me.
“You’ve got to conserve your strength,” I tell him.
“Please.”
There’s something else he wants to say. Despite the pain, he needs to tell me something. “I was never sorry,” he says, his voice faint.
I don’t want him to talk anymore, but I also don’t know what he means. Maybe he sees it in my eyes, because of all things, he smiles. He pulls me inches closer and whispers in my ear.
“I was never sorry I loved you,” Jake says.
I turn away as my tears begin to fall. They spill from my eyes, streaking down my face. It was complicated back then, when Jake and I had our forbidden summer. Stuart was away all the time, constantly, and I almost felt that he knew and didn’t care about Jake and me. Maybe Stuart was moving on and wanted me to do the same.
I look out at the ocean, the lovely reflection of the moon. I look back up at the sky and all its teeming stars.
And I look at my kids, who are all still asleep. It’s strange, but I don’t think I’ve ever loved them any more than I do right now.
I squeeze Jake’s hand again because there’s something
I
need to tell
him.
“Jake,” I say, finally turning back to him. “Jake?”
My mouth stops.
Everything stops in my universe.
Jake’s no longer breathing.
He’s gone.