by LK Collins
“Are you sure?” he looks at me and I nod, giving him the green light.
“Yeah, being here today has been great. And I want to make a difference; I don’t want other families to suffer like we have. If we can get our team out there, then I want to be a part of it.”
“Nixon, you feel the same?” he questions me.
“She brought it up last night, and I guess I can’t argue. This is where she belongs; this is what makes her happy.”
“Okay, I’ll reactivate you both starting tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you!” she exclaims and gives him a hug. I stand and shake his hand before he walks out. Looking down at Cam, she kisses me. “Thank you, baby. I promise you won’t regret this.”
Chapter 31
Cameron
Suiting up for my first shift back feels so good. Inside, I can feel Conner guiding me. The four of us are all talking and laughing the way it’s meant to be. The storm is breaking up, so it’s way calmer than we expected and that has everyone not so on edge.
“Is this all we need from the inventory?” Nixon asks me.
“Yeah.”
“That’s nothing,” he says.
“I know.”
“I’m so ready to get up,” Luke exclaims and I ask him, “Did Mack not even let you guys run the beaches or anything?”
“Nope, we were put on the no-fly list. All we did was a lot of cleaning around this place.”
I look around and notice that things do look pretty good around here. “Well, I’m back and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Damn straight.”
We go out to the chopper—it’s a little breezy but not as bad as I thought it would be—and load up. Nixon finishes stocking what we needed and kisses me before I put my headset on. “You sure you’re good?” he asks.
I smile from ear to ear and tell him, “Never better.” Strapping up in my seat, I can feel it in my bones that this is what I’m supposed to be doing.
Luke talks to dispatch and Guy starts the engine causing the blades to whip above us. Nixon takes my hand in his as we sit next to each other. I glance over at him and he winks at me. I smile back, and Guy announces, “We’re clear for takeoff.”
The Jayhawk lifts in the air and Nixon kisses my hand a few times, Luke says, “We can hear your lips when you kiss—save that shit for home.”
“Ten-four,” Nixon says, shutting him right up, and I can’t contain my smile.
“Seems calm,” I tell Guy as I notice we aren’t being jerked around.
“Yeah, it’s not bad at all. Winds about thirty knots.”
Looking out my window, the waves cap from far out and I say, “Should’ve surfed today.”
“Yeah, we should’ve.”
“Luke, you been out at all?” I ask him.
“Nah, my thumb’s got me all jacked up.”
I catch Guy glance at him and he cuts him off before he can even tease him, “Don’t you even start with me now, you douchebag.”
“You know…I really missed you guys,” I tell them and they say in sync, “Who…us?”
Then we all three bust out laughing as a call comes over the radio. “USCG 6035, this is Lieutenant Boscov, do you copy?”
“Ten-four, Lieutenant, we can hear you loud and clear,” I cheerfully answer first.
“I was checking in, since I missed you this morning, how are things out there?”
“Quiet, sir, and smooth.”
“Good, let’s hope they stay that way. Welcome back.”
“Thank you, sir.”
We disconnect and I say to the guys, “That was nice of him.”
“Oh, Mack, don’t let him fool ya,” Luke says and I notice Nixon staring out his window but not at the water, at the sky. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
We cruise for a few hours and everything remains quiet. There are no boaters out today or anything crazy needing our attention so far. “Should we head in for lunch?” Guy asks and we all agree. But as we circle back, there is a call of a stranded fisherman, eleven miles out.
“You guys want it?” Luke asks and I respond rapidly, “Absolutely.” But as I glance at Nixon, I can tell something is wrong. He’s still watching the weather and the darkening sky. In order to save this person, we are flying right towards the storm.
Chapter 32
Nixon
“Remember, I’m going down,” I tell Cameron as she unbuckles and begins to put her gear on.
“No, you aren’t,” she argues with me and I glare at her. “Remember what we agreed on?”
“That was before Conner. Please let me do this, baby. I’ve got more experience. I’ll be fine—in and out.”
Luke comes over the radio, interrupting us and says, “The boater called in stating that his engine was malfunctioning and he was running on a faulty backup. The dispatcher lost connection with him, but got his last coordinates. He is or was on a thirty-eight foot Yellowfin boat.
“Ten-four,” Cameron says, and I can feel the wind pick up whipping around us, shaking the exterior of the helicopter.
“Please?” I beg her and she says to me, “I’ve done this thousands of more times than you have. Trust me, okay?”
“Cam.”
“It’ll all be good.” She finishes getting geared up, and what can I do? Cause a scene? She has the authority over me at work and should be the one to go down.
In and out. It’ll all be good, I tell myself and believe her words.
“T minus three minutes until arrival at the coordinates,” Guy says and I double-check her harness, pulling up on it tightly.
“Start looking, everyone,” Luke orders, before I connect the drop line. She adjusts her snorkel and mask and we look out the windows. “I have the watercraft in sight,” Luke says and Cameron and I both see it too. The boat has been overturned and the guy is nowhere in sight.
“Dammit. We’re too late,” she says in a somber tone.
“I’m gonna circle around and see if we can get visual of the boater on the other side,” Guy says and I can see the disappointment on Cameron’s face.
“There he is,” she shouts. “Clinging to the motor.”
Luke starts to talk to dispatch and she says, “Unhook me and put the basket on the line.”
“No way. You’re not going down unless it’s attached to the line—end of story.”
“I have nowhere to stand down there and we need to get him out of the water, fast.”
Guy gets into position and I tell her, “Straddle the boat, then I’ll send you down the basket.”
“You’re clear, Cam, be safe,” Guy says and I open the door. She looks at me one last time, the look in her eyes is so trusting, and I kiss her. Before lowering her down, a gust of wind shakes the heli but Guy keeps us steady. “We good?” I ask, stopping from lowering her. “Yeah, wind speeds are projected to drop as the storm is moving away from us,” Luke says.
I focus on Cam, watching how she sways in the wind, but effortlessly lands in place, then straddles the back of the boat. She unhooks her line and waves at me. As fast as I can, I raise it up, all the while my eyes are on her sitting on the bottom of the rocking boat. The line comes in and I attach the basket, lowering it to her, hoping that with the wind, we can get it right in the water so the guy can climb in. I can see he is struggling. But to me, no one else matters except for Cameron. I hate her down there like that. The wind is gusty as I drop the basket. I land it close to him and he swims to it, wrestling with it as he tries to get inside. I can see Cameron yelling to him, telling him what do.
Then she signals me to pull him up. He’s panicking and even from my vantage point I can see him heaving in for air as he sways in the wind.
As soon as I have him secure in the chopper, I unhook the basket and begin to lower the line to her. As it heads down, she looks up at me so expectantly, and then we get knocked with another blast of wind. The fucking alarms sound in the helicop
ter as we begin to fall from the sky. All the while, I watch Cameron, stranded—waiting.
“Winds have picked up,” Luke says as Guy recovers.
“We’re gonna need to circle,” Guy says flying away from her.
“No…fuck that. We’re not leaving her.” Waves crash over the boat and lightning lights the sky. She looks up at me scared as we go farther and farther from her. “We’ll come right back,” Guy says and I react…and fucking jump. I will not make the same mistake twice. I already left her once, I’m not leaving her again. My body plummets through the air crashing into the ocean like a rock. I fight my way to the surface; the waves are overbearing, crashing over me every time I think I’m clear.
Then I spot Cameron, waving her arms back and forth. She’s far away from me, but I keep swimming to her, ‘cause my life depends on it. She is my life.
Reaching the boat, exhausted, she’s lying over it and stretching for me. The rain is suddenly dumping down hard and it makes it impossible to climb up on the boat. “What were you thinking?” she shouts as I struggle.
I don’t answer her, instead I keep fighting to get up on the boat, but realize as the storm is upon us, that I can’t. Looking around, the clouds are the darkest I’ve ever seen them and I tell her, “You need to get in the water with me.”
“Why?” she asks, panicked, as a wave hits her back and throws her in. Her fingernails dig into my arm and I pull her up. “This storm is coming right at us. We have to go under the boat.”
“No.” She has tears in her eyes. “They’ll be right back, they won’t leave us.”
She looks up at the sky and I do the same, our bodies keep smashing against the boat. A feeling of disillusionment washes over me. “They aren’t coming back, baby. The helicopter will crash.”
“Yes, they are!” she shouts.
“Cam.” Water splashes into my mouth and I spit it out. “They aren’t coming back and I’m not going to let anything happen to you, now get under the boat. It’s still floating, so there’s an air pocket we can seek shelter in.”
“And what if they come back?”
“Then they’ll send a team down to find us, you know that.” Thunder cracks in the sky and she flinches. “Go, babe!”
She swims beneath the overturned boat gripping my hand and I follow, our life vests making it hard to get under the boat, but we do and sure enough there is a small air pocket that we float right into. Cam is crying, I can hear her, even though I can’t see her, and I just hold on to her as we get thrashed around.
I pray to God and to Conner that we pull through this. After everything, what a shitty way this would be to go out.
Chapter 33
Cameron
The rain has lightened and I’m not sure how this boat hasn’t sunk…but it hasn’t. About an hour ago, I had a panic attack. I thought I was going to die from lack of air and realizing that Guy and Luke aren’t coming back for us. They really left us and that hurts worse than anything. Our job is search and rescue, and here we sit two US Coast Guard faithful, stranded and waiting.
The waves are making me nauseous and Nixon asks me, “You okay?”
“I need air,” I tell him and he says, “Let me go check on the conditions.”
“NO!” I screech, knowing how easily we can get separated. “We’ll go together.”
“Okay,” he agrees, not arguing. “On the count of three,” he tells me and then counts. The second that he says “three,” I breathe in before we go under, pushing off the boat with my feet. As we surface, the rain is lighter and you can see the storm moving away, but the waves are still heavy. “Let’s try and get on the boat using the motor to climb up on.”
We move around the back and I grip it, then Nixon pushes my ass up with one hand and I lose contact with him. Right away, I panic, but I’m on the boat and he’s pulling himself up too. I straddle it like I first did when I came down, and he does the same. He’s exhausted; I can see it all over his face.
Leaning over, I hold his hands so we stay connected and tell him, “Thank you for not leaving me.”
“Cam, I’ll never leave you again, no matter what.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re everything to me.”
“Me too.”
“I love you, Cam.”
Those three little words are the first he’s ever said to me. We never said it when we were younger, even though I think we both felt it.
“I…I love you, too. I always have. I’m sorry I made us come to work today.”
“Don’t be sorry. We’re together, and that’s all that matters. Everything happens for a reason and here we are.”
“You really feel that way?”
“Yeah, I do.”
I can’t stop the tears, feeling so emotional, so lost out here. “Are we gonna die?”
“No, not a chance in hell. We could survive for months, and you know the entire Coast Guard is out looking for us.”
“Why hasn’t anybody come yet?”
“I don’t know, but they will. We’ll stay with the boat, and it won’t be long.”
I nod, knowing that he is right, but as the sun begins to set and nightfall isn’t far away…I begin losing hope.
“Don’t fall asleep, baby.” Nixon shakes me by my hands, and I blink heavily.
“Just five minutes?” I ask, the swaying motion and pure exhaustion making me so tired.
Then there it is…the sound we’ve been waiting for. “Do you hear that?” he asks me.
“Yeah, it’s a boat!” We both begin to wave our free arms at the small watercraft, being sure that we are still holding hands with the other.
The boater seems to be coming right towards us, but it’s not the Coast Guard. “He sees us,” I exclaim.
“I know.”
As the boat pulls up, there are a few fishermen on board. “What are you doing all the way out here?” the man driving it asks us in his thick tropical accent.
“We’re with the US Coast Guard in Florida and were attempting a rescue when we both fell from our aircraft,” Nixon says.
“You’re far from home, my brother,” the man says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’re five miles off the coast of the Bahamas.”
“What?” I shriek.
“The Gulfstream must’ve pulled ya. Which is a good thing. I hear Florida is getting hit hard by that storm,” the man says. “We can take you back to our place?”
“Okay,” Nixon agrees; we don’t have any other options. We need to get to safety.
The men help us climb on board, and I’ve never felt better.
I cling to Nixon and he asks them, “What are you all doing out here?”
“Fishing!” He nods his head and another guy opens a huge cooler packed with a ton of fish.
“Thank you for stopping,” Nixon says. “You have no idea how grateful we are.”
“Of course, my man, it’s what humans do, we help each other out. Were you guys out here long?”
“I’m not sure,” he says, and that’s the last thing I remember…
***
“Baby, wake up,” Nixon says and I fight to open my eyes. The engine to the boat cuts off and everyone starts to clamber onto the dock. Nixon boosts me up as another man grabs ahold of me until he gives me back to Nixon.
My eyes follow the long dock that leads to an old tropical hotel. There are tiki torches lining the walkway and Nixon says, “This place is beautiful, Beni.”
“Thanks, it’s been in my family for over fifty years now. This is my wife, Tama.” We shake her hand as she greets us and he says, “Could you set them up in a room and bring them some food? They were stranded.”
She nods shyly, smiling. She’s a gorgeous woman, but a woman of few words.
I’m still wobbly as we follow her into the office of the hotel and she grabs a key off the wall, then leads us to a room. “Here you go,” she says quietl
y, opening the door to the cozy space. Right away, Nixon looks in, then says, “Do you have a phone I could use?”
“No, no phones here.”
“Is this good?” Beni asks, popping his head in as his men carry the coolers with fish behind him.
“Yeah, um…no phone though?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about that. We could take the boat where you can make a call, probably three hours? But it needs gas and I’m afraid they’re closed for the night.”
“What?” I shriek, feeling so lost. But at the same time, if I was to have to get on another boat, I might be sick. As much as I love the ocean, I don’t think I could go near it right now, even if I had to. Going through what we did today was the scariest thing I’ve ever endured.
“We’ll go in the morning,” Nixon says, “This is great. Thank you both so much. We’ll pay you back.”
Beni and Tama close the door and I slide down the wall, sitting on the floor with my knees huddled to my chest.
“You all right?” Nixon asks me, panicked, and I swallow the tears. Not even knowing myself if I am.
“What the fuck are we gonna do?” I’m still in shock with everything we’ve been through and scared that no one knows where we are.
He sits in front of me, resting his arms on his knees and says, “We have a plan, we’ll call home in the morning. We should feel very lucky to be on land and safe and together.”
“What’s the chance that the one person who finds us has no way to contact anyone? What about on his boat, does he have a fucking radio?”
“I looked, Cam, and he doesn’t, but who cares? They left us, they can wait ‘til morning. ”
“Nixon!”
“I’m sorry. It’s going to be okay, babe. We’re safe now. If back home is getting hit by the storm, then they can’t search for us and are probably without power too.”
“They are going to be worried sick.”
