Between Here and the Horizon(47)

Michael put a hand on my arm, warning me with his eyes—probably not a good idea for you to be here right now. If circumstances were different, I’d give this guy as good as he got, but I was exhausted. And looking for Sully and Linneman was far more pressing a task. I slipped by the men and walked all the way down to the end of the pier, holding each breath for five steps, holding each breath for as long as I could, as if that might somehow help.

I peered through the binoculars, scanning the sea, and I waited. The gray and white and black stretched on forever. Eventually, I saw something moving through the water. A boat? No, a rock. No, definitely…it was the boat. Tearing inland, I couldn’t track it well enough at first to see how many men were on board. And then I could make out the shape of one man. Just one. The boat was too far out to tell who it was: Linneman, Sully, or someone else entirely. I took off at a sprint, crashing down the pier, past Michael and the other two guys, back down onto the beach.

The boat was coming in fast. It slowed as it approached the shore and the break, but it was still traveling at a rate of knots. Cutting through the white caps and the rollers, it almost rocketed straight out of the water when it hit land. Linneman was first over the side of the boat.

“Quickly. Get them out,” he yelled.

Hands everywhere. Bodies, pushing and shoving. Ice cold water spilling over into my shoes, feet instantly tingling with pain. Water up to my knees, and then up to my waist.

“Ophelia, get back. We can handle it. We’ve got them. Please!” Michael, shoving me back to the shore. I stumbled, fell down in the wash. Hands helping me up, and then bodies being lifted over the side of the boat.

Cold.

So cold.

Soaked.

Lifeless.

“Does anyone know CPR?” Linneman was shouting. “Someone, start checking for pulses.”

Then Sully.

He was drenched, hair plastered to his head, breathing hard, his thin white t-shirt stuck to his check, rucked up at the back, exposing two long, bloody scrapes, and a patch of angry red skin. He jumped over the side of the boat, and then somehow managed to lift another man out behind him, throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of wet cement. The moment he saw me, he started to run through the water in my direction.

“Don’t just stand there, Lang. Come on. Rally.” Grabbing me by the arm with his free hand, he started dragging me out of the water after him. I tripped and stumbled, barely kept up, but then I was on my knees in the sand, ears full of water, and Sully was taking my hands and placing them on the lifeless man he’d laid out in front of me.

“Like this,” he said. “Link your hands together and compress. Up and down, up and down. Don’t stop until I get back.”

I pumped my interlinked hands up and down on the guy’s chest like he showed me, stunned, unable to breathe a word, and Sully ran back the way we’d come. His shoes were gone, feet bare. Had he taken them off in the boat? Had he lost them in the ocean? There was blood on my arm. Blood on the sand next to me where he’d just been standing.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

I kept up with the compressions, not daring to stop. The roar of the boat’s engine shuttered into life again, and when I twisted, looking back over my shoulder, Sully and Linneman were already lifting the boat on their shoulders again, heading back out past the break.

“They’re going back out?” I looked around, searching for someone to tell me what the hell was going on, but the people on the beach were frantically running to cars, carrying blankets, carrying bodies, administering CPR like I was, and no one heard me.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

I looked down into the man’s face lying before me. His lips were blue, parted, showing white teeth. His skin was worn like leather. Late sixties? Early seventies? How many storms had he weathered out on these waters? How many times had he nearly lost his life and won it back?

I fell into a trance. I kept pumping my hands up and down on the stranger’s chest until my arms burned and ached, and I felt like I couldn’t go on another moment, and then I carried on some more.

Another ambulance arrived, and then a sound, like the beating of a drum, like the racing of my heart, a paddle thumping at the air, everyone looking up, looking relieved. An air ambulance, bright red and white, descending from the heavens like a wrathful archangel. EMTs poured out of the chopper, jump bags over their shoulders, scattering across the beach.

“Ma’am? Ma’am, thank you. If you could step back for a moment, I can take a look at him now.” The young guy standing in front of me didn’t look old enough to professionally save lives. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, though, as he dropped to his knees and began checking vitals.

“No pulse. How long have you been administering CPR, ma’am?”

The sky seemed to break open, and a bright, white light lanced down through the grim morning, illuminating the beach briefly before the clouds pressed in again.

“Ma’am?”

“Hmm?”

“How long have you been administering CPR for?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Was he awake when he was brought out of the water?”

I shook my head.