by Sam Cameron
Dad’s confidence was kind of heartwarming. Steven felt himself blush.
“That doesn’t mean you have to drive me,” he muttered.
“Do your old man a favor and let him feel useful once in a while,” Dad said.
Steven supposed that wasn’t such a hardship after all.
“Okay,” he said. “But if I pass, you’re buying dinner.”
“Deal,” Dad said.
*
Denny didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He ruled out his first impulse, which was to crawl back into bed and ignore the world. He briefly considered his second, which was to go work at the Bookmine. But it was a gorgeous day for boating, with clear skies and a flawless forecast, and he didn’t want to be cooped up all day. He needed the horizon and waves and so he’d take out the Sleuth-hound, maybe all the way up to Key Largo and back.
He called down to Sensei Mike’s just to triple-check that everything was in order for their test tomorrow. An unfamiliar voice picked up.
“Yes?” the man asked. He sounded elderly, and his voice was heavily accented. Japanese, Denny thought. Denny asked for Sensei Mike and the man briefly considered his request.
“Yes,” he said again, confidently.
“Is Mike there?” Denny asked.
“Yes,” was the third reply.
“I’ll call back,” Denny said, and hung up.
Thirty seconds after disconnecting he put together Sensei’s special surprise with the fact of an elderly Japanese visitor. He called Steven.
“What?” Steven asked.
“Sensei Enji,” Denny said.
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I think the surprise tomorrow is Sensei Enji. Mike’s sensei. Someone speaking Japanese just answered his phone.”
Steven was silent for a minute. “I guess we better do really good tomorrow. Otherwise he’ll kill us for embarrassing him.”
Denny didn’t think Sensei Mike would be embarrassed so much as disappointed, because it was one thing to flunk a couple of students on a test but quite another if your mentor was there to see the debacle. “When you come back we’ll get in a few more hours of practice.”
A few slips over, Larry Gold appeared on the deck of his boat, shirtless and yawning and scratching at his tanned belly. Tristan and Brad didn’t seem to be on time this morning, either. Not Denny’s problem. He had already told Steven he was borrowing the truck and so he loaded their scuba tanks in it, dropped them off at Darla Stewart’s dive shop for refilling, and headed to the Sleuth-hound.
Brian didn’t call him, didn’t send a text message, didn’t send a carrier pigeon or flare or smoke signals. Denny tried very hard not to think about it. Talking to Mom had helped more than he’d thought it would. Whatever he felt for Brian—felt strongly, felt like a knife under his ribs, felt like a big monster wave—he couldn’t force Brian to feel it back, or to even accept it. He could just make amends somehow for being a lying jerk.
Two hours later, he was catching absolutely nothing at all and trying to figure out the whole amends thing when a distress call came over the radio.
“Help!” Tristan Flaherty said, her voice frantic. “Can anyone hear me? We need help!”
Chapter Thirty
The Coast Guard answered Tristan’s distress call, asking her what the emergency was.
“My dad hit his head and he’s bleeding,” she said. “Our captain pulled him out of the water but he’s got chest pains and his lips are turning blue.”
“Where are you located?” the Coast Guard operator asked.
The Agana, Denny thought immediately.
“I’m not sure,” Tristan said. “We were diving this old military ship, the Agana—”
Denny was already throttling up the Sleuth-Hound.
He was only a mile or so from the spot, and so was first on the scene. Tristan waved frantically from the deck as he tied up alongside. Larry Gold was flat on his back as she gave him CPR. Brad was on the dive platform but unable to haul himself over the railing. He had a nasty gash on his forehead and a glazed sheen to his eyes.
Denny said, “Can you keep holding on?” and Brad nodded, but Denny had his doubts. His hands were trembling and the waves were lifting and dropping him, tugging him away.
“Help Dad,” Tristan said. She was doing compressions, fast and hard, the same way Denny had learned, and counting loud. “Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two—I’ve got this.”
Denny got Brad onto the boat and settled in a corner. Despite the warm temperature, he was shivering, and one of his pupils was wider than the other. Concussion and shock, Denny thought. A first aid kit was open on the deck, the contents scattered everywhere. He ripped open a large bandage, got it up close and personal against the gash, and said, “Hold this tight. Stay on your side, in case you throw up.”
“Bossy kid,” Brad said, but did as told.
Denny took over the compressions and Tristan did the rescue breathing, using the disposable mask from the first aid kit to force air into Larry’s lungs. His face was gray and clammy. Denny’s compressions and Tristan’s air were the only thing keeping him alive.
The steady thump of rotors registered on Denny’s ears, quickly growing louder as the Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter arrived. The whirling air made loose supplies go skittering across the deck. A rescue swimmer dropped into the waves and a few strokes later was hauling himself up into the boat.
Denny recognized him instantly: AST Third Class Eric Beamer, who’d run the Seven Mile Bridge marathon last year and almost beaten Steven. Almost.
“How’s it looking?” Eric asked, feeling for Larry’s pulse.
“Not so good,” Denny said honestly. The compressions strained his arms, but he kept at them. “We’ve got two patients for you.”
“I’m fine,” Brad insisted over the noise of the chopper.
Tristan said, “You’re not, Dad!”
“He’s paraplegic and he’s got a concussion,” Denny told Eric.
Eric did a quick assessment on Brad, despite Brad’s protests. The expression on his face was not encouraging. His crewmates aboard the chopper sent down a gurney for Larry. They used a strop to lift Brad. Tristan wanted to go with them but it was more important to get the patients to Fisherman’s Hospital than to waste time hauling her up, too.
Eric waved from the open door once Brad was aboard. The chopper zoomed off, quickly becoming an orange-white dot on the horizon.
“I’ll take you up there,” Denny promised. “Your dad will be fine.”
He steered Larry’s boat back toward home with the Sleuth-hound towed behind her. Tristan was unnaturally quiet, definitely shaken up, but she went down below and put on dry clothing. She stuffed her father’s wallet, phone, and medicine into a backpack, grabbed another bag with her own belongings inside, and cleaned up the deck of Larry’s boat. She called the hospital as soon as they were in range of a cell phone tower. The admitting clerk in the ER had nothing to tell her.
“What if he needs me?” Tristan fretted. “He doesn’t always tell doctors the truth, and he’s stubborn—”
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Denny promised.
Back home, he slid behind the wheel of Steven’s truck and waited until they were on the road before asking, “What happened out there?”
“We did the dive,” she said. “The currents were pretty strong, like you said. I had to hold on to the guidelines with both hands, most of the time—but it was okay, we didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t stay down too long. When we came back up, Dad slipped while pulling himself up. He banged his head and fell back into the water. Larry went in and pulled him out, but something was wrong—he was clutching his arm and he couldn’t breathe.”
“Gave himself a heart attack,” Denny said.
Tristan said, “It could have happened to anyone. It was just a stupid accident.”
Denny didn’t argue with her. He may have broken a speed limit or two on the way to Islamorada, but Tr
istan wasn’t complaining. Once they reached the emergency room, she tried to argue her way past the clerk to be with her dad.
“The doctor will be right out,” the admitting nurse promised.
In Denny’s experience, that was never true. But Tristan couldn’t win the argument, so they sat in the blue plastic chairs and waited. Tristan stared at the white-and-green wall as if imagining the very worst possible scenario.
“Shouldn’t you call your mom?” he asked.
“He’d hate that,” Tristan said. “He’d absolutely kill me for worrying her.”
Up on the wall, a flat-screen TV was showing some inane reality show about Hollywood socialites. Denny checked his watch. Steven should be taking his test by now.
“You don’t have to stay,” Tristan said.
“No, I’ll stay,” he said. “I’m just thinking about Steven’s test.”
“The vision thing?”
“The really important vision thing. Otherwise they won’t let him in.”
“He really wants it,” she said.
“Yeah. He really does. As much as I want to go into the Coast Guard.”
She was staring at the wall again. “I wish I felt that strongly about something.”
“I thought you loved astronomy,” he said.
“I used to think I did,” she replied. “All summer long I’d lie on our roof and watch the stars while my parents argued about stuff. I made up my own constellations: Peaceful Dog, Zen Cat, Gate to Forgiveness. I even made up a spreadsheet.”
Denny leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “So what happened?”
“We started scuba diving. And I thought, maybe the answer’s not out there at all. Maybe it’s down in the water.”
He chose his next words carefully. “Or maybe you want diving to be important to you because it’s important to your father.”
She didn’t argue.
After another half hour of waiting, a doctor finally came out to tell them Brad was mostly fine. “We’ll keep him tonight, keep an eye on that hard head, but he’s a tough guy.”
“What about Larry Gold?” Denny asked. “He had the heart attack. We gave him CPR.”
“Still hanging in, I think,” the doctor said, but didn’t sound hopeful.
When they were allowed to see Brad, he was sitting up in bed looking disgruntled. Tristan flung herself at him and he rubbed her back soothingly.
“I know,” he said. “Stupid accident.”
“You’re not forgiven,” Tristan muttered.
Brad met Denny’s gaze. “Thanks for all your help out there.”
“No problem.”
“Doesn’t mean you were right about diving the Agana,” Brad reminded him. “I got some great shots.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” Tristan said, wiping her eyes. “I’m too traumatized.”
Denny stayed for only a few minutes. He offered to take Tristan back to Fisher Key but she wanted to spend the night on the pull-out futon and wouldn’t be dissuaded, as stubborn as her father. Denny was two miles away from the hospital when he heard a rattling and pulled over to investigate. Tristan’s inexpensive digital camera had fallen out of her bag on the drive up. He called her and offered to bring it back.
“I’ll pick it up from you later,” she said. “Check out my awesome shots.”
She sounded like her mood was back on the upswing. Denny hung up and turned on the camera. He recognized the Agana’s bow, and there was her upper deck, encrusted with sea life and coral, the railings rusting to nothingness. Tristan had captured shots of the ocean floor, nothing particularly unique about them, except for one rectangular metal object he couldn’t quite identify.
Denny stared at for a moment, puzzling. It looked battered, but not like it had been submerged long.
His phone rang. It was Darla Stewart’s shop, telling him his tanks were ready. He put Tristan’s camera aside and promptly forgot all about it.
*
They arrived in Miami with a lot of time to kill. Dad bought them an early lunch at McDonald’s but Steven could only pick at his cheeseburger. Dad read the paper and Steven surfed the net on his phone. When it came time to drop Steven off, Dad stuck to his word and didn’t try to come in. Instead, he said he’d be back in a couple of hours, and added “Good luck” about twelve times.
“See you later, Dad,” Steven said.
He had butterflies in his stomach when he pushed open the doors to the recruiting office. Nothing to worry about, he told himself. Just my entire future. Red, blue, green, yellow—how hard can it be?
A cold wave of air-conditioning hit him, and goose bumps rose on his arms.
“Steven Anderson for Master Chief King,” he told the yeoman at the front desk.
“I see you, recruit!” King bellowed from his corner desk. “Come on back here, Mr. Can’t See Blue and Green.”
That was the nice thing about Master Chief King—he didn’t beat around the bush. He was black, six foot two, and completely bald, with the same stocky build Steven’s father had. Steven had never asked him if he’d played football, but he certainly wouldn’t want to be on the field opposite him.
“Nervous?” he asked as Steven shook his hand.
“Not much,” Steven replied.
Master Chief nodded. “What do you do with a blue whale?”
Steven was flummoxed. “What?”
“You cheer him up!” Master Chief King said. “What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?”
“I don’t know,” Steven admitted.
“A carrot!”
With a perfectly straight face, Steven said, “Very funny, Master Chief.”
King grinned. “It’s an eight-mile drive to the doctor at MEPS and believe you me, I’ve got dozens of them.”
“We know he does,” said the recruiter at the next desk dryly. “He’s been practicing them all week.”
The jokes weren’t very good, but they were a nice distraction. At MEPS Steven was ushered past the doctors he’d seen for his first physical and taken down to the ophthalmologist, a civilian named Dr. Meadows.
“Doc, let me tell you about this kid,” Master Chief King said. “He did the PST swim in 7:48. He did the run in 9:40. He can sit-up and push-up and stand up better than any recruit I’ve seen in the last five years. He’s not color-blind.”
Dr. Meadows, who was slight and pale and scrawny, took Steven’s folder from his assistant and said, “I hope not. Come on this way, Mr. Anderson.”
Steven followed him into an examination room. Dr. Meadows had him sit in the big chair and took a rolling stool for himself. The office was mostly bare, except for an eye chart on the wall and a stack of recruiting folders on the counter.
“So you failed the FALANT,” Dr. Meadows said, studying Steven’s file. He didn’t sound particularly concerned or interested. In fact, he sounded like he was thinking of dinner with his wife or a good movie he wanted to see.
“Yes, sir,” Steven said. “But I tried it at my regular eye doctor’s office last month, and he said it was fine.”
“The civilian version’s a little different,” Dr. Meadows said. He kept reading.
Steven studied the chart, then the back of the door, then the ceiling tiles.
“Do you know how it’s scored?” Dr. Meadows asked, flipping a page.
“Yes, sir. If I pass all nine light combinations in the first run, I’m good. If I miss one, I get two more tries at it.”
Dr. Meadows said, “You missed three the last time. But you say you did fine at your regular doctor’s.”
“That’s right.”
“Were you rushing when you took it here?”
Steven said, “I don’t think so.”
“Were you nervous?”
“Not then.” In fact, Steven distinctly remembered being completely relaxed and confident. Maybe too confident. “But to tell the truth, I’m nervous now.”
Dr. Meadows lifted his head and gave Steven a sympathetic smile. “It’s a big thing. Hug
e, right? I’m going to tell you right now, this machine is the best model from here to Norfolk. It’s been calibrated and recalibrated and fine-tuned to the umpteenth degree. We believe in the machine, Steven. We trust it.”
“Yes, sir,” Steven said, but meanwhile he was thinking: Never trust a machine.
“Good,” Dr. Meadows said. “Let’s start.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Brian didn’t sleep at all Thursday night. He didn’t have much appetite for breakfast, and he couldn’t think of a single thing to do with himself other than throw himself back into the final pages of Duma Key. The words kept slipping off the page and he consistently lost track of what was going on.
You can’t love someone when you’ve only known them for four weeks, he told himself. That’s too soon.
You’re a jerk, Denny Anderson.
Sean called him around noon. “Are you going to keep me in suspense all day?”
He went out on the balcony and gazed at the flat, shimmering Gulf of Mexico. “About that?”
“About what?” Sean’s voice squeaked. “How about the parking lot of reconciliation? His big fat apology and how you took it?”
“He didn’t exactly apologize,” Brian said.
“He didn’t?”
“And he didn’t invite me to his aunt’s party.”
“That’s what you want? To meet his hundred Cuban cousins and aunts and uncles?”
“Sure.”
“Let me ask you something. Do you want to be there for him, or to be there for yourself?”
Brian bristled. “It’s not about me.”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s not about you,” Sean said, exasperated. “He’s only going for his mom and aunt. You may not have noticed, but Steven’s the glory hound and Denny’s happy to take no credit at all.”
“He doesn’t have to go.”
“So you want him to hurt his mom to make you feel better?”
