Undertow (22 page)

He started to respond but I wasn't really interested. I walked away from him on leaden feet toward the news that I dreaded more than any other. I had lost someone, of that there was no question. What remained to be seen was if I'd lost it all.

The Coast Guard officers ran alongside the gurney, holding IV bags while they filled in the staff as to how the patient presented. The words that made it into my consciousness were not good. “Unresponsive,” “massive blood loss,” and “poor vitals” let me know that our most critical patient had arrived. I prayed it was one I wanted to see.

As he rolled by, his face was obscured from my vision, too many bodies surrounding him to see. Once I got my wits about me, I chased them down the hall as they rounded the corner into ER5, slamming through the doors right behind them. Instead of jumping into the thick of things, I stood at the foot of the bed and waited to see who lay hidden behind the mass of hospital staff tearing away the blankets and what remained of the victim's clothing to hook up leads and various other monitoring equipment to his body. Once his feet were exposed, my heart sank and I choked back a sob.

They were not the feet of a fifty-year-old sea captain.

With the knife still in my heart, I gathered the courage to slowly make my way toward the head of the bed. I no longer cared about my fears; I needed facts and absolutes. I needed to know just how much pain my heart could endure. If Decker's face was not there to greet me when I moved past the final nurse, I was certain that I would break. That was fact.

In slow motion, the bodies surrounding me seemed to magically part, allowing me to slide past them effortlessly to my destination. The entire ordeal was surreal. When I looked upon the face of the last fisherman to have survived the Norwegian Queen's death, I screamed, collapsing onto the bed. My tears could not be stopped, nor could my sobs. Eventually, I was pulled unwillingly from my position, dragged kicking and screaming to the staff lounge where it took a team of nurses and one doctor to pin me to the couch and sedate me.

As the chemical calm surged through me, all I could think was that they shouldn't have been in there with me. The patients needed them—the
crew
needed them. They should have been helping them, not fussing over me as hysterics took me over.

Decker needed them most of all.

The image of his nearly unrecognizable face was etched in my mind as I was pulled into an artificial slumber. I found no solace there, the darkness too familiar to be soothing at all. While I was thankful for Decker coming back to me, I mourned the loss of my father, a true captain, who went down with his vessel. Would I see him in the darkness too? Would he find my mother's soul there, reunited finally?

Sadly, I would never know.

24

I awoke groggily, like someone had roused me from a long night's drinking far before I was ready to face the world. But I had to face it. I needed to know if Decker had survived the night. I needed to know if he would survive at all.

The face I had seen before I was ripped away from him was not the face I knew. He was so ruined, his body punished terribly by the losing battle he'd waged against the failing ship. I couldn't fathom how he'd sustained the injuries I'd seen, let alone the ones he inevitably had to which I was oblivious in my fear-induced state.

Pulling myself from the sofa, I stood for a moment, allowing my head to get its bearings before emerging into the main hallway of the ER department, headed directly for his room. Ignoring the nurses at the station, I stormed through the double doors and was met with emptiness—then my world stopped.

I fell to my knees, unable to even cry. Tears took emotions I was long past. Sadness had been blown over, my grieving process moving at lightning speed. I was utterly wasted beyond repair.

“Dr. Fredriksen,” a small voice called from behind me. “He's been moved up to the ICU. We were trying to tell you when you walked past, but you didn't hear us. Do you want me to take you up there now?”

My body still in shock, I couldn't even lift my head to respond. I only muttered a faint yes as I stared at the floor. The nurse came up behind me, helping me to my feet and out of ER5, a place I never wanted to be again. She ushered me gently through the hospital, up to the third floor. After inquiring at the nurses' station, she continued walking me down the hall to Decker's room.

“Do you want me to go in with you, honey?” she asked, her tone motherly, no longer seeing me as her superior but as a member of a patient's family who needed her love and support.

“No,” I whispered. “I'll be all right.”

“Okay, Aesa. If you need anything, have the girls give a ring down to the ER and I'll come up.”

“Thank you,” I muttered mindlessly, staring at the door that separated me from a man struggling for his life. My man. My love.

Without further hesitation, I gently pressed it open and made my way over to the chair by the head of the bed. I pulled it up as close as I could beside him and sat in it, afraid to make any noise as though I would wake him. But you couldn't easily rouse someone in a coma. I found out that he had been put in that state shortly after his arrival at the hospital; I read his chart notes that were clipped to the side of the bed. Nothing in that file made me especially optimistic.

I leaned in close to his head, whispering in his ear.

“You can't come this far and then leave me, Decker. I'm not going to let you.”

His head was wrapped in white gauze and his face looked painful, but I managed to find a spot to lay the faintest of kisses on before I left him momentarily to check on the others. I needed answers about what had happened to them, the ship, and my father. Desperate to help Decker in any way I could, I thought that somehow, if I knew how his injuries were sustained, I could do just that.

Quietly, I made my way out of his room and back down the hall to the main desk. I inquired about the other two crewmen that were brought in the previous evening, and they informed me that both had been moved to rooms in the main part of the hospital; neither in ICU. With their room numbers committed to memory, I made my way down to see them.

Robbie had a private room, so I knocked on the door lightly before entering, not wanting to wake him if he was resting. To my surprise, he answered.

“Yeah? Come in.”

I poked my head around the door, and his bruised and weathered face lit up instantly.

“You're a sight for sore eyes, or eye, as the case may be,” he joked, a smile in his tone but not his expression. I was sure it would have been far too painful to wear one anyway.

“I was thinking the same thing,” I replied, moving toward the edge of his bed. A sling was strapped tightly to his body, his arm in a cast. I leaned in to hug him gingerly, not wanting to harm any other injuries I couldn't see. “Are you okay? How badly are you hurt?”

He minutely lifted his arm, indicating the obvious. I scowled at him in return.

“That's really the worst of it, Aesa, I promise. I know I look like I was on the receiving end of one helluva beating, but otherwise I'm fine. Nothing permanently damaged, I promise.” His eyes drifted away from mine to stare out the window, his mood shifting in an instant. Despite his obvious change, I didn't expect what he was about to say. “I'm sorry about your father.”

His words took me aback for a moment, and I struggled to compose myself. I wasn't there to grieve—not yet. I was there for answers.

“What happened?” I whispered, my voice tightened down far too much for any more sound to escape.

“There was an explosion. It nearly blew the aft right off.”

“How?” I probed, wanting more explanation than he could probably give.

“We don't know. There was no time to find out. Everything from that point on was a race to survive. We knew there was no saving the ship, so we all hauled ass to the suits and started to put them on, but the Queen was taking on water so fast—there was no time.”

“No time for what, Robbie?”

His eyes fell to the blanket covering his lap.

“For everyone to get them on.” He then lifted a bleary eye to mine, and I could see that the experience had been far more harrowing than I had realized. “Your dad . . . he never had a chance. By the time he made it to the deck, we were nearly underwater. He couldn't move fast enough . . . neither could Andy. We never even got the raft inflated. It floated off unused while the rest of us bobbed around in the water, trying to get as far away from the boat as possible.”

“He went into the water without a suit?” I managed to choke out, a tear running down my face.

Robbie nodded in response.

“I tried to get to him,” he said softly. “I really tried, Aesa. I loved him like a father. You know that.”

It was my turn to nod in acknowledgment of what was said. My father had died without ever having a fair chance to survive. The thought angered me deeply. How cruel and callous the Bering Sea could be.

Robbie went to say something else, but a nurse popped her head in and interrupted, letting me know that there were some men downstairs asking for me.

“I'll be back, Robbie,” I told him, kissing him gently on top of his head before walking out of the room behind the nurse.

Once we were back on the first floor, she indicated the waiting room, and I made my way there, opening the door to a slew of worried-looking crabbers. I poised myself, knowing what I was about to endure, having to recount all that I knew for them. Their brothers had fallen victim to the sea. Such things were taken seriously amongst the tightly knit community of fishermen. They may have been each other's competition, but they were also friends and family.

“Who made it?” Jonathon asked without pomp or circumstance. There was no time for etiquette. They had likely had a long steam into port thinking about who had lived and who was lost. Answers were in order, no matter how insensitive his methods for attaining them may have seemed.

Words failed me yet again as I stared at their wall of blank expressions. Jeremy and Justin eyed me with sympathy, knowing that their father's question had not been the most tactful, given whom he was asking. Nevertheless, it was plain that they too wanted to know who to mourn and who to pray for.

“Your father . . . ?” Jonathon prompted gently. A tear escaped my eye in response. “Fuck,” he yelled, turning away from me to wipe his own eyes. Fishermen were strong and proud, but even they felt keenly the loss of a friend, though they hated to show that weakness to others.

“Robbie and Brad are upstairs,” I managed to force out. “I saw Robbie. He's okay. I don't know what shape Brad is in, but he had some burns on his hands. I saw them when he came in last night.”

“And the third man?” Uncle Keith asked, looking at me expectantly. He and Andy, the other member of my father's crew, had been longtime friends. Breaking the news to him that Andy too was lost was not something I wanted to do.

“Decker . . . ”

“He's okay?” Jeremy asked eagerly as he stepped toward me.

I couldn't hold back my remaining tears anymore. I shook my head in negation before I fell into his arms, Justin coming up behind me to hold me too. There was no way that any of them would be allowed up to see him, and I had no intention of trying to describe the myriad injuries he'd sustained as well as interpret for them what they meant. His prognosis was iffy at best; that much I knew.

I stood and cried while the cluster of fishermen huddled around me. I was one of theirs too, the daughter of a legacy captain—their fallen friend. It was an unwritten rule that they would take me in, continuing to treat me like the family they always had. They would make sure that I had everything I needed—everything my father would have wanted me to have. That was the code, and they would follow it to a tee, starting with putting me back together after an almost insurmountable loss.

25

It took me a while to pull myself together, and that was only after I had been summoned by one of the hospital administrators. The men watched me disappear back into the ER after I promised to keep them updated on Decker's condition. The other two they could visit, and they were on their way to go see them after I departed.

My meeting was little more than an informal request for me to take time off, starting my contract on its original schedule. They could clearly see that I was not handling everything that had happened well, and I was certain that Dr. Lewis also had something to do with it. I didn't think he had liked me very much from the start, and my reaction to the events that followed had done little to change his feelings toward me.

I agreed to the terms presented, knowing that arguing would have only caused more problems than it solved. I didn't want to start off on bad terms, and, since I had already shown them one breakdown in my professionalism, I didn't want to show them another. I was, however, allowed to stay in Decker's room for as long as I wanted. Visiting hours didn't apply to staff members, even those on hiatus.

So I took full advantage of my loophole, diligently watching over both him and his monitors, looking for any changes in his behaviors and condition. I also studied his chart notes carefully, making sure that nothing had been overlooked. Thankfully, the majority of his injuries were not life-threatening on their own; they only added to the stress on his body while it tried to heal. The few burns he had were only second degree, and were primarily on his hands and neck, the presumption being that he had shielded himself from the bulk of the blast. His leg, however, had nearly cost him his life. And the infection it allowed in still threatened both life and limb.