Undertow

by Natusch, Amber Lynn

  “You need to take some ibuprofen now so that it won't be too bad in a couple of hours when you have to be up and around.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I laughed, thinking that he was probably spot on with his recommendations. Delayed onset muscle soreness was only going to worsen over the next twelve or more hours. Cutting it off at the pass seemed a wise move indeed.

  “You're welcome. I'll put your bill in the mail.”

  I continued to laugh at him as I rested my head back against the chair, my eyes closing instinctively. As the darkness drowned me out, I muttered something under my breath.

  “You can collect from me later,” I whispered before sleep overtook me. What seemed like only moments later, I was happily dreaming of my father and mother, together again, remembering a time before I was too jaded to see anything but the negative in things—before I fled from my reality. The warm sensation that dream brought over me felt like being encased in a blanket and held by the one who loved you most. It lingered most beautifully until I woke up.

  8

  Decker

  “You can collect from me later,” she mumbled before succumbing to sleep.

  I couldn't help but watch her, curled up in the chair facing me. Everything about her was captivating. Her wavy auburn hair hung in the most disheveled way, the loose curls covering part of her face. It was hard to not push them aside so I could maintain a clear view. She made it hard to focus on the task at hand, but eventually I was able to pry my eyes from her lightly freckled face and stare out at the relative calm that stretched for miles before us.

  The calm before the storm. That's what Aesa's controlled demeanor reminded me of: a placid façade belying a torment of emotions.

  Observing her was a study in contradictions. Her heritage gave her a strength that shined through, allowing her to carry out tasks most men weren't capable of, though twice her size. She was driven, committed, and unshakable. Knowing that about her, it made me question how someone so outwardly tough could be so internally broken. After talking with her that night, it was painfully obvious that she was.

  I knew because I saw in her what I once recognized in myself.

  But she hadn't yet found peace with her demons as I had, and my desire to help her in that quest was nearly all-consuming. My need to do a lot of things for her—to her—was nearly all-consuming as well. I gripped the wheel tighter, trying to clear my mind. She made it hard to think.

  In an effort to distract myself, I analyzed her words that night, especially those regarding her relationship with her father. I just couldn't make sense of them. She harbored so much contempt for him, and, though I didn't know why, I had never seen any indication of similar feelings on his end. It was hard to imagine why she had walked away from a man that loved and respected her as much as he appeared to.

  The day he received the call from her about her return to Alaska, I'd never seen him so pleased. He was almost jovial. Robbie mentioned to me that he hadn't seen her for years, nor had her father. He never said why that was, but it was clear that something had occurred that had changed everything for Aesa and her father. Robbie appeared to know what it was, but he was giving nothing away. He respected the skipper too much for that.

  When the captain collected the crew to let us know that she would be coming with us, he nearly beamed when he added the fact that we would have our very own on-board physician: his daughter, the doctor. Those words together made him smile, something I hadn't ever seen him do.

  But seeing them together demonstrated the deep rift that ran between them. It didn't require a lot of observation to notice it. The tension in their relationship was not only visible but also palpable in the air around them. It was beyond the awkwardness a person exhibits around someone they haven't seen in a long time. It was as if their past had created a physical wedge between them. Even though it was none of my business, I couldn't help but sit there in the darkness and speculate as to what had caused it.

  Her words led me to believe that he had let her down. I knew what it was like to be on both ends of that. Disappointing the ones you love is a heart-wrenching thing. The constant battle that plays across their faces when they try to look at you is more punishment than their hateful sentiments. But being disappointed was just as bad. The betrayal you feel when someone you love turns on you is unmatched. For me, it proved an affront that wasn't easily forgiven, and was never forgotten.

  I found escape from both at sea, spending the past couple of years learning to move beyond who I had been and focus on who I wanted to be. The isolation that being a fisherman provided was exactly what I needed. Maybe a week or two at sea was just what she needed too.

  My mind wandered on, time becoming irrelevant as I sat and stared at the dark waters before me and thought about the assumed similarities between my past and her present. When footsteps echoed up the narrow stairway, I brought my attention back to where it belonged.

  “Is it time to switch already, Andy?” I called, not turning to see him as he approached.

  “Andy's passed out,” Damon replied. “I figured since I was already up I'd do his watch.”

  I turned to find Damon standing in the middle of the wheelhouse, eyeing Aesa's sleeping form a little too tightly for my liking.

  “Sounds good,” I said casually, getting up from my post. “I'm going to take her downstairs. If she stays here, she's going to wake up with one hell of a kink in her neck.”

  “She'll be fine,” he countered, settling himself into the captain's chair like a predator—the predator I knew he was.

  “She has to be on deck tomorrow. She's already pretty beaten up,” I said, moving toward her. “We can't afford to have someone doggin' it with that storm headed our way.” I scooped her up gently in my arms and made my way toward the staircase.

  “Don't get any funny ideas about her,” he drawled from behind me. His words made my hair stand on end. Turning my attention back to him, I found his eyes pinned on me in an almost menacing way.

  “You either,” I warned, my voice low and commanding.

  With that, I disappeared as quickly as I could while keeping her relatively still in my arms. I needed to get her away from him. More importantly, I needed to keep him away from her. Damon was bad news, and I was the only one who knew just how bad.

  She shifted slightly as I carried her briskly down the hall to her bedroom, sneaking her in and placing her in her bed. I brought the blankets up under her chin, tucking them in around her lightly. Her unruly waves insisted on falling in her face, and, that time, I couldn't resist the urge to sweep them off her cheek, nestling them delicately behind her ear.

  My hand lingered longer than it should have, and I scolded myself, knowing that I needed to go. But I couldn't. Instead, I sat gingerly on the edge of her bed and thought about what haunted her while I feared for her, knowing what hunted her. I would not allow Damon near her, even if that meant I had to stand watch over her twenty-four hours a day. Her spirit was already broken. Any contact with him would make that damage irreparable.

  9

  Aesa

  A knock on my door woke me out of a disorientingly deep sleep. I felt like I hadn't been asleep long enough to be forced awake, but that was the life of a fisherman, and, since that's what I had recently become, it was now my life too, though only for a short time.

  “I'm coming,” I groaned, dragging my protesting body from the bed. The soreness further drove my objections to being upright, but there was something else, something deeper than that, that begged me to return to the comfort of bed—the feeling I had while I slept. There was a peace that I hadn't known for a long while, and I wanted it back fiercely.

  When I hauled the door to my room open, my father stood there with a full coffee mug in hand, extending it toward me once I eyed it.

  “You're in for another long day, Aesa. I thought you could use this.”

  “I could use another day of sleep,” I moaned under my breath.

  “As could we all, but that
is not in the cards for any of us. The crew should be on deck in twenty minutes. Get yourself ready and be sure to eat well. There won't be much time for that later,” he informed me, not making me any more motivated than I already was, which was not at all.

  “Got it,” I said, taking the mug from his hand with a tight smile. “Twenty minutes.”

  “Have you checked on Robbie today?” he asked when I turned away to dismiss him.

  “No,” I replied, my heart beginning to race. “I was so tired last night; I totally forgot. I'll do that now.” I slammed the coffee I didn't want to drink down on my dresser and pushed past my father down the hall to Robbie's room. He didn't answer when I knocked, so I let myself in, hoping his condition would be an improvement over what I had observed the day before.

  The bedding rustled as he moved away from the light of the hall that seeped in around my figure.

  “Robbie? Robbie, how are you feeling?”

  He said nothing at first, and it concerned me. I moved to the bed and rolled him over to face me so I could better assess the situation. I was met with swearing from a grumpy sailor.

  “Jesus Christ, Ice. You think you could kill the lights a bit in here,” he groused, trying to roll back away from me. “And for fuck's sake, could you go easy on the ribs when you're grabbing at me?” His voice sounded stronger and his breathing more clear as he cussed me out for my lapse in judgment. He was on the mend for sure.

  “Stay still a minute,” I ordered, putting the back of my hand to his head. It felt significantly cooler than it had when last I'd checked. “Are you still coughing?” I asked.

  “Does it sound like I am?”

  “Take a deep breath.”

  “How about you take a hike, crazy lady? I'm fine. I told you I'd be fine, and I will be—as long as I can keep you away from me,” he told me, playfully pushing me to the edge of his bed. “Go do my job for me, would you? And don't make me look bad.”

  His act was almost convincing until he turned to crack a childlike grin at me, overly pleased with his performance.

  “I never bought any of that, you know?” I quipped, standing to leave.

  “I had you going for a little bit.”

  “Not even a second.” I walked toward the door, stopping just short of the exit. “Now, I want you to drink lots of water today and try to eat something. And take a shower too. You stink.”

  The wattage on his smile increased tenfold.

  “Ha! Says the girl who reeks of crab and sea water right now.”

  “I'm a fisherman, Robbie. What did you expect?”

  His laughter trailed me into the hall before I closed his door. Robbie was going to be fine; the worst of his illness had passed. Unfortunately for me, he still wasn't well enough to return to work, leaving me with fifteen minutes to get above deck and help the crew prepare for the storm of the century. Remembering what Decker had told me about my father's stress made me feel guilty about my sullen behavior toward him that morning. After getting dressed quickly and stuffing my face with anything and everything I could find, I filled a thermos with coffee for my father and ran up the stairs to the wheelhouse, nearly tripping on my way.

  “Here, Dad,” I said, thrusting the shiny metal container at him. “I figured you could use this.” I hesitated slightly, unsure that what I was about to say would be welcomed or seen as a statement questioning his abilities as a captain. “I know this storm has you worried. I just want you to know that the guys all trust you. I trust you too.”

  His wide eyes turned to me, his mouth unmoving. The shock at my words was discernible in his expression, but, before I allowed my sentiments to sink in enough for him to respond, I walked away, not wanting to ruin the almost-tender moment we had just had. I carried the feeling that I had done something positive for our relationship with me on deck, the sense of inner warmth it gave me fueling me through the menial and laborious tasks I was given there.

  As I did my best to keep up, I fought the urge to seek out Decker and tell him of my most recent interaction with my father. I'd never felt the need to share something with another more in my life. He clearly knew how to read people, a gift that I often possessed, though I seemed inept at applying it to my own family. Decker didn't appear to have that deficiency. He understood my father in a way that I almost envied. Maybe if he hadn't been the ruin of my childhood, I would have put more time and interest into understanding him too.

  * * *

  Time was virtually irrelevant on a fishing vessel. Light or dark didn't matter. All they did was give you some skewed sense of whether it was night or day. Beyond that, they did nothing to help you wrap your head around exactly what day it was or how long you'd been working. I realized just how similar crabbing was to my ER experiences. Hours passed without notice, the job at hand requiring all your attention. Had we not had clocks on the wall, or watches on our wrists, we would have been in the same situation as the crabbers.

  I looked up to find an eerie, starless sky hovering over us while we pushed on, preparing to run from the storm that had already started to show us her strength. The wind continued to rock the ship with fervor while the freezing rain pelted our faces, making our jobs increasingly difficult and dangerous. The severity of the storm had once again been upgraded, and it continued to head right toward us, picking up speed as it did. Quota to fill or not, time was running out. We needed to abandon the grounds.

  While the boat jogged toward the final string of pots, trying its best to keep its nose pointed into the crashing waves, my father's voice came over the intercom. He informed us that we would be taking our dinner break shortly, and that we needed to make it brief. Once he finished giving his orders, Decker approached me, stepping away from his post in front of the hydraulic station momentarily, to tell me to head on in and get food together for the boys. Though he was kind enough not to point it out, I had been dragging for a long time and was becoming a liability. He knew I wasn't going to make it much longer and gave me the option to leave the deck with my dignity and my life intact. I accepted the gesture gratefully and scurried off the deck with the spray from the crashing waves assaulting my face.

  Stripping off my layers of raingear and heavy clothes, I made my way to the galley to find ingredients I could assemble quickly, knowing that the boys and I needed to head right back outside after dinner to finish buttoning everything up before we tucked tail and ran from nature's fury. Once I acquired what I needed, stumbling about the kitchen as the boat rocked and rolled with the growing waves, I went about preparing the food. I needed to get the crew fed in record time and give them the energy they needed to tie down the stack safely. It was obvious that I wasn't the only one on deck who was dragging.

  I threw all the leftovers I could find into the microwave to warm while I held a large pot of soup to the stove and stirred it. The rhythmic motion soothed my nerves, but even as it did, I could feel the waves becoming increasingly erratic, battering the hull that separated me from an icy cold, watery death. It was a disturbing thought, and I did my best not to dwell on it. As my mind struggled to focus on something else, a voice startled me.

  “So, Aesa, tell me something,” Damon purred as he stalked around behind me in the kitchen. I immediately felt like prey to a predator. “Did your father bring you on this boat to torture us all? Because this feels like torture.” His voice moved nearer to me while I continued to stir the soup on the stove. But my focus wasn't on that task; I needed to figure a way out of the situation, and quickly. Suddenly, the weather outside seemed far less important.

  I had known Damon was trouble the moment I saw him, and his subsequent attitude had done nothing but confirm that initial perception. The boys didn't seem to notice it, but I knew his kind: women haters, the lowest of the low. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd done his time for sexual assault charges. He reeked of them.

  “I wouldn't imagine that's why he did it, Damon. He seemed to want to spend time with me. I don't think he gives two shits about what my p
resence does to you, but I know what he will care about. If you lay one hand on me, he'll toss you into the Bering Sea himself. I doubt anyone would miss you much. You don't seem like the friends-and-family sort to me.”

  “Feisty. They always start that way,” he said, his voice sounding distant and lost in memories. It only further confirmed my suspicions. “But, in the end, they always break.”

  He came around to my left side, blocking any chance I had to easily walk away.

  “What do you want, Damon?” I asked, doing my best to sound irritated and not scared. The truth was he was pretty terrifying, and I wanted to get away from him at any cost, a hard thing to do while trapped on a boat.

  Instead of answering, he pulled a long chef's knife from the drawer beside me and began playing with it, resting his finger against the tip while he twirled it slowly, staring eerily at the reflective metal. I almost screamed for help, but I knew that no one would likely hear me over the growing weather outside. I also knew that, if I did scream, it might motivate him to become violent. We weren't to that point yet, and I had no intention of forcing his hand.

  “Right now?” he asked, feigning surprise at my question. “Right now, I don't want anything.” He leaned in closer to me, pressing me nearer to the hot element behind me. “I just want you to know that you're on my radar.”

  The knife he held was far closer to my face than I was comfortable with, even though he seemed far more interested in playing with it than using it on me. But when he pried his eyes off of it and pinned them on me, every hair on my body stood at attention. I had been wrong about him. He was far worse than I ever imagined.

  Unable to pretend he wasn't scaring the shit out of me, I closed my eyes, wanting to block out his image, however futile that act would be. I just couldn't stand staring him down any longer. Thankfully for me, I didn't have to.

  I heard footsteps running down the stairs and opened my eyes in time to see Decker lunge at Damon, snatching his knife-wielding arm upward and bending his wrist into an impossible angle until he dropped the would-be weapon. The clanging sound it made seemed to echo off the walls for an eternity. But it was soon drowned out by their fighting. Decker had Damon pinned against the far wall, his forearm pressed against his throat. Damon struggled to pry himself free, but he was smaller and unable to gain leverage against Decker.