“What happened?” she asked.
“Plane exploded,” he said in a curt voice because he knew that getting into the boat would be horribly painful. But he made it. He also knew his skin had gone ghostly white because he felt clammy, plus his voice faint after this exertion, but, when he finally made it to the deck of the sailboat, he whispered, “Thank God.” Then he slowly passed out too.
The next time he woke to see the same woman, only this time she looked a little bit different.
He looked around and realized he was in a bed, most likely aboard her sailboat, as he felt the rocking motion of the ocean. “What the hell happened?”
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said. She walked over and held out a cup. “This is water,” she said. “I want you to take a slow sip.” He shifted up on his good arm and noticed that his bad arm was now in a sling. She held the cup to his lips, and he slowly drank. He wanted to grab the cup and toss it back, but she was portioning it out.
He glared at her.
She just smiled and said, “All in good time. We can’t inundate your body all at once, but we need to get good fluids in there.”
When he had slowly drank the full cup, he sagged back down and asked, “Garret?”
She motioned beside him, on the other side of the night table.
He leaned to see his buddy. “How is he?”
“He’s alive but in rough shape,” she said. “With any luck our signal for help will get somebody down here soon.”
“Here?”
“We’re just off one of the Micronesian islands,” she said. “I was on my way to Thailand, when I was diverted by the plane.”
“You saw it come down?” His tone sharpened, as he studied her with a little more clarity. “What did you see?”
“Just the plane nose-diving,” she said. “Leaving a ton of smoke and fire in a trail behind it. I’m not even sure it was the landing that caused the breakup, as much as maybe you broke up just before you hit. It was really hard to tell, and it all happened so fast.”
He nodded and said, “I know. It was pretty brutal. Did you see anybody else?”
“Nobody,” she said. Realizing what he meant, she stopped, looked at him, and whispered, “How many more were there?”
“One,” he said. “My boss and friend. His name is Bullard. I’m Ryland. That’s Garret on the other bed.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s possible that he’s been picked up by somebody else, but honestly I haven’t seen too many people out here.”
He nodded and sagged back. He would trust that Bullard was still alive because that was one tough-as-leather man. Sure, a blown-up plane could kill anybody, but, with Bullard, if there was any way for him to be alive, he would be.
Ryland looked himself over and then Garret. His friend was in a bad way, but at least he was alive. So was Ryland, and he’d place odds on Bullard being alive too. He better be. “How long before we can get to a medical facility?”
“Not exactly a traditional medical facility but we’re sailing toward a US Navy ship,” she said quietly. “They’re coming to meet us.”
“Good,” he said. “Do they have a full medical center on board?”
“Fully state-of-the-art, yes,” she said cheerfully. “The hope is to stabilize you both and then get you airlifted out.”
“That would be nice,” he said, and soon he was out cold again.
*
“It would be nice, yes,” Tabi whispered, brushing the hair off his forehead. What he didn’t realize was that he was in worse shape than he probably knew himself. That leg would take some resetting, plus the gash on his head, his multiple breaks and cuts—they all needed attention. His whole body was black and blue. She had managed to strip him down—by cutting off his clothes—to see how much other damage there was, storing everything in a bag beside him. Not much of him escaped without some injury. She couldn’t imagine the soft tissue damage inside. She didn’t have any way to stitch him up, but he needed stitches—a lot of them—on multiple body parts.
Thankfully any blood had been cauterized by the seawater. Painful but effective in a pinch.
His friend had what appeared to be internal injuries too. He was the reason she headed as fast as she could toward the US Navy ship out there. It was just a sheer fluke that she’d seen the plane come down in the ocean and just another fluke that she’d found them floating among the debris. She’d been trying to get away from people, trying to get away from work, in fact trying to get away from everything. It had been a real shitty couple months for her, and this was supposed to be her time away.
But she never turned her back on anybody in need, and she’d never walked away from a natural disaster in her life. As a surgical nurse, she had heavy medical training, but she wasn’t a doctor. Yet she’d seen some things in her time, and she knew critical injuries when she saw them, and this was one of those times.
Since finding the two men and making contact with the US Navy ship, she’d been looking for any other crash victims but hadn’t seen any. Again what a fluke that she’d even seen these two. The floating pile of rubble had caught her interest, and, when she’d gotten closer, she thought she’d seen movement. Now she was damn grateful she’d done what she could, but, if the one died, she wouldn’t be happy. She checked her radio and sent out one more message. “Ahoy, USS Sand Egret. One patient was awake and is now out cold again. Second one is still out cold.”
“We’re about forty-two minutes out,” spoke the same man again. “We’ve picked you up on radar.”
“Good,” she said. “I can’t see any sign of you on the horizon yet.”
“We’re there and should be visible soon.”
She kept going in the direction she needed to go, hoping the weather cooperated. She didn’t like being out in the open seas as far as she was likely to be by the time they got the two men transferred. She could only hope that the weather, which had been threatening a squall all day, held off. The last thing those two needed was yet another event. She glanced around behind her to see a few other ships around where the debris field was—everything from scavengers to curiosity seekers. Hopefully somebody would see the third man. She didn’t dare take the time or the energy. She had two critical patients on board.
It didn’t take forty-two minutes; about thirty-seven minutes later the ship came around an island, and another ten minutes passed before a Zodiac raced out to meet her. As soon as one of the seamen boarded her vessel, she took him below and showed him the two men.
He was surprised. “Both white,” he said. “Interesting. Did you get an ID from either of them?”
She pointed. “His clothes are in the bag, and that’s his ID there.”
He pulled it out and looked at it. “Ryland Roscoe. Africa. That’s interesting,” he said. “What are they doing here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Neither has been in any shape to really talk.”
“We’ll get them transferred up and out,” he said.
She got out of the way, as the men carefully unrolled a portable stretcher and transferred Garret into it, still out cold. They moved him up and out onto her deck and then onto their Zodiac.