I came up sputtering and used the rope to guide me to the rungs on the side of the raft. Finally, I touched something solid and reached up, hauling myself over the edge and dropping hard on the bottom of the small life raft. I took a second to calm my panting breaths while I lay on my back with the rain stinging my skin.
I rolled over and coughed, removing the water still in my mouth and lungs and looked out over the waves. I could see well enough to know The Oblation was pretty much completely destroyed. The storm was minor – and there was no way it would have been the cause of all the damage I could see from where I was. I rolled quickly and pulled at one of the sealed plastic containers tucked into the side of the raft. I retrieved a signal whistle and blew it three times.
Nothing.
No response, no yelling – nothing.
I blew again.
And again.
Pieces of the mast floated into view on the top of one of the waves, along with part of a sail and something I thought might have been a chunk of futtock. Someone’s suitcase rose up on a swell, and then slowly began to sink. It went past something wavy and oddly shaped – like a bunch of snakes all coiled together. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and rubbed at my eyes.
When the wave slipped back down I saw it again. It wasn’t part of the ship, and I was relatively sure it was one of the passengers. The water was too rough to try to maneuver in the right direction, so I grabbed the life preserver and dived in.
I swam under and reached whoever it was just in time to grab a hold of strands of hair and coil them around my fist right before they dropped too low in the water for me to have hopes of latching on. If the person had worn a shorter hairstyle, I wouldn’t have been able to reach. Thankfully, whoever it was didn’t weigh much and didn’t struggle.
Shit. I could be risking my life for a body.
Another wave hit just as I was taking a breath, and I took in a mouthful of water. I didn’t actually inhale it, but I didn’t get any air, either, and my lungs were starting to burn. I pulled up on the hair in my fist until I could get a better grip on the actual torso. I managed to grab what was, undoubtedly, a boob, so at least I knew I was saving a woman. I pulled her up against my chest and leaned back, trying to simultaneously float on my back, use the life preserver to keep me above the wave swells, and keep the head of one of my passengers above water.
I got a couple of good breaths and started to pull in the rope. The added weight wasn’t helping when the waves crashed around us. More than once I considered just letting her go because my arms were starting to hurt really, really bad. I didn’t know who she was, but I couldn’t quite manage to intentionally let go of her. If one of the waves took her from me, well, that would be a different situation, but I wasn’t going to just let go of her no matter how much it hurt. I may be a mostly uncaring ass, but that was going too far. Besides, I’d been hurt a lot worse than this and still pushed through.
My hand touched the end of the lifeboat, and I struggled to pull both of us over the side. I got her in first, and then tumbled in after her.
I was balanced on my knees and one hand, breathing heavily with the other hand over my chest. The rain still poured down on me, and I knew I didn’t have any time to rest. I mentally yelled at my muscles to get going again and sat up. I leaned over the chest of the woman I had pulled from the water, just to check.
She wasn’t breathing.
“Fuck!”
I quickly pulled her upright and flipped her over my back, pushing my shoulder into her diaphragm. Her mouth dropped open and water released from her lungs, pouring out of her mouth. I flipped her over onto her back and tilted her head to open her airway, checking her mouth for any obstructions.
A for airway, B for breath, C for circulation…
Her airway was clear, but she still wasn’t breathing. I placed the first two fingers of my hand against her neck and felt the faintest thump of her heartbeat under the pads of my fingers. If she had a pulse, she must have been breathing recently, which meant she still had a chance. I placed my hand on her forehead, tilted her head back and covered her mouth with mine.
I blew a long, slow breath into her lungs, then tilted my head to the side and watched her chest fall. I turned back to her mouth and breathed into her a second and third time. My fingers went back to her neck and verified her pulse was still there before I breathed for her in another three-breath segment.
It didn’t take long, thankfully. I was exhausted, and there wasn’t much chance of me being able to continue resuscitation for very long. If she had needed chest compressions, we were going to be in a lot of trouble. After only a dozen breaths, she coughed, sputtered out more water, and then took several gasping breaths before passing out across my lap. At least she kept breathing on her own, and her pulse felt a lot stronger.
I took a couple of deep breaths for my own lungs and turned my face up to the sky with my mouth open, drinking in the rain drops and hoping the raft was set up to automatically start collecting the fresh water. I was going to have to check that before I did anything else. Fatigue now was bad, but it was still better than dehydration later. I figured I would locate John Paul and the better equipped lifeboats when the sun rose, but I didn’t want to be wrong.
Thankfully, the water collection did seem to be set to go, I just needed to attach a little collection tube from the built in gutter in the ceiling of the raft to the plastic collection bag inside. I pulled the canopy over the top part of the raft; sealing it and leaving just a small part open so I could bail out the water that had already gotten in from the rain and the waves.
I was feeling a little dizzy and figured I wasn’t going to be able to do much more. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to just sit down for a minute. The thing was, if I did stop, that would be it. I’d be out in a second, and if I didn’t do the important stuff first, we were both going to die before I woke up.
I looked back over to the girl I pulled from the water and heard myself gasp as I saw red marks all over the floor. I reached to her and turned her over, checking her back, under her hair, and up and down her limbs, but I didn’t see any sign of injury. While I was laying her back down, I saw a drop of red fall and hit her shoulder, so I reached up to my own forehead.
I guess I hadn’t noticed it, since the rain and sea water kept washing the blood away, but there was a pretty good gash on my left temple. It probably wasn’t too serious, though still worthy of stitches. Head wounds meant blood, so there was a lot of blood. I dug around in one of the sealed pouches until I found first aid supplies. I covered up the cut with some gauze and tape. Hopefully I’d find John Paul in the morning so he could stitch it up. Like I needed another scar. At least it was up near my hairline and would probably be covered up most of the time.
I checked myself over for any other injuries but didn’t see anything. I took a quick inventory of what was on the life raft and found two thin pieces of cloth that were probably supposed to be used as both towels and blankets. Maybe even sails, though they weren’t big enough to make any difference at sea. I used one to dry off the floor in the back of the raft and pulled the drenched girl back away from the raft’s opening, near the dry spot. I tried to make her at least look comfortable, and as I moved her arms and legs so she didn’t look too awkward, it briefly registered that the passenger I pulled from the water was the early-rising bookworm. Of course, now that I had pulled her over to the dry side of the raft, it wasn’t so dry anymore.
Fuck it.
I looked out and watched The Oblation as it finally gave up and sank under the waves. She had been my home for three years, and now she was gone. I wouldn’t let myself wonder about John Paul or Alejandro or the other passengers. The lifeboats were gone, so I was going with the assumption that the rest of them were on board one of those. In daylight I should be able to signal them.
I made my body continue on. I dropped the two floating anchors and affixed the rest of the canopy, sealing us inside the life raft. Everything was well secured, I had the water collection going, and I wasn’t bleeding anymore. I checked my sole passenger’s breathing again and watched the last pieces of my home sink into the darkened sea. I took one more deep breath, flopped onto my back next to her, and finally surrendered to exhaustion.