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Raff’s wrist is swollen to twice its size. He says he felt it twist when the humpback’s body landed beside him and the force of its weight threw him hard. But, and here is the wonder of it all, it did not land on him. If it had, he’d be dead. I can’t even approach how I feel about that, I can’t go back in my mind to those moments, watching and powerless and so sure my son was gone. It’s not about me, so I will leave that there. I have only very basic first aid knowledge with which to treat the break. I can’t x-ray it without power, wouldn’t know how to read an x-ray anyway. I bandage it and shovel pain meds down his throat. We don’t have a freezer, which means we don’t have ice.

He is awake and calm. I can’t stop hugging him. I don’t move off his bed, and he suffers me, as well as his little brother and his sister at his feet. He says he’ll stay with Rowan until she wakes; I can only imagine what gets forged in the moments before a whale falls on top of you. I agree, wouldn’t be leaving her anyway. We all stay. We sleep in the camp beds and sit talking in the camp beds and eat in the camp beds. It is the longest I have spent with all three of my children together in months.

Rowan sleeps. She looks different from how she looked when she arrived, when I watched her sleep and dream the first time. Perhaps it is not her, but my eyes, that are changed.