Page 6

M issy sat beside her father, one hand holding her father’s hand. She stared down at him, feeling the tears threatening to slide down her face once again. Her sleep had been fitful since returning, as she kept seeing her father unconscious and helpless beside her on that rock of an island, unable to do anything for him.

For all her medical training, there was still only so much that was available to her when she was out in the middle of nowhere, without any access to equipment or supplies.

The hospital doctor walked in just then, took one look at her, and offered, “He’s doing better, you know?”

She looked at him hopefully. “Seriously?” she asked, not able to believe him. “Or are you just telling me that?”

“I’m not in the habit of just telling people stuff,” he replied, with a smile, “but he’s doing a bit better, and he’s definitely resting more comfortably. As I told you, the tests revealed a brain bleed, which we’ve implemented a fix for, and that’s all been safely drained away. You know better than anyone what a horrible assault his body went through, but we’re hoping that, given enough time, he’ll heal and come back to us.”

“But there’s no way to know if he will, and there’s no way to know a time frame, is there?”

He shook his head. “Modern medicine is wonderful, but it has its limitations. Sometimes we just can’t get them back,” he shared. “One of the biggest things you can do is just be here for him, remind him that you’re here, remind him that you’re safe, remind him that the ordeal is over now and how you need him back in your life.”

She smiled. “That’s easy enough to do. I’ve already told him all that,” she murmured. “We’ve always been very close.”

He nodded. “That’s what I understand, so keep that up. Meanwhile we’ll give him a chance to do what he needs to do—heal. We can’t rush this, and, if his brain and his body need a little longer, we’ll give it to him.”

“You won’t just pull the plug or anything, will you?”

His eyebrows shot up, and he shook his head. “No, that’s not something we do. He’s not even close to that point where we would even consider that,” he noted. “So rest assured that your father has a really good chance of making a full recovery, now that he’s getting care.” Then he frowned at her and asked, “How are you doing? I don’t want to forget that you were also out there, as part of that nightmare.”

“The worst part,” she confessed, “is that I can’t sleep. I keep seeing my father in this condition out on that island, but I’m unable to help. I keep waking up, reaching for him.”

“Got it.” The doc nodded, with full understanding. “I could offer you something to help you sleep.”

She immediately shook her head. “No, I would rather just work my way through this. I don’t want any pills.”

“How about talking to somebody?” he suggested, studying her carefully. “We don’t always have to do everything ourselves.”

She smiled. “Is that personality trait so obvious?”

He grinned. “It is something that we see often,” he noted. “If you have friends you can talk to about it, anybody who’s there for you, give them a call. Spend time remembering that you’re safe, that you’re back, that you survived. As your father recovers, these nightmares, although they may not go away for quite a while, they’ll become easier to handle.” And, with that, the doctor was gone.

She sat back down beside her father, having moved away from the hospital bed while the doc was checking out her father’s vitals. Then she smiled at the relaxed expression on his face. “Did you hear that, Dad? The doctor says there’s a good chance you’ll come out of this and be okay. That is way more than I could have hoped for, so start listening and pull yourself out of this. Do you hear me?”

A chuckle came from the doorway, and she looked over to see Jackson. Behind him was Trey. She lit up when she saw him. “Hey,” she greeted them warmly. “I didn’t think I would see you again today.”

He nodded. “Just checking in on your dad—and you of course.”

But the concern in his gaze made her heart swell. “I’m fine. I was just having that conversation with the doctor, you know, about how hard it is to sleep now.”

“Nightmares?” Trey asked.

She nodded. “Yes, nightmares,… nightmares where I can’t quite reach my father, where I can’t quite ever get him out of the trouble he’s in.”

“That’s to be expected,” Trey told her, “considering what you went through. As he improves, then that will as well.” She looked over at Jackson, to see that he had stepped out into the hallway to talk to somebody. “I guess I didn’t realize that you and Jackson were related.”

“Jackson’s my brother,” he reminded her. “I told you, but maybe you were too out of it at the time.”

“Obviously I knew it on some level, but it just didn’t click.… I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been more confused than I realize, given the situation.”

“It stands to reason, and that’s why people keep asking you how you are. You have waved off any effort to get treated yourself or to help you. Dehydration, exhaustion, fear, fatigue, exposure, and trauma all can create confusion, and you’ve had all of that and more.”

“Jeez, it’s sounds terrible when you put it that way.”

“It is terrible, but back to Jackson. He’s my brother, which makes Elizabeth my sister-in-law.”

“Now she is a lovely lady,” she replied warmly.

“She is,” he agreed, smiling at her, “and everybody is hoping for the best for your father.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she muttered, “because it’s been a couple rough days. It’s one thing to have him unresponsive out there in those terrible conditions with no medical attention or anything, but having him still that way, here in the hospital, after surgery, where he’s warm, dry, and hydrated, is almost worse.”

“But you two are safe now,” Trey reiterated, “and that is what you need to remember. And Schooner is doing fine at the house with Elizabeth, Jackson and me.”

“So everyone keeps telling me, and I’m so glad to hear Schooner is doing okay,” she admitted. Then she frowned at Trey. “Did you have another reason for coming here?” He stared at her steadily. “Okay, what am I not seeing?” she asked, her heart sinking. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he replied. “However, out of courtesy, I’m here to tell you that I’m heading back out with Rob. You know Rob?”

“Yes, I know Rob,” she confirmed. “So what are you doing?”

“We’ll try to retrieve the boat.”

Her cheeks sucked in as she stared at him, and her breath caught in her chest. “Right,” she muttered, when she finally could. “I should have thought of that.”

“You have enough to think about right now,” Trey said. “Your concern, and your one and only priority right now, is your father.” She glanced back down at her dad. “If nothing else,” Trey added, “and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

“I understand,” she said in a low voice.

“If there’s any way to get her back into working condition, that is something we would very much like to make happen. It was your father’s boat that he loved and adored.”

“And his father’s before him,” she agreed. “It would be absolutely wonderful if that was a possibility,… even if we could save something of it. But I remember the poor shape it was in, so I’m not sure that anything can even be done.”

“I didn’t take a close-enough look, once I realized that you guys were there and that we might have a chance to get out before the weather got really ugly.”

“As I recall, it did get really ugly, but you still got us out,” she said warmly.

“With a little help from the Coast Guard,” he noted, with a smile.

“We were very lucky that they were out there,” she pointed out. “I was wondering about that. How come they were so close?”

“Oh, I can help you with that. Once I heard you on the radio, and we knew you were alive, I got ahold of Jackson. He was able to pass on to the Coast Guard what you had told me about where you were before it all went bad. That got them headed in the right direction. Then, once I was able to find you, I tried to pass along another location. So, by the time we got out of there and turned toward home, they’d been heading in our direction for quite a while. Then eventually we could communicate directly, and they were able to come meet us.”

“Which I’m incredibly grateful for,” she declared, taking a deep breath. “You don’t realize how important all of these connections are, until you’re in need, and life gets even more complicated.”

“And life can always get complicated,” he stated. “That’s a given. It’s all about making the best of what we have at any given moment.”

She smiled. “There’s that eternal optimism. You’re quite different from your brother in that way.”

“Am I?” he asked, tilting his head and glancing back around to see where Jackson had gone.

“He’s not a big optimist like you are,” she stated. “I think sometimes he’s probably quite the opposite.” She could see that she had surprised Trey with that comment, but she shrugged. “It’s what an outsider sees,” she explained immediately. “It doesn’t mean it’s a fact.”

“Of course not,” Trey said, but he still gazed at her steadily. “We’ve had a few rough years.”

“Haven’t we all?” she said, with spirit.

He chuckled. “At least it’s looking like maybe you’ll have a happy ending with your dad.”

“I sure hope so,” she replied fervently, as she stared down at her father’s still body. “I just really want him to wake up. I’m finally back from my university days and ready to do my residency with him,” she muttered, wincing as she looked back down at the prone figure. “At least I’m hoping to.”

“You will,” Trey said confidently.

She studied him. “What? Are you some psychic now?”

“Nope, not at all,… but I’m somebody who learned that wallowing doesn’t get us anywhere, and projecting positivity—even in bad circumstances—helps us to get through the rough times.”

“It might help us get through rough times,” she conceded, “but it still isn’t an answer.”

“No, but it can buy us some time, and that can be important too. Now, back to the boat. I just wanted to double-check with you, to confirm you have no objection to our going out there and trying to salvage the boat.”

“No, of course not,” she replied, “particularly since you’re doing it for my father’s sake.”

He nodded. “Okay then, in that case, we’ll head out first thing in the morning and see what we can find.”

“At least now you have a location,” she noted, half joking.

“We do, and, with any luck, it will still be there.”

“It was up on the rocks at one point,” she pointed out, “but the storms can be pretty rough out there.”

“That’s why we’re heading out as soon as we can,” he shared. “Just no way of knowing what’ll be left of her, if she’s even still there.”

Missy winced. “That is a reality to be prepared for. I sure hope she’s still there, although I’m not sure you’ll bring her back. She was bashed up pretty badly.”

“We’ll start by doing an assessment to see if we can stop further damage from happening, while we come up with a plan. That’s why I’m going with Rob.”

“Ah.” She nodded in understanding. “That is something he does, isn’t it?”

“He salvages,” he confirmed, with a smile. “In fact, he’s gotten a bit of a bad name for mostly salvaging for money, instead of helping people, although a guy has to make a living somehow.”

She winced. “I really hope that’s not the case in this instance.”

“We’ve already talked to him, and apparently your father helped him out of a spot at some point, so Rob’s more than willing to pitch in.”

“Oh good,” she said in delight. “That would make it a lot easier.”

They talked for another moment or two, and then he left, though Jackson never did pop in to say anything further.

She wasn’t necessarily surprised. Jackson wasn’t somebody she was close to by any means, just somebody she would see out on the streets and would know from high school. They were in the same graduating class.

As she settled back into her vigil, sitting with her father, she watched as almost a grimace of pain shifted across his face. She raced to his side and picked up his hand. “Hey, Dad. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re fine now. We’re safe.”

No other acknowledgment came, but just even seeing him respond on a pain level made her feel so much better. He was feeling pain so he was more conscious, right? She didn’t want him to suffer by any means, but to think that he was here and was potentially responding to something was huge.

With that frame of mind, she settled on her cot to wait until he woke up.

The trio set out in the early morning. Trey had Schooner at his side in Rob’s boat. Rob had a huge recovery vehicle, not a tug and not a ship, just something that he had bastardized somewhere in between. It did the job, and, for that, Trey was damn grateful. It was interesting to see just what a beast Rob’s recovery vehicle was. When Trey questioned him about it, Rob just gave him a toothless grin.

“She’s my Mary,” he replied, with a big laugh, “and she’s the only reason so many of you younglings survived out there.”

“Any idea how many rescues you’ve been involved in?”

He shook his head. “Too damn many,” he muttered. “Wasn’t sure anybody would survive, as I was heading out there so often.… Everybody’s got this punk attitude that the world will save them, and unfortunately I seem to be there on the spot to save a lot of them. I should have let a lot of you drown.”

Trey wasn’t sure if he was being pinpointed directly or if the man just had a gripe with all of humanity. That was the problem with somebody like Rob. He saw a lot of the worst of people doing the stupidest things. If there was ever anybody who could judge the others, it would be Rob. As Trey contemplated the number of rescues he himself had been involved in with Rob, he pointed it out. “I guess I’d forgotten just how many that I know about. I can’t imagine how many you’ve done in all this time I’ve been away.”

“Too damn many,” he muttered, “just too damn many. I don’t understand why people have to be idiots when it comes to their lives.” Rob shook his head. “Somebody like me?… I do an awful lot to get an extra ten or twenty good innings in,” he shared, “but so many of the young ones are just out there, risking their lives, and don’t even seem to know or to care.”

“They just think the world revolves around them and that they’ll live forever,” Trey suggested.

“Sure, until reality hits, and they find out there is no forever,” Rob noted, with a hard cackle.

There was certainly enough truth to his words, but it’s not as if anybody had ever been successful in convincing the young to take care of their lives because there was always that sense of ownership to the world around them, that they would live forever and would enjoy everything that their parents hadn’t done.

Maybe Trey was no better, but then his and Jackson’s lives had been a whole different kettle of fish, since their mom had been sick so much of the time. Trey checked his bearings, and then pointed out a change in direction was needed.

Rob nodded. “I hear you, but, with the winds right now, we need to come in from the north, and then angle down that direction,” he explained, as he pointed off to the side. “Otherwise we won’t make it very far.”

“Have you ever been to these parts?”

“A couple times,” he said, with a nod. “I don’t remember being up here with Silas though.”

“Did you go out with Silas much?”

He shrugged. “We both love the water, but we were both loners. Silas?… He got out here to get away from everybody, particularly with his clinic. He used to tell me how stressful it was sometimes and how he wasn’t sure he should keep doing it. He was really hoping his daughter would come take over and make the load easier for him.”

“And now she’s here,” Trey pointed out, “and he’s unconscious in the hospital.”

“That’s what I’m saying about not waiting for a better time or a better thing in life,” he declared, “because, as soon as you wait for something better, often the situation’s just worse.” He shrugged. “She’s sitting there, waiting for him to wake up, and, all this time, he’s been waiting for her to get here.”

There was a lot of truth in that statement, although Trey could see that it was hard all the way around, waiting for the training and the education to be complete in order for her to join Silas. But it was also easy to understand how Silas may have gotten overwhelmed sometimes with the volume of work he was doing. Silas’s biggest problem had been to put down many animals. Even when done to save the animal pain and a diminished quality of life, it took an emotional toll on the humans. When a bark came at his side, Trey looked down at Schooner, nudging his hand. “It’s okay, boy. I know this isn’t your favorite place to be.”

“I’m surprised he came back so willingly,” Rob noted, as he gummed away at some chew in his mouth. “I’ve seen some good sea dogs in my days, but, after a scare like this one had, I’ve also seen good sea dogs become land dogs. Yet this guy seems to be quite happy to keep going.”

“I think he was probably happy there, not necessarily upset at the change in their circumstances,” Trey suggested. “I looked into his training and his service record, and he’s done an awful lot of survival work with the military teams, and sometimes that’s just what these War Dogs are geared for.”

“In this case it’s a good thing because Silas didn’t necessarily have much luck with his rescues.”

“It sounds to me as if his big heart made him take home some of the worst cases because he couldn’t let them die alone,” Trey offered in a low tone.

Rob looked at him sharply and then nodded. “That goes along with the man I know.… I hadn’t considered it that way before.”

“No, and he didn’t really let a lot of people into his inner circle.”

“And he let you in?”

“I think at one time he was hoping I would become a vet myself. I was an eternal disappointment to him when I ended up going into the military… to him and a good share of my family, it seems.”

“There’s no appreciation for the military anymore,” Rob grumbled, looking at him. “I’m surprised any young person goes out into that world.”

“Maybe, but I wanted to do something in a big way,” Trey shared, with a smile. “I wanted to help, you know? If nobody ever helps, then nothing ever changes.”

“Yeah, but let me then ask you something,” Rob began with a snort. “Did you see anything change?” And, with that, he headed to his navigation maps, leaving a very quiet Trey in his wake.