The Raft

by S.A. Bodeen

  A small square mirror.

  Signaling maybe?

  Only if you knew Morse code. I hoped Max did.

  As daybreak brightened the sky, I held up the mirror and looked at myself. The light blue bags under my eyes startled me a little, as did the glittery diamond in my nose. I’d forgotten about that. I swiped crusty stuff out of my eyes, then smiled wide and fake. Even in the middle of the ocean, my first thought was that I wanted to brush my teeth. Less than a day and they were already gross.

  I put the mirror away and moved on to the next item.

  A flashlight and some extra batteries.

  I switched on the flashlight.

  At least we wouldn’t be completely in the dark anymore. Just knowing we had a flashlight, the ability to make the dark go way, made me feel a little better.

  I switched it off.

  A sponge.

  No clue what that was for.

  Seasick tablets.

  Um, a little late.

  There was a small first aid kit as well, with some gauze and bandages and a couple packs of Tylenol. My head was killing me, but I figured the Tylenol would come back up as soon as I swallowed them.

  That was it. No food or water.

  I zipped the bag back up and threw it at the side of the raft. Apparently, this kit was meant to tide you over while the Coast Guard was on the way, long before you got hungry or thirsty. How stupid to make a survival kit that didn’t actually help you survive.

  I glared at the kit for a moment, then sighed and reached for it once more.

  Maybe I’d missed something.

  Max stirred then, moaning and rolling over. A nasty gash ran from the outer edge of one eyebrow up his forehead.

  I winced.

  “Are you okay?” I waited a moment. “Max?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t stand looking at that wound any longer and reached for the first aid kit. I pulled out a bandage and dabbed gently at his injury, wishing I had something to clean it with. “Thanks for getting me in the raft.” I stopped what I was doing. “I thought I was going to die.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “But I didn’t. Drown, I mean. We’re in the raft. We’re safe.”

  Swallowing the for now at the end of the sentence, I continued cleaning his forehead. I stuck on the adhesive bandage, and although it ended up slightly crooked, it seemed secure. “Not perfect, but it’ll work.”

  I slid down and crossed my arms, leaning back on the side of the raft. My wet clothes were almost unbearable, and my teeth started to chatter.

  I also had to pee. Bad.

  sixteen

  I kept hoping for the sun to come out and warm things up. Warm me up. “Otherwise we’ll have to add hypothermia to the list.”

  Why was I talking to Max? He couldn’t hear me.

  So I turned to the left and answered myself. “What list?”

  Turning back to the right I answered, “Our list of issues.”

  “Like wet clothes?”

  “And no food.”

  “No water,” I added, looking around where there was nothing but water. “Well, no fresh water.” Hearing the list out loud made it all real and made me worry.

  I looked at his feet. “And one shoe. You only have one shoe.”

  Then I pointed at my bare feet. “One shoe is better than none.”

  I sighed.

  Part of me didn’t want him to wake up. He’d been so upset about Larry when the plane went down. I didn’t know Max at all. I had no idea what he was going to do when he woke up. He was the adult in the situation. Whatever kind of person he turned out to be, I hoped he would have a plan.

  We drifted for a while, and I didn’t say anything else out loud. The joyless gray of the sky blended with the bleak darkness of the water. But I didn’t feel as alone as I had in the dark.

  And there was hope inside me. Hope that we would be found soon. Being cold and tired and hungry wasn’t going to erase the big picture. The big obstacle was getting rescued and I harbored hope that help was on the way.

  Although I tried to think about other things, good things, things to keep me distracted, it became impossible to ignore my bladder.

  For the first time, I was glad Max wasn’t awake.

  I did not want to put my legs—or any part of me—back in the sea. On my belly, I slid my bottom half over the edge. My legs were straight out, not in the water, and I managed to get my shorts and undies down far enough so they wouldn’t get wet. Well, they were damp from the rain and seawater already. I didn’t want to add pee to the list.

  Emptying my bladder felt so good, I nearly cried with relief.

  When I finished, I kind of splashed myself clean, let myself dry a bit in the breeze.

  I had to smile, thinking of what a view some plane overhead would have had. I pulled my bottoms back up.

  Later, the rain tapered off and the wind became a light breeze as the clouds finally broke. The sudden burst of warm sunshine spread over my exposed skin. My smile was automatic and genuine.

  There were a few inches of water in the raft, which I was sick of sitting in. I wondered whether I should bail. Then I remembered the yellow cup and unzipped the Coastal Commander. Was it a bailer?

  I stuck the cup into the water around me and scooped some up. Seemed like a bailer to me. After working for a while, I managed to reduce the water in the raft by quite a bit, so that the sun could actually dry most of it.

  The Coastal Commander had redeemed itself slightly.

  I wondered if Max would get sick, sitting in wet clothes with the head wound. I knew I couldn’t sit in my wet clothes all day. Somehow I needed to try to dry them. Max’s too. Scooting over to him on my butt, I undid his tie, set it aside, and then unbuttoned his white shirt.

  After that, I had to pause. How strange to be undressing him. Maybe I shouldn’t. I mean, he probably wouldn’t have done the same to me. Although that was different, wasn’t it?

  I shook my head to clear it, tried to take on the mental tone of a caregiver. I was just trying to help him, because he might really be injured. And might be worse off if he sat there in wet clothes. And I would feel terrible if I could do something, anything, and didn’t. So I grabbed hold of his shirt and pulled it off him.

  His T-shirt was thicker and wetter and harder to get off, but I pulled it over his head. His chest was tan and muscular, and something silver hung from a black cord around his neck.

  “Max?

  Max!”

  He didn’t answer.

  I reached out and held it in my hand, then glanced up at his face. I hadn’t really noticed before, but he was handsome. Even unshaven and asleep. I shook his shoulder a little. His eyes stayed closed and he didn’t budge.

  The silver at the end of the cord was oblong, with a swirly pattern of different blacks etched into the surface on one side. Something so familiar about it. Holding it in my hand, my glance rested on my thumb and I realized what the pattern was.

  A thumbprint in the silver.

  His own?

  I pressed the silver thumbprint up against my own. They were very close in size.

  Max’s hands were considerably larger than mine, even though he wasn’t that big a man. The print couldn’t belong to him.

  So whose was it?

  A girlfriend’s?

  I wanted to know more, but he obviously wasn’t talking at the moment. I let the thumbprint drop back against his chest.

  A ragged scar ran down the length of his side. I wondered how he got it and whether he would tell me when he woke up. He seemed like the type to not want to tell stories about scars, like some people did.

  He seemed like the type to not want to tell any stories at all.

  I backed off with the clothes, tossing the T-shirt to a corner of the raft, then holding up the button-down so the wind could blow it around, drying the thin material fairly quickly. I put that back on him, which wasn’t easy, but I felt a sense of satisfaction when I
finished.

  Then I took off my hoodie and tried the same drying trick. But the material was so thick that even after my arms got tired of holding the thing up, it wasn’t near to being dry. I knew I should try to dry my camisole, since it was next to my skin.

  I hesitated for a moment or two. Then, tired of being clammy, I turned my back to Max and pulled my camisole over my head, then held it up in the wind, trying not to think about the fact I was naked from the waist up in a raft with a man I didn’t know.

  My camisole was cotton and dried pretty quickly. The cloth felt so warm when I put it on, which made my wet Bermuda shorts feel even worse. I realized they would dry just as fast, if not faster, so, glancing at Max to make sure his eyes were still shut, I slipped those off as well. I told myself that having dry pants would be worth the few moments of embarrassment. And my pink underwear actually looked like—and covered more than—my bikini bottoms anyway, so it was all relative.

  When my pants were dry and I put them back on, I turned around and asked him what had been on my mind for a while. “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

  No answer, as expected.

  So I replied, “Of course they are.”

  Funny, it didn’t make me feel any better.

  I tried to think of something that would.

  “People have survived for weeks in rafts. In way worse situations than this.” One in particular came to mind.

  Whenever we were down to no new DVDs to watch on Midway, I was forced to watch some older movies. One was about the USS Indianapolis, which, in 1945, was on a secret mission to the Mariana Islands to deliver components for the atom bomb that got dropped on Hiroshima a week later. The ship was on the way back to the Philippines when it got torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, and the massive ship went down in twelve minutes.

  Strange, that the G-1 had almost taken longer to sink below the waves than a huge ship like that.

  The survivors of the shipwreck were stuck out in the ocean with no lifeboats. Some were in life jackets, but some were only in what they had on. Some had jumped in the ocean wearing nothing but underwear.

  And the mission was so secret that no one knew where they were, so no one knew they were missing. For four days and five nights, the crew, what was left of it, drifted in the ocean. A plane accidentally spotted the oil slick and the survivors were finally rescued. There were almost nine hundred to start, and only a little over three hundred survived the time in the water.

  “See,” I said out loud. “That was way worse.”

  But it was hard for me to think of anything worse than being in a raft in the middle of the ocean with no food or water, not knowing whether anyone would ever find us. Now that I had begun thinking about the movie, I couldn’t stop.

  Men dying from dehydration, going crazy. Sharks attacking.

  A shudder ran through my body.

  Living on Midway, I didn’t like to think about sharks. But I was still fascinated by them.

  Most people on the mainland seemed to think great white sharks were the worst, but I’d seen tiger sharks in action. Tiger sharks seemed to be killing machines, reacting only on instinct, which was to kill and eat, not necessarily in that order. They had the nickname “garbage can of the sea” because they’d eat anything. Including people. On Midway, women didn’t even go in the water during their periods because the scent of blood might draw sharks. During albatross nesting season, when the young albatross were learning to fly off on their own, the waters around Midway attracted lots of tigers.

  The young albatross touched down in the water when they got tired. Some of them didn’t understand they had to fold in their wings, because once their wings got wet, they couldn’t fly. So the stupid ones held their wings out as they sat in the water, but they weren’t strong enough to keep them up for long, so of course they drooped until they touched the water and the feathers got wet.

  Then the young birds couldn’t take off.

  And they were doomed.

  The tiger sharks knew exactly when this would happen and, like clockwork, they showed up every late June, early July for their fill of albatross Happy Meals.

  I’d been out in a boat with my dad one day when we saw a young albatross floating out in the lagoon. He started to motor toward it when all of a sudden a two-foot-wide gaping mouth shot up and devoured the bird in one bite, then disappeared below.

  What scared me the most was that there was no warning, like in the movies, where you get the music and the fin in the water and then the strike. In reality, with the tigers, there was simply a dark shape in the water, a glimpse of that shadow, shiny gray skin, and then instant death.

  So I had no time for people talking about great whites. Tigers are the true monsters of the sea. And I did not relish having a mere inch or so of inflated rubber between me and them.

  I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.

  No such luck.

  seventeen

  By that evening, with the help of the sun and the warm breeze, I felt a little drier, except that my clothes were stiff from the salt water. But it beat sitting there in wet ones all night. I had to accept we weren’t getting rescued that day. My skin stung from all the salt that had dried on it. I tried to think about other things. It would help if I had someone to talk to.

  But Max was still sleeping.

  I wanted him to wake up. I felt alone again, too alone.

  “Max?”

  He didn’t move.

  “Max. Max!”

  Nothing.

  Sliding over to him, I grabbed his arm, shaking it a bit. He didn’t stir.

  “Max.” I actually slapped his cheek lightly, and then laid my hand against it. His warm skin was sandpapery with whiskers and I let my hand linger there a moment as I said his name again, and slid my trembling fingers down and around his neck until I felt his pulse.

  I breathed out and leaned back.

  I was tired too, and I hadn’t even hit my head. I’d read that sometimes your body knew when you needed rest and kept you asleep. Well, actually, that was more like a coma. But I didn’t think Max was in a coma.

  I hoped not anyway.

  Folding up my hoodie, I placed it on his lap, and laid my head down, hoping he wouldn’t mind. The position was comfortable … almost comforting.

  I closed my eyes.

  My stomach growled, so empty it almost hurt. My throat was dry when I swallowed, but I tried to push the discomfort away. Finally the rhythm of the waves, gentle and calm, put me to sleep.

  I awoke to a sliver of moon and a multitude of stars overhead, and a warm breeze. Still hungry and thirsty, I also noticed another discomfort: My shorts were cool and damp again. Was the raft leaking?

  eighteen

  My hands almost completely submerged in the cool water as I felt around the bottom of the raft. There was at least an inch of water, maybe more. But it didn’t seem to be getting wetter.

  Had I been asleep that long?

  Maybe it had rained.

  But my shirt was still dry. I felt around until I found the bailer, and then scooped until I could barely feel any water in the bottom.

  “Max?”

  He didn’t answer. Quickly I laid my fingers on his neck, found his pulse. Was it fainter than before?

  I didn’t think he was supposed to sleep that long if he had a concussion. I needed to wake him up.

  With both hands on his shoulders, I shook him. “Max!” He didn’t stir. “Wake up! Come on.”

  I felt again for a pulse.

  Faint. Oh so faint.

  Curling myself up, I laid my head down in his lap, my eyes scrunched, and, even though I was parched and famished, tried to sleep.

  The sun woke me up, bright and hot, with not a cloud in sight.

  I licked my lips. They were so dry, they burned.

  Only then did I realize our new enemy.

  We were already thirsty, but the sun and heat would only make us more so. Hunger sucked too, but people lasted a lot longer
without food than they did without water. I tried to remember the movie about the Indianapolis survivors, how long they had lasted without water.

  I tried to tell myself they had it way worse than we did.

  We had a raft.

  They had been stuck in only life vests, floating defenseless in the ocean. I would not have lasted even a day like that. I would have lost my mind imagining what was there beneath me as I floated.

  But then, they had also had each other.

  I glanced over at Max. Even unconscious, he was still there. I could do this, as long as I wasn’t alone.

  I reached forward to check his pulse again, but then my hand froze in midair, stopping before it reached his neck.

  There was no reason to check his pulse.

  Max was fine. Completely fine. He was just asleep.

  He’d been through a lot and he’d been injured and he needed to sleep. And I was going to let him. Almost by itself, my hand reached out and rested on his neck. Was that a pulse? Yes. Yes, I felt it. A very faint drumming, but it was there. It was.

  He’d fallen over a little, and something poked out from behind him. I pulled on it. His ditty bag. I’d forgotten about it ever since he’d shoved it behind him. I held it in my lap for a moment, then squeezed, feeling the shapes inside. Beneath my touch plastic rustled, and something felt like a book. Almost involuntarily, my hands caressed the bag for a moment.

  I glanced at Max, then back to the bag.

  No, I wasn’t opening it.

  The bag belonged to him. He’d have to open it. Besides, he would probably be pretty pissed when he woke up and saw I’d gone through it, so I pushed it back behind him, where I’d found it.

  There was more water in the bottom of the raft again, and I bailed, trying to keep us dry. I wanted Max to wake up, to talk to me, to talk to me about anything. I didn’t care what. Even sharks would have been an acceptable topic at that point.

  “Did you know sharks are the only fish that blink with both eyes?”