Undertow

by Natusch, Amber Lynn

  “Aesa,” he whispered, though not intentionally. His throat was dry and hoarse, not only from the induced coma but also from the smoke damage he had sustained on the boat and the intubation he'd received on the chopper. I reached for the water bottle I'd brought with me and slowly angled his bed up just enough for him to be able to sip some without feeling like he was drowning. Both of us knew all too well what that was like.

  “Try to drink this,” I encouraged, holding the bottle up to his mouth. He took a few small swigs to placate me before speaking again.

  “Aesa . . . your father . . . ” He fought hard to get the words out, clearly unaware of how long he'd been unconscious. His first thought was of my welfare, wanting to be the one to tell me the horrible news I had already received. Even as the tears rolled down my face, I managed a smile.

  “I know,” I whispered back, leaning my face in close to his. “Please don't worry about that now. I'm just so glad you're okay, that you made it.”

  “Robbie?”

  “He's fine. Brad too, but he's been sent to a special hospital for burn victims. They think he should make a full recovery once he's grafted and healed up.”

  “Andy?

  I shook my head in negation.

  “I'm sorry, Aesa. There was no saving your dad.”

  “I know,” I replied, choking on the words. “It's what he would have wanted. He wouldn't have wanted to survive if it meant losing his crew.”

  “A true captain to the end.”

  I could only nod in agreement, my voice failing me entirely.

  “What happened to me?” he asked, trying to look himself over even though blankets still covered the majority of his body.

  “I only know what Robbie told me and what I've seen medically, but you nearly bled to death from a leg wound. You nicked your femoral artery,” I said with a pause. “Robbie saved your life.”

  “I remember him holding me in the water and yelling something at me, but I kept fading in and out of awareness. After that . . . this is the next thing I remember. Seeing you.”

  “It's probably better that way,” I told him, my smile tight in an effort to fight back the tears that came instantly when I remembered what he had looked like that night—covered in blood and half-dead.

  “That bad, huh?” he joked, trying to smile against the healing lacerations and bruises on his face. The pain meds they'd given him didn't appear to be strong enough given the grimace that immediately followed. “Well, I guess the good news is that I have a personal physician to render the best care possible for me 24/7 once I get out of here.”

  “Which won't be for a while,” I countered, my doctor persona taking over in an instant.

  “Yes, ma'am,” he purred, reaching slowly for me. “Any chance you want to show me just how much you've missed me?” His words were playful, but underneath was a tone of seriousness that carried a heavy weight. As worried as I was for him when I saw him wheeled into the ER, I'm sure he was worried that he would never see me again before he lost consciousness, drifting off in the darkness of the Bering Sea. So much drama had bonded us so quickly that his sentiment flowed through me, calling to me to respond to his words before I had a chance to think. My lips drifted towards his and fell upon them softly, reassuring him that I was real and he was alive.

  When his intentions exceeded his body's limitations, I put an end to our kiss, pulling away from him as I gently laid a hand on his chest, encouraging him to lay back and rest.

  “I can't show you exactly how much just yet,” I said with a wink. “You'll need to get your strength up for that, I'm afraid. Until then, a kiss is all you can have. Doctor's orders.” He sighed, but did as I asked and lay back down against the mattress. “Are you hungry? Do you think you want to try to eat something?” I asked.

  “I'm a little tired,” he mumbled, his eyes closing somewhat involuntarily. “I think I might just rest for a bit. Will you stay?”

  “Of course,” I replied, pulling a chair up behind me so I could be closer to him. “They'll have to drag me out if they want me to go.”

  “Good,” he uttered quietly, taking my hand in his. “I'm not letting go.”

  28

  Decker's recovery went far more quickly than expected, but I wasn't surprised. The same fortitude that made him an amazing crabber pushed him through the pain of healing and rehab at an alarming pace. Only a week after he woke up, he was released from the hospital under the expressed understanding that he would be staying with me. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

  I was still in the hotel suite, which made for somewhat tight living quarters, but we easily made do. He was mobile, but still fatigued easily and spent a fair amount of time on the couch doing what leg exercises he could from a seated position. At night we shared a bed together, though it wasn't nearly as sexy as it sounded. His leg would still swell a bit after a long day of exercise and walking around, so I'd prop it up and do my best not to bump into it during the night. Sex was off the menu for the time being.

  Luckily for us, we found that just getting to spend time together was enough, learning more and more about one another as we co-habitated. Our bond had been quickly forged, so it seemed strange to learn some of the more trivial things about him after the fact, but they made me smile nonetheless. I learned that he loved the color green, had an odd fascination with the circus, and never ate anything deep fried because the smell alone was enough to turn his Bering-Sea-withstanding stomach. I in turn let him in on the little secret that I never wore red because it reminded me of blood (which was an irony he just couldn't wrap his head around), that I graduated first in my medical school class, and that I liked to stay up all night when the moon was full and listen to the world's reaction to it. Lunar cycles made people and animals behave strangely, as did many other things.

  I hated leaving him to go work my shifts at the ER, but he dismissed my resentment, citing that many a wounded man needed my help; I just wasn't allowed to fall in love with any of them and bring them home. He demanded a corner on that market, and I let him have it willingly.

  We spent our days like that at first, just learning the minutiae of each other while in non-life-threatening situations. I searched for apartments during my breaks at the hospital, hoping to find something that would accommodate us both easily. I wanted to surprise him with it so I could see his reaction. We hadn't discussed our plans at all beyond him getting well and me getting along better with my superiors in the ER. The slack I'd been cut had long since disappeared, and I needed to perform at the top of my game if I wanted to have any chance at saving face. I had my work cut out for me, indeed.

  Having just come home from the night shift, I was tired but elated, knowing that I'd found an amazing place for us to rent, and I couldn't wait to get inside to show him the listing. When I entered the suite, he was on the phone, a pen in his hand that he was using to quickly scribble information down onto the hotel notepad. I waited for him to finish, wanting his full attention for my announcement, but when I started to put the pieces of his one-sided conversation together, my enthusiasm quickly fell by the wayside.

  “When would you need me?” he said, his eyes still fixed on the paper before him. “Just this season, or . . . ?” I listened intently as he mumbled a few affirmative responses while the person on the other end fed him more important details about what I feared was going to happen.

  Decker was going back to the Bering Sea.

  “Okay,” he agreed, my heart sinking further into my stomach as he did. “I'll make arrangements. Talk to you soon.” He hung up and tossed his phone down onto the notepad he'd been so studiously writing on then looked up to me. I did my best to shield my feelings from him, hoping that, for once, my efforts would not be in vain.

  “Who was that?” I asked casually, hoping to maintain that tone throughout his explanation.

  “Robbie,” he replied tentatively. “He was asked to captain a boat—one of the smaller vessels in the fleet. The skipper is sick with p
rostate cancer. Doctors won't let him go out, so he asked Robbie to take over for him until he's well enough to return. Seems they need another deckhand too.”

  “Oh. When would you start?”

  “Opie season for starters, but they'll need me beyond that too. As long as Robbie is there, I would be there.”

  “That starts pretty soon,” I pointed out. “Are you sure you're up to it? I'm concerned your leg might be an issue.”

  “Robbie is going to put me on the hydraulics so I don't have to do too much heavy lifting or throwing, and it'll keep me from having to climb the stack.”

  “What about the ice? You know how heavy it builds up on the boats during Opie season!”

  “I'll help out with that, but ice removal shouldn't bother my leg much. It'll be okay, Aesa. Please don't worry.”

  Don't worry, I thought to myself, wondering how he could even begin to say that to me.

  “I have to, Decker. You're not talking to some girl who knows nothing about the trade. You're talking to me, someone who grew up in it. I know what happens on those boats to people not at one hundred percent. It's not good.”

  “And that won't be me,” he protested, standing cautiously before coming toward me. His limp was barely visible. “Robbie is setting me up in the best possible way to keep me safe, and I'm getting stronger every day.”

  “But that's not good enough for a crab boat and you know it. As for Robbie, you're going to trust someone dumb enough to captain a crab boat with a broken arm?”

  “Listen,” he said softly, running his hand down the side of my face. “You're worried; I understand that. But I need you to understand that this is a demon I need to face. I love this job, Aesa, and I won't let what happened scare me away from it. I find peace out there. I know you can't make sense of that, but I do. I'm a bit uneasy about doing this, but I know it needs to be done, and I do trust Robbie. He's been fishing for ten years now. I've watched your father teach him everything he could ever need to know to run a boat. He's solid as a skipper, Aesa. We're going to be fine.”

  I wanted to believe his words—truly, I did—but I couldn't, and my heart, which had sunk into the depths of my abdomen, broke a little before I had time to reinforce it as I'd always done. For that fleeting moment, my face showed the true sorrow I felt, then I forced a smile, feigning bravery and support. He leaned in and kissed me softly for my efforts.

  “I think you need this too, Aesa,” he continued, speaking softly against my lips. “You need to see that not all is lost when it seems that way. Your life is not all about loss.”

  His words were sweet and lulling, but they fell on deaf ears. What I needed was to get as far away as possible from the inevitable hurt that was coming my way, and I needed to do it quickly. Images of his unconscious and bloodied body ran through my mind, immediately followed by ones of me standing before his gravestone. His and all the others. I would not sit around idly and wait for that to be my reality. I could not, and I couldn't believe he was all but asking me to.

  “Not all of it,” I whispered back, our lips still lightly touching. My words were true enough; my life was not, and would not be, all about loss. Not if I had a say in it.

  He kissed me once again before making his way into the tiny kitchen to find something to eat. Just like that, the matter had been solved, or at least it had for him. My mind, on the other hand, was already organizing a plan.

  “What do you want to do today?” he asked, taking a sip directly out of the orange juice container.

  “I'm really beat,” I lied, moving toward the bedroom. “I need to sleep until I can't bear to lie down anymore, and then I have some research to do tonight. We could watch a movie or something, but I'll need to be on the computer while we do that. Is that okay?”

  “Sounds fine to me,” he agreed, leaning back into the refrigerator.

  “Good. I'm going to go lie down now.”

  Before he could add anything else to our conversation, I walked into the bedroom and shut the door, changing out of my scrubs quickly and slipping into my pajamas. Instead of sleeping though, all I could do was think of all the ways I could protect myself from further pain. I knew that I loved Decker, even I couldn't deny that, but it wasn't enough to override the future I knew I would have with him when he returned to the sea. Too much had happened for me to be able to pretty that up in my mind as I had when we first came together. With that unsettling future as fuel, I devised a plan that I knew could work. I had little time to pull it off, but conveniently, many pieces of the puzzle were already in place. All I needed to do was make a few phone calls.

  Being the head of my class in med school had many perks, as did having stellar references from the Chief of Emergency Medicine at Grant Medical Center, one of the largest emergency medicine departments in the country. I had applied to do my second year residency at several schools and was accepted by them all. One in particular was disappointed when I opted to come back to Alaska. Transferring wouldn't be easy, but given the tension between Dr. Lewis and me, combined with my recent tragedy, I figured there would be room for extenuating circumstances to sway the powers that be.

  Boston wasn't an ideal location, but it was just about as far away from the Bering Sea as I could get, and Mass General had an excellent reputation. I picked up my phone off of the nightstand beside me and hurriedly sent an email to my contact there, letting him know that I would be interested in revisiting my application for residency.

  Five minutes later, he confirmed that the necessary paperwork would be in the mail the next day.

  * * *

  Decker

  Watching her walk into our bedroom hit me in the strangest way. It was like watching my sister walk out of the visiting room in prison for the last time, never to return again. There was an air about her that just didn't seem right, and I just couldn't shake the physical response it drew from me. My heart sank, encouraging my mind to go down a road that I didn't want to travel. But it was nearly impossible not to. I'd seen that look in Shannon's eyes the day she left me behind in prison—the same one that Aesa had just given me when she heard I was heading back out to sea. To her credit, she recovered quickly. But not quickly enough. That momentary warning set my system on high alert, a reaction I thought I had long ago overcome. It turned out that Aesa wasn't the only one with knee-jerk reactions to things in her past. I was just less aware that mine were still present.

  What I quickly reminded myself of was that Shannon had chosen to remain damaged goods. Aesa had recently made every attempt she could to mend her broken past and move beyond it. It was apparent that she was far from succeeding on that front so early in her battle, but she was a fighter by nature. If she decided to continue the war, she would stand her ground till the end.

  I just needed to remind her of why she wanted to choose that path.

  So that is what I did for the remaining days before I was to return to the fleet and sail off in search of Opilio crab with Robbie and crew. Every time I felt her distancing herself from me, I gently reminded her that her past did not have to dictate her future. Her reaction was always to involuntarily close her eyes and take a deep breath, visualizing something that I never bothered to ask about, but there was no need. The second her eyes opened, she was back, looking up at me the way she had that night on the dock. The night she saw that she could have something more than pain in her life—she could have me.

  But would that knowledge be enough for her in my absence? Could she hold on to that and allow it to override the downward spiral that beckoned her—the undertow that threatened to drag her down? Those were the questions that haunted me at night as I watched her sleep, the tension in her face more plainly visible. Her subconscious battles waged on in the late hours, making me doubt the possibilities.

  29

  Aesa

  “How was your shift?” Decker asked as I walked in the door, tossing my keys casually onto the mail pile on the counter. When I saw the letter at the top of it, my heart stopped sudden
ly. I tried my best not to snatch it up and hide it away, but I knew he'd seen it. What I didn't know was if he had paid any attention to what it was and where it was from.

  “Messy, but good.”

  “Sounds ominous,” he said with a smile, pushing himself up off of the couch. “Something came for you today—something important. I had to sign for it.” He indicated the large manila envelope in question, his expression unwavering. “Do you know what it is?”

  I looked back down at it, knowing full well that it contained a contract from Mass General, the contract to my new life.

  “I'm not certain, but I'm guessing it's maybe a headhunting package—for when I'm finished with my residency. I don't know why else they would have sent something so official.”

  “There's a rather simple way to find out,” he countered curiously.

  “Agreed, but this is our last twenty-four hours together, Decker. I don't really feel like wading through the mail. I'd rather go out, or stay in, or do anything that involves you.” I walked toward him, a seductive smile tugging at my lips along the way. “But, if you really want me to, I could sit down and open the mail, maybe pay some bills, return some emails, clean the room. It's your call.”

  I leaned against him, inhaling him deeply, and I felt his body tense instantly. We hadn't been together since he was discharged from the hospital, partly because his injuries were still severe enough not to warrant any excess stress, but also because I just couldn't. By the time he was well enough to attempt it, I was doing my best to distance myself from him emotionally. I needed to in order to do what was in our collective best interest. But in that moment, I had no other cards to play. The second I opened that envelope from Mass General, I was busted.