Migrations(33)

“Hold steady.”

“How much weight’s in that thing?” Dae asks incredulously.

“’Bout a hundred tons.”

There’s shouting on the deck and I press my nose to the glass to try to see what’s going on down there. The net is almost out of the water when one of the cables snaps.

“Cover!” I hear someone shout and every crew member hits the deck. Too late for one of them: the cable whips out and cracks into a body, flinging it against the bulwark. A doll, a toy, something weightless and lifeless and fragile. I gasp in horror and listen to the shouts of panic from below. Whoever it is doesn’t move.

The net, meanwhile, holds, but only just. More strain works at the power block and all the pulleys, and I feel the boat tilt farther. Someone is climbing the A-line to reach the top of the power block, and I recognize Malachai’s tall athletic frame as it nears the top, swaying precariously with the waves. He could go over at any moment, and water this cold can kill.

“What’s he doing?” I demand.

“Attaching the backup cable.”

“Can’t you just put the fish back and end this?”

“Too good a haul.”

“Are you fucking kidding?”

Ennis ignores me so I bolt out into the gale.

“Franny!” I hear him roar but I’m ducking and hammering down the metal steps, holding on for life. I am drenched to the bone, my parka seems no help against that, and the cold is shocking. It is worse than when I dove into the fjord to save Ennis. It is worse than the winter mornings in our freezing little wooden house on the beach, with wind howling through the slats in the wall and you thought you would die of it, you honestly thought you would—oh, it is worse than that by far. Water streams inside my parka, down my spine and into my gloves, turning my fingertips to ice. My ears, I think, have dropped off. I have the lucidity to think of these poor people who work in this madness, who must function at their best in it. On deck the shriek of the storm is deafening. I press myself to where Anik is huddled over the crumpled body of Samuel. Léa, Basil, and Dae are still struggling heroically with the winch, holding it in place with nothing but sheer muscle, a constant stream of curse words spewing from their mouths all the while, as Mal tries to reconnect the cables.

I focus on Samuel, who is unconscious. “Help me get him inside!” Anik yells and so we take an armpit each and drag the big man over the lurching deck. My feet slip out from under me and I hit the deck hard. Air goes from me. I remember this. It’s drowning. I gasp, panicked, trying to find a breath but there are none. The sky spins and falls onto my face. Anik’s hand rests between my ribs and he says, “Slow, slow, easy,” until I can breathe again and I’m not drowning and then we are moving, dragging, slipping, and finally inside the top of the ladder.

“How do we get him down?” I pant.

Anik is shimmying down the ladder and disappearing, and he seems to take a disastrously long time to emerge with a first-aid stretcher. Together we roll Samuel onto it and strap him in and I’m worried about his spine but there’s nothing for it. Anik goes a few steps down and catches Samuel’s feet, and then we slide the stretcher down the stairs to the bottom. The next task is to lift it, and it seems to weigh a thousand tons, a million, it’s far too heavy for me, I can’t— “Franny,” Anik says calmly. “No one is coming to help—they’re too busy. You must lift him.”

I nod, and bend my knees. I’m stronger than I’ve been before, stronger than even the days when I was a swimmer—prison will do that, it will carve you tough. We haul him up and stagger down the corridor. As the boat heaves the wall slams into us and there goes the air from my lungs again. “Keep going,” Anik pants, and we do, crashing into the kitchen and dropping him on the bench.

“He’s not breathing,” I pant. “I don’t think he has a pulse.”

“I’m getting the paddles.”

But he’s taking too long, searching through a cupboard, so I duck to blow air into Samuel’s mouth and then because he’s too high and too large I climb up onto the kitchen bench and I straddle his large girth, and I start pumping his chest as hard as I’m able. I don’t feel as though I’m making any difference. He is too firmly built, the bones and muscles too protective of his heart for me to get to it. I give him another breath of air, a long one, feeling him inflate beneath me in a way that unnerves me deeply.

“Off, quick.”

I scramble down and Anik unzips Samuel’s parka and cuts his shirt open. Then he places the small patches over where the heart should be. They connect with wires to a small black box with a monitor.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” I ask.

“No.”

“I think you have to put one to the side and one to the bottom.”

“How do you know that?”

I shrug helplessly.

He hesitates, unsure, then does as I’ve said. The pack is energizing itself, and we watch the charge climb higher and higher until the light goes green.

Anik’s eyes are frantic. He reaches for the button but he doesn’t need to press it—the device automatically shocks if it can’t detect a heartbeat. Electricity jolts through Samuel’s large body. He is immediately a thing of meat and blood. But Samuel isn’t dead—this isn’t that, it isn’t—he gasps and returns to consciousness, more quickly than I would have imagined possible. He groans and vomits all over himself, and we have to roll him onto his side so he doesn’t choke.