Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  A shadow fell across Gabe. She snapped a look up at Harry. “You’re blocking the light.”

  He leaped aside. Sami gave a cursory visual examination to the rest of Gabe’s body.

  “Any injuries other than the head?” she asked.

  “Fuck, isn’t that enough?” Luisa asked. “Do you see the blood?”

  Sami ignored her. She looked at Alex.

  “Nothing else. Two blows to the skull. Cast-iron frying pan. Glancing blow tore the scalp.” He wasn’t a doctor, but he’d listened to her for long enough that he knew what she needed to know, more or less.

  “Okay. Most of the flowing blood is from the scalp wound. I can sew that up.”

  “But the first one…” Harry edged closer, careful not to block the light. “I heard … I think it cracked his skull.”

  Sami carefully parted Gabe’s hair, wishing for more light but not wanting sand in these wounds. Blood had already started to congeal around this spot, and the injury was far more concerning than the second. Either blow could have caused a variety of brain injuries, but she could see the white of bone beneath the blood. Cranial trauma was certain, but she wasn’t worried about a concussion or even a skull fracture. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, so far from help, what worried her was cranial edema—swelling of the brain. If she had to relieve intracranial pressure here, with no tools …

  “Harry, are there more towels on the dinghy?” she asked, opening the first-aid kit. Her vision blurred a bit and the heat inside the dusty walls made her stomach churn, but she held it together, fighting off the effects of the alcohol she’d had.

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  “Cat, please get them,” she said, digging through the small kit. If she’d had surgical glue she would have used that, but all she had were bandages and gauze. She could suture if she had to, but not here. Not like this.

  “How is he?” Luisa asked.

  “How does he look?” Sami snapped before reminding herself she wasn’t dealing with med students. She took out the small bandages, removed their adhesive, and used them to close the tear in Gabe’s scalp.

  “I’ll need plenty of fresh water to clean this right,” she said, ripping open a packet of gauze. She pressed it gently but firmly over the torn scalp, then looked up at Alex. “Hold that.”

  As he obeyed, she used surgical tape to wind around Gabe’s head, just to hold the gauze in place for the moment. Then she rose unsteadily and stepped around Gabe and Alex, heading for Luisa and the shuddering, muttering man against the wall.

  “Wait, what the hell are you doing?” Harry barked.

  “There are two injured men here,” Sami replied.

  “Are you shitting me? That’s the guy who did this! Gabe’s still got a gaping wound in his skull, for Christ’s sake. What the fuck are you doing?”

  Sami knelt by the stinking, unshaven man. He hadn’t eaten in some time. Along the way, he’d obviously pissed himself. She looked him over, her eyes drawn to the torn-up fabric that had once been his trouser leg, and the blood that had soaked through. He had a dirty T-shirt tied around his upper left thigh. She wished she’d washed her hands—cursed herself and the alcohol she’d drunk for not having done so—and she parted strips of fabric to find the source of the blood.

  “Damn it, Sami!” Harry roared.

  “She’s doing her job,” Alex said.

  Before Harry could snap at her again, Cat ran back in with two clean, folded towels.

  “Good,” Sami said, her head fighting a booze fog. “Wrap Gabe’s head, carefully. I’d like to keep those wounds clean. They’re going to bleed more, but hopefully not nearly as much. Then you guys are going to put him in the dinghy and we’re going straight back to the boat. If he’s suffered real damage, there’s nothing I can do for him here.”

  “So you can help him if we get back to the Galahad?” Harry asked.

  “Whatever you’ve got there for first aid has to be better than this. And we should head for the Hawaiian islands as soon as everyone’s back on board.”

  Harry took the first towel and worked with Cat and Alex to prepare Gabe.

  Sami took a closer look at the wound on the other man’s leg. Luisa helped her turn the guy to take advantage of the light coming through the boxy foyer window.

  “We taking him with us, too?” Luisa asked.

  “Of course,” Sami said.

  “Not a chance,” Harry snarled.

  They all ignored him. Alex moved to Sami’s side.

  “We have to be careful. If he wakes up again—” Luisa said.

  “I know,” Sami interrupted.

  “There’s a broken window in the other room,” Alex explained, gesturing toward the man’s bloody leg. “We figure he slashed himself up climbing through.”

  Sami blinked, a fresh wave of Orchid Sunrise–induced queasiness washing over her. “You didn’t get a good look,” she said. “No broken window cuts like that. And he’s given himself a tourniquet, or he wouldn’t have survived this long. The guy was bitten.”

  They all stared at her. Sami rolled her eyes. “Come on. Move it.”

  “His leg,” Harry said. “That’s a shark bite?”

  Luisa and Sami helped the disoriented man slide himself up the wall, staggering, leaning on them both.

  Sami shot Harry an urgent look. “Well, I sure as hell didn’t bite him.”

  Then they were moving. Alex, Harry, and Cat hefted Gabe and carried him gingerly outside and down to the dinghy. By then the others were there, but they could only stand and watch and ask a dozen questions. There was nothing else for them to do.

  Nothing else any of them could do.

  Whatever was going to happen now was going to happen.

  Sami wished she’d stayed on board the Kid Galahad. She wished they’d all stayed on board.

  CHAPTER 11

  As it turned out, they had to leave the guy with the shark bite behind. Harry wouldn’t allow them to put the poor bastard in the dinghy with Gabe, and Alex didn’t blame him. Sami argued, but not for long. The little boat and the sailing yacht both belonged to Harry, and in the end that won out. They left Luisa on the shore in front of the Coast Guard station. Cat promised to come right back for her. Harry sat by the motor and held tightly to the throttle, using it to control their speed and direction.

  They hit a wave and the boat bounced. Sami shot Harry a hard look. “Slow down.”

  “I’m doing my best,” Harry said.

  Alex, Cat, and Sami sat in the dinghy, arranged so that Gabe was stretched out across them. They tried to keep him from bouncing too much, tried to keep his head supported, keep the towel wrapped around his skull. Moving him like this was a huge risk—Alex knew it, just as he knew that Sami wouldn’t have gone along with it if she thought she’d had a choice.

  For a time, no further words passed among them. Harry’s fingers were white where they gripped the throttle. Alex and Sami kept glancing from Gabe’s still form to the Kid Galahad as they buzzed nearer and nearer. Cat seemed the only one among them who wasn’t tense or terrified. Her legs were across the dinghy so that Gabe’s lower body rested on them. Somehow she had blood on her chest and hands—from moving him or wrapping his head in that towel.

  Then they’d reached the Galahad. Harry slowed them as he drew alongside the starboard side and cut the engine. He leaned over to grab the ladder as the dinghy drifted over to bump against the yacht. Two heads appeared above them—Patrick and Nils must have heard the engine and come to help them aboard. But as Alex glanced up, he saw the horror on the faces of the two men.

  “My God,” Nils said. “What happened?”

  Harry ignored the question. “Help us.”

  Working quickly, they secured a line from the dinghy to the boat. Alex reached out and held on to the ladder. Sami kept her focus on Gabe’s head—she bent and said something into his ear, maybe some quiet exhortation or an apology for whatever pain they might cause him—and then she, Alex, Harry, and Cat all hoisted Ga
be upward. The dinghy rocked beneath them. For half a second, Alex tensed and held his breath, thinking they were going to tip, that they were all about to spill into the drink. Then Patrick and Nils lifted Gabe’s upper body and hoisted him carefully upward.

  “Watch his head,” Sami warned. “Just wait for me.”

  She scrambled up the ladder and for a moment Alex felt relieved that the crisis was out of his hands. He exhaled, even as Harry stepped past him—the dinghy listing with his weight—and followed Sami up the ladder and onto the deck. Voices carried back down, Sami barking orders at Patrick and Nils, putting them to work.

  Cat shifted into the back of the dinghy. Expressionless, eyes cold—so unlike her—she gripped the throttle.

  “Cast me off before you go aboard, would you?” she asked.

  Alex untied the line from the ladder, holding on, studying Cat more closely. “You okay?”

  Cat smiled thinly. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “Stupid question,” Alex acknowledged.

  “Let’s just get everyone on board and get out of here,” Cat said. “Between smugglers or pirates, or whatever, and the sharks—”

  Alex cocked his head. “Sharks?”

  “You didn’t see them? Look around, Alex. They’re creeping me out.”

  He scanned the water but saw nothing. Cat’s urgency didn’t allow him time to linger, so he climbed the ladder. The motor revved and the dinghy leaped away from the yacht, motor growling as the little boat powered back the way it had come, headed for the Coast Guard station to pick up Luisa and the delirious lunatic who’d started all of this.

  At the railing of the Kid Galahad, he watched the dinghy skid across the water. Cat bent low as if to urge the little boat on, trying to give it extra speed just from her will alone. He had always thought of her as a person of great serenity, though her innate strength and ferocity had shone in her love for music and her performances. This determination was a different side of her, a different sort of strength, but Alex was glad to see it. They all needed to focus right now.

  From somewhere behind him, Harry called his name. Just as he turned, he caught sight of something in his peripheral vision. Alex looked again and this time he saw the fin surfacing. Then, as if they’d been invisible until he’d spotted the first one, he noticed two others. The sharks were at least seventy-five yards from the yacht, and not all swimming in the same direction, but he had the strangest sensation that they were aware of the boat’s presence. As if the sharks were purposely keeping their distance from the Kid Galahad, waiting to see what might happen next.

  Alex saw movement below and he glanced down to see another fin passing by, this one within a few feet of the hull. He realized he didn’t know a damn thing about sharks. The army hadn’t taught him that, and his graphic design and marketing career hadn’t prepared him for this. Whatever the sharks were doing, they certainly weren’t keeping their distance.

  Harry shouted again, so Alex turned and hurried across the deck, past the wheelhouse. They’d laid Gabe out. The towel around his head had been unwrapped and lay open beneath his skull. His chest rose and fell, so Alex knew the first mate hadn’t died, but his tanned features had gone pale and there were beads of sweat on his face. His eyes scrunched together and he mumbled something, not conscious but not completely out.

  Nils stood back, watching. Patrick had vanished. Sami knelt over Gabe while Harry loomed expectantly.

  “What do you need, Doc?” Alex asked his wife.

  “I sent Patrick to fetch freshwater. I need plenty of it. Harry needs to get me the entire first-aid tool kit, whatever’s on board—”

  “Alex can get it,” Harry said.

  So that was why Harry had been shouting for him. He listened as Harry described exactly where to locate the kit and then he hustled into the wheelhouse. Unlike the little box that had been on the dinghy, this was like a mobile emergency room, a trio of colorful cases. Alex grabbed a red duffel labeled OXYGEN and a fat, heavy blue case labeled FIRST AID. A stiff yellow backpack labeled DEFIBRILLATOR he left behind. He couldn’t carry all three, so he’d have to make another trip for that one.

  When he rushed back onto the deck and set the two cases down, then unzipped the FIRST AID case, Sami’s eyes lit up with relief. Alex couldn’t tell how drunk she really was—still buzzed, at least, despite the adrenaline rushing through her. But now she was in familiar territory—sober or not, she could work with this. She started barking orders and the men around her followed them. Harry opened the duffel and took out the oxygen tank, hurriedly responding to Sami’s instructions. She checked Gabe’s airways. A thin, clear mucus ran from his nose and he saw the way her brow furrowed at this discovery. Harry didn’t notice as he was turning on the oxygen while Sami settled the mask over Gabe’s face.

  Patrick returned with the water, but Sami made him wait as Nils became her nurse. She used antimicrobial wipes to clean her hands, then opened a package of surgical gloves and slipped them on. Alex knew this wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t question it. Circumstances were dire and he didn’t need to give Harry any additional reasons to get agitated.

  Moving quickly through the supplies, checking what she had, Sami pulled up Gabe’s eyelids to check his reaction to light. He groaned. She studied his pupils for dilation.

  “Well?” Harry asked.

  “I’m just starting, Harry,” Sami said, not looking up.

  She pinched Gabe on the arm so hard that his eyes went wide and he let out a gasp of pain.

  “What are you doing?” Harry snapped.

  For a moment, Gabe focused on him. “Wow,” he rasped. “That … Harry … it hurts.”

  His eyes fluttered and he started to pass out. This time Sami took him by the ear and pinched the lobe.

  “Stay with me,” she said. “Do you know your name? What about your birthday?”

  He licked his lips like they were dry, face etched with pain. “Gabriel … Anthony … Hogan. July … something…”

  With a sigh, he passed out again.

  “Get him back,” Harry demanded.

  “One thing at a time,” Sami said, and now she did glance up, a little bleary-eyed but steady. “It’s good. He knew your name. Knew his own. He’s suffered a traumatic brain injury, but there are no convulsions, no vomiting. I think he may have some swelling in his brain, but if the brain is not bleeding—”

  “There’s a lot of blood,” Patrick said quietly.

  Sami nodded. “From the wounds. Maybe not from the brain. We’ll see.”

  She kept working. Alex cleaned his hands and helped her remove the little bandages they’d put on the scalp laceration back at the Coast Guard station. With Patrick pouring clean water, she confirmed that this wound, at least, was superficial. She placed a layer of thick gauze over the gash, then opened another packet of gloves and made Alex put them on.

  “Light pressure on the gauze,” she instructed.

  He knew not to argue. Gently but firmly, he added pressure and when Sami turned Gabe’s head a bit Alex tried to keep that pressure steady.

  “Patrick,” she said. “Wash out this wound. If you think you’re going to be sick, tell me. Do not throw up.”

  “He’s got a strong stomach,” Nils said.

  Alex caught a glimpse as Patrick washed the wound. In the midst of hair and torn scalp, a little bit of Gabe’s skull showed through, glistening wetly in the sun. Sami had kept pressure on it during the boat ride and so the bleeding had subsided. Alex tried not to think about how much blood Gabe had lost, telling himself it couldn’t be that big a problem or Sami would already have mentioned it.

  “There is a skull fracture,” Sami confirmed, almost as if talking to herself.

  Harry exhaled loudly. “Shit.”

  “Isn’t it bad for him to be passed out?” Patrick asked. “He’s in shock, right? I mean—”

  “It’s sure as hell not good,” Alex said. “Let her work.”

  Sami used her gloved fingers to feel the creas
e in Gabe’s skull and the area around the wound. “Definitely some swelling of the brain. No way of knowing yet how bad it will get. The only thing I can do right now is clean and bandage the wound.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Harry asked.

  Sami sighed. She held up her gloved hands so she wouldn’t accidentally touch something unsanitary and she stared at him. “I know you’re upset, Harry. I’m doing what I can. If it’s not to your liking, try thinking about what you would’ve done without a medical professional here. These kinds of wounds can heal on their own, believe it or not. The skull can repair itself. That depends on severity, so he might need surgery. But I’m not the one we want performing that surgery and we sure as hell don’t want to do it on a boat, rocking on the sea, without the proper equipment.”

  “Is he going to be all right?” Harry asked.

  Sami opened a small packet of iodine. “I don’t know. I told you, I’ll do what I can.”

  She looked at Alex. “What about the other guy? Cat went to get him?”

  “Fuck the other guy!” Harry growled. “You’re going to take care of Gabe. The son of a bitch who did this can rot on the beach. He’s not getting onto this boat.”

  They all stared at him for a moment, but Harry looked away in disgust and then dropped to his knees by Gabe. He took the injured man’s hand. “You people don’t get it. The last couple of years, Gabe’s about the only person in the world whose friendship I never had to doubt.”

  Alex would have put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, but he didn’t want to take pressure off Gabe’s scalp wound, or waste the sterile gloves he’d donned. Instead, he bent low over Gabe and made sure he caught Harry’s eye.

  “Sami’s going to do all she can. We all are. As far as the other guy’s concerned, he was bitten by a shark and left here to die. The guy looked half-starved and completely disoriented. He’s clearly out of his head. The state he’s in, there’s no telling who he thought was coming through that door. Probably thought he was defending himself.”

  “Fuck him,” Harry said quietly.

  Nils rose and went over to crouch beside Harry. “My friend, listen to me. The best thing you can do right now is put clean sheets on Gabe’s bed and get a clean blanket we can use to carry him below. Then make sure we’re ready to sail as soon as the others get back to the boat.”