It takes about five minutes for the bell to travel through the moon pool and down to the seafloor. That doesn’t sound like long, but when there are three of us crammed into this humid metal dome, which is not much bigger than a shower cubicle, it feels like an eternity. Once we’ve been lowered, I open the hatch and get the guys into the water. They head off in opposite directions, and I set up my hammock. It’s much more comfortable than sitting on a stainless steel bench for the next few hours. I keep an eye on the valves and wires and lights ahead of me.
I’ve been taking the pill for eighteen years. I was roughly halfway through a pack when I stopped. I’m not sure if that means I’m ovulating about now, or if I’ll skip that part of my cycle and get an early period. It’s bizarre how little I understand about my own anatomy.
I’ve heard that women feel more aroused around the time they’re ovulating. Also, apparently, our faces become more symmetrical and our hip-to-waist ratio becomes more pronounced, making us more attractive to potential mates. Is that happening to me right now? I don’t feel aroused or attractive. What if I don’t ovulate for a few more days? How long can sperm live inside a woman’s reproductive system? Surely James’s sperm have either completed their quest or they’ve croaked. Even if they have fertilised an egg, there’s no saying whether the zygote will implant in the lining. Making a baby is a low-chance, high-risk event.
I touch my abdomen through my diving suit. A baby. Trying to imagine it is so abstract that it barely makes sense.
I become aware of Hamish’s voice: “Diver two? How’s that valve coming on? What’s your twenty? Diver two? You copy?”
I check Rich’s breathing supply. It looks normal. “Hamish?”
“I can’t get a reading on diver two,” Hamish tells me. “Give me a minute.”
I check Rich’s comms and hot water. They look okay too.
“Deano, this is surface,” says Hamish. “Prepare for diver rescue.”
“Diver rescue. Right. Roger that.” I’ve practised diver rescue multiple times, but I’ve never had to do it for real.
“Deploy the man lift,” Hamish tells me. “Blow the canopy down.”
I try to keep calm by imagining this is a drill. I release my standby umbilical, which is two metres longer than Rich’s. No matter where he is, I should be able to reach him. If he’s stuck, I’ll have to try and set him free. We’ve all heard about the poor guy on Jet Barge 4, who got his arm stuck in a pipe; it sucked the flesh clean off his bones. And we’ve heard how traumatised the bellman was who found him.
I put on my helmet and lower myself into the water. I take Rich’s umbilical in my hand. Even though I know what to do, the moment my body enters the water, I falter.
“Deano? You all set?”
“Big ten-four, Hamish.” Despite the hot water being pumped around my suit, I’m shivering. I start to follow the umbilical, taking up slack. I’m observing protocol to the letter, but I don’t feel right. I don’t know if it’s a form of dissociation, which would certainly not be unheard of for me—perhaps it’s a way of trying to distract myself from the prospect of coming face-to-face with a co-worker’s corpse—but it’s hitting me like a ton of bricks: I could be killing my baby right now.
What have I been thinking? Putting my body through all this when there’s the possibility of a new life growing inside me? I’ve known about the risks of diving and pregnancy ever since I started training. Premature delivery, malformed limbs, bubbles in the amniotic fluid. I’ve read about what happened to rat embryos when they were exposed to hyperbaric oxygen. “Foetal wastage” was the phrase used.
I know about the effects that diving can have on the adult human body too. There are so many things that can go wrong: nitrogen narcosis, barotrauma, pulmonary embolisms, welding accidents, shark attacks, drowning. An American study I once read said that statistically, a commercial diver is forty times more likely to die at work than any other employee. And yet somehow that has never bothered me. Every job has its hazards. I went to school with a girl called Krystal Vickers who got third-degree burns all the way down the left-hand side of her body during a shift at McDonald’s. An entire football team got struck by lightning at a match in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An Italian stripper suffocated to death while waiting to jump out of a cake at a stag party. Things happen.
But now I’ve gone and thrown a baby into the mix. A vulnerable life that I’m responsible for. My baby hasn’t consented to the risks I’m exposing myself to. My child shouldn’t have to grow up with a hole in her heart because I timed my sex and my work badly. Things happen, yes, but some of them are preventable.
“Deano? You got eyes on diver two?”
It’s so muddy down here, I can barely see my own hands. At last, though, I come to the end of the umbilical.
“Um, Hamish,” I say faintly. “I’ve found him.”
Rich is reclining, as if on a sun lounger. He looks peaceful. Too peaceful.
“Rich?” I squeeze his shoulder.
His helmet turns. There are air bubbles.
“He’s breathing,” I say, trying not to let Hamish hear the tremor in my voice. “All right, Rich, it’s okay.” Talking to Rich is a bit pointless as we don’t have a comms line, but it makes me feel better. I open his steady flow valve to give him a bit more air; then I clip my harness onto him.
Rich’s body is limp, so I have to carry him back. It’s a slow process. Not only is he extremely heavy—even when underwater—but I’ve also got to be careful not to snag his equipment. Sweating, I hoist Rich into the bell.
“Good work, Solvig,” says Hamish, using my name for the first time.
10
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
It’s the first full-blown argument I’ve witnessed while in saturation. Some of it is hard to make out, as the angrier the guys get, the higher-pitched their voices become. What’s clear is that Dale is really laying into Rich.
“What made you think you’re cut out for this job?” Dale rants. “In all my years of diving, I’ve never known such a muppet.”
They’re at the dining table. Rich obviously wants to leave, but there’s nowhere to hide, so he has to sit it out and hope Dale calms down. Eryk is watching TV next to them, but he’s put it on silent with the subtitles, out of respect. Every now and then, he looks at Rich, shakes his head, and turns back to Cash in the Attic.
Rich leans forwards, cradling his bandaged hand. “If I’d known this would happen, mate . . . but I didn’t. I just sort of blacked out. It’s only happened a couple of times before. Never on a dive. I thought it was stress.”
“Stress?” Dale laughs. “Fucking stress? I’ll tell you about stress. Stress is finding out that one of your crew members gets panic attacks from time to time. And that one of those times happens to be while he’s wielding heavy fucking machinery. Finding out that he’s keeled over and broken his own hand, but it could have been my hand, or . . .” He looks around and points at me. I’m standing stiffly in the doorway. “It could’ve been her hand. She had to come and chuffing rescue you, you paper hat. Do you know what sort of a situation you put her in?”