The Emissary

by Patricia Cori

  “It’s a lie … it’s all a lie.” Her words echoed through his mind and would not be silent. The more he tried to push them away, the louder they rang—the truer they became.

  Both of his officers were there, holding the helm. “Anything I can do for you, Captain?” Bobby asked, concerned. He’d been with Jimbo the longest, after Doc, and he could second-guess Jimbo’s moods and his thoughts.

  “Just hold on while I get myself together here, Bobby.” Jimbo’s mind was racing wildly. He couldn’t focus enough to think things through, bouncing back and forth from what he once knew was impossible, to what Jamie knew was not. Everything was upside down; he was walking a tightrope between realities. No matter how insane it seemed, the whales were there for her—they had been warning her all along, and it had taken this to get him to listen.

  His mind played out the moment she ran her hand over the radar printout. If only he’d come clean with her then, and trusted her with what he knew.

  “Do you believe there’s an extraterrestrial presence on this planet, Jim?”

  “Should I?”

  “Shouldn’t we all, Captain Jim?”

  From the bridge, Jimbo had a 360-degree view of the ship. They were completely surrounded, still, by the whales’ frenzied bodies. His responsibility was to the ship and the people on it, and he needed to shake off the doubt, and his fear for Jamie, and get them out of danger.

  He walked through the steps he needed to take, in order to still his mind. “Start with Mat.” What was he going to tell him about what had happened? How much did he need to hold back? And could he trust Mat? He decided to send an SMS, to buy time, until he was clearer and he could talk to him rationally. He typed out a brief message, revealing as little as possible: Accident on board. Jamie head injury—medivac to hospital. Waiting news. Heading back in. Will get back when I know more, J.

  Back on deck, Doc prepared to operate on Jamie—to stitch up the wound and stop the bleeding. As best he could, he took all the necessary precautions. He slapped on a pair of gloves, sterilized the wound, and then injected Jamie with an antibiotic and a tetanus shot before performing the rudimentary surgery. It took twenty stitches just to seal the wound and get the bleeding to stop, but the greater concern was the possibility of bleeding inside the brain and possible permanent brain damage. He wrapped her head again, relieved to see the bleeding had just about stopped—waiting, counting the minutes for the medics to fly in and get her to a hospital.

  He worried that they would not be in time.

  With all attention on Jamie, it took a while for anyone to notice that, uncannily, the violent rocking of the ship had stopped. The whales became very still, hovering right next to the ship, almost immobile, as if they knew that Jamie’s life was in the balance. Doc carefully secured the head brace before Sam and Domenico lifted Jamie onto the gurney. Doc strapped her in securely, and then, with Philippe’s help, Sam and Domenico carried her up to the main deck. Doc threw the medical gear back into the kit and brought it up with him, looking back at the bloodstain left behind, and an angry sea filled with giant whales, beyond.

  To Liz, who was still grappling with what had happened, Doc said, “Tell Mike to get one of the crew to come and scrub that out.”

  “I’m going with her,” Liz replied, ignoring his command.

  “You’ll have to ask the captain for permission.” Even though the ship was run informally, there was still a line of command, and she was in no position to make that decision.

  “I don’t need permission. Don’t let them fly without me.” She ran up the stairs after him.

  “Okay then, but make it fast—when that copter sets down, nobody’s going to be waiting on you.”

  She disappeared down the hall to her cabin. Sam and Domenico rolled Jamie into the entryway, just inside the main doorway, waiting—nervously watching the clock. Jimbo came back downstairs, secretly hoping some miracle had occurred, and that he would find Jamie back on her feet again, but knowing that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t need to ask Doc how she was holding up. After so many years, he knew how to read him. The urgency of Doc’s movements … the anguish in his eyes: Jamie was critical.

  To see Jamie Hastings, such a big presence, so full of life, lying there unconscious, close to slipping away … was surreal. No one spoke, for fear of giving voice to the thoughts they all were thinking. They stood around her, stunned and silent, each confronting his own conscience—especially Sam.

  He had never even given her a chance.

  Fin scratched persistently at the glass door, looking woefully out at his master from the mess hall, but Jimbo ignored him. Fin was more than he could deal with. As out of control as Fin was, he would be another bit of drama that nobody needed and then, Jimbo knew Fin would be traumatized at the sight of Jamie, so lifeless … so close to death.

  Jimbo wanted to go with her, to protect her, but he had no choice. The ship was in jeopardy. He was the captain—he had to stay and bring her out of it.

  Liz came racing back from her cabin, struggling to get into her jacket. She had an overstuffed overnight bag over her shoulder. “I’m going with her … she’s going to need someone.”

  Jimbo nodded in agreement. He went to the bar, opened the cabinet with his private stash, and poured himself a double shot of scotch, which he drank down in one hit. He set the glass down hard on the table and looked over at Doc, who he knew disapproved, to let him know not to even think about saying a word about it. Not even one word.

  “Set me up one of those, will you, Jimbo? Once Jamie’s on her way, I’m going to need one, too.”

  Jimbo took another glass from the bar and left the bottle and glasses on the table, knowing that would be a ritual they would share, in Jamie’s honor, once she was in the air.

  At last, the unmistakable drone of the helicopter whirred in the distance, and they all moved out, wheeling Jamie to the heliport pad at the stern, readying her for transfer. Overhead, the pilot and the doctor seated next to him stared down at the scene below them, incredulous. Who could believe what was actually happening down below? From their position, it looked as if the ship had become engulfed in a cluster of floating logs, but they had had the briefing—they knew these were whales: it looked like a hundred or more. It was like a scene out of a movie—pure science fiction—only it was all too real.

  “What in god’s name is going down?” said the pilot. He spoke into the radio, “Deepwater, we are coming in for a landing. Over.”

  Bobby sighed a breath of relief. “We are ready and waiting. Over.” He prayed they could set her down easy, without spooking the whales any more than they already were.

  The helicopter put down carefully on the ship’s helipad, and the men moved into fast action. The medic in the back opened the hatch; Jimbo and Sam lifted the gurney into the cabin. The medic hooked her up immediately to an intravenous drip and all manner of life-support equipment. Doc tried to brief them, but, with no time for anything but the most perfunctory details, the doctor waved him away—even one minute lost could mean her life.

  Jimbo reached in and took Jamie’s cold hand. “Come on, Jamie, hang in there. I’m ready to hear them whales speak,” he said.

  Liz turned to look back at Sam, oddly detached from him now, and took a seat in the back, next to Jamie’s gurney. They closed the hatch and took off immediately, while Jimbo and his crew looked on, left to deal with the insanity that surrounded them, and a desperate sense of foreboding that Jamie would not be coming back.

  Buckling her seatbelt, Liz looked out at the apocalyptic scene, an immense sense of dread overtaking her. As the wind from the helicopter blades splayed the water beneath them, she could see whales spy-hopping out of the waves. What she didn’t realize—what she couldn’t know—was that they were searching for the Emissary, knowing she was gone, and with her, a message from the deep that had not gone unheard … only unanswered.

  11

  A Near-Death Experience

  Within minutes of
landing on the roof of Vancouver General, the hospital emergency crew had Jamie racing down the elevator and into the emergency room, into the expert hands of the ER medical team. Liz tried to stay with her, but a nurse rushed her out into the waiting area, where she was helpless to do anything but that: wait … and maybe pray.

  An admissions clerk approached her almost immediately, with a pile of forms and bureaucratic red tape, but Liz explained she was not family and couldn’t provide any information. Jamie was all but a stranger to her, and she couldn’t answer even the standard questions: Did she have insurance? Who was the next of kin? What medications was she taking?

  She realized how shallow she’d been with Jamie. What did she really know about her? She’d just met her only three days earlier—even if it seemed a lifetime since she had seen the woman first drive up at the harbor. Did she have a family? Who needed to know that she was lying in the emergency room of a hospital unconscious, possibly dying? About all she could tell the admissions nurse was Jamie’s full name, that they were from the USOIL Deepwater research vessel, and that all billing and insurance matters would have to be handled through the head office, directly. For a girl who never stopped talking, she was curiously at a loss for words.

  She called Sam on his mobile, which he fortunately picked up, and told him to have someone call the hospital immediately, since the staff was already pushing for confirmation of Jamie’s insurance coverage, and—most of all—they needed someone to sign permission slips in case surgery was required. Sam reassured her that Doc was already taking care of it, and that they were talking with the appropriate people in headquarters, who were on the case as well. As for signing permissions, that would be her mandate, and her responsibility.

  In that same moment, the nurse nodded from behind the desk. “We’ve got them on the line now, thank you,” she said, calling over to Liz.

  Sam pressed to hear any news on Jamie’s condition. Everybody on the ship was still in shock and disbelief at what had happened, and they were waiting, worrying. All Liz could tell him was that Jamie was still unconscious and that they were working on her in the ER. Other than that, she had no information. It was still too soon, and all she or anyone else could do was wait.

  “Call me later,” she said, and then hung up, abruptly.

  While Jamie lay unconscious, being examined, tested, punctured, radiated, scanned, and transfused, her spirit floated out of her body: first, hovering over the room, watching the doctors working on her, from above the bed, and then floating higher … leaving the physicality of her existence all behind. She could still hear their voices, but as she lifted higher and her body awareness yielded to the pure light of spirit, she let go completely. The scene of her imminent death and the team’s desperate rush to save her faded from full color to pastel, and then it blanched completely, like a distant memory that was all but forgotten. As she drifted, all there was left to feel or to hear of the body and the room was the remote sound of the beeping monitor, reminding her that she was not completely dead—not yet. It perforated the veil between the dense, physical world, in which her physical form was encapsulated, and the expansive spirit realms, through which she floated, boundless, surrounded in the bliss of her own immortality, and the infinite light of Source.

  It was wondrous: leaving her body behind; letting go of the pain it held; letting go of the fear. She was swimming in crystalline waters, and everywhere around her, the spirits of dolphins and whales wove a musical nest in which they held her to the light, like an infant in its mother’s arms, singing to her eternal being. Everything was music: the opus of an endless symphony, the music of the spheres.

  The mother whale she’d linked with in New Zealand came to her. Jamie knew she would. She knew that their souls would reunite, and here they were, so soon after: soul-to-soul—ancient sisters. The magnificent whale poured back into Jamie’s essence the fountain of love she’d swum away in: that day when her time of going had come, and Jamie had seen her through. Jamie heard a voice, echoing through the ethers.

  “I am the messenger,” said the great whale. “Know me … I have so many things to show you.” With that, she swam beneath Jamie and lifted her to the surface, teaching her to breathe in the new world, as she did with her newborn, who lay by Jamie’s side on the back of the great mother. And then higher … and higher still, they rose together, breaching in the light of stars—surfing the cosmic waves.

  Through countless universes, where the stars, pinholes in the screen of sacred darkness, leaked the light of god through the illusion of nothingness, they rose into the infinite light, and journeyed in the ecstasy of Oneness. Only when they had known it in all its brilliance and glory, did she deliver Jamie to the dolphins. They were there, waiting to greet her on reentry into the deep, bouncing their sounds off her being, healing her with their music. She swam by their side, guided through a dark tunnel in the deepest waters, their eyes shining the way through. Always moving towards the bright light, Jamie delighted in the beauty of luminous sea spirits: she could see them all. Everywhere around her, their vaporous, glowing light bodies flowed in the current and the gentle sway of the sea. Celestial beings, angels were they—illuminating the fantastic voyage into the brilliance.

  Before her, she beheld a city of lights—a civilization of light beings, no less than heaven on earth. There were huge underwater ships, unlike anything she could have ever imagined: translucent worlds unto themselves, and so light, so fluid—like gigantic jellyfish, illuminated from within.

  Music abounded. The ocean was filled with celestial sounds—and the melodies of the whales.

  “Doctor … we’re losing her.”

  “Paddles.”

  “We’re flatline.”

  “Stand back.”

  The doctor placed the defibrillator around Jamie’s heart and hit her with a first bolt. No response.

  A monstrous blast ripped through Jamie’s ocean in that moment, and the music of the great whales turned to screams. Terror. The colony vanished instantaneously, faster than the sound itself.

  “Nothing, Doctor.”

  “Stand back.” He rubbed the paddles together, waited ten seconds, and then hit her again.

  A second blast ripped through the water. This one hit her in the back and she started sinking to the bottom, while everywhere around her, dolphins and whales lay dying, in agony. Where was she? Where was the light? What were these enormous microwave towers doing in her dream?

  She fell to the ocean floor, landing with a thump—just next to the hydrophone, which was poking out of the sand next to her. Lying there, back in the pain of her body, a voice spoke out.

  “This is really happening. It’s not a dream. It’s real. You are the chosen one … only you can help us now.”

  She reached out, but saw no one. “Take me with you …”

  “Help us silence the great drums … please help us.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “It’s not your time. You are needed. Wake up, now …”

  “Wake up, Jamie.”

  “We’ve got a pulse, Doctor.”

  “Jamie? Can you hear me? Open your eyes.”

  The attending physician, Dr. Arun Varja, was standing at the foot of the bed, reviewing her chart and discussing her condition with the nurse, when he noticed activity on the brain-wave monitor. “Jamie, can you hear me? Wake up; wake up, Jamie.”

  In her unconscious state, trapped between worlds, she saw herself, lying pale and lifeless; she saw the doctor and nurse who watched over her. She didn’t want to be back, but there she was. The great Humpback had delivered her back to life, for the time being. She was still there, by Jamie’s side. The whale’s giant tear fell over her hands like a gentle waterfall, before washing out into the sea. Jamie tried to open her eyes, but could not. The whale slowly faded away and she floated there, somewhere between life and death, unable to move forward or back.

  The hours passed, with no progress at all. Jamie was officially in coma,
with no response to any attempted stimuli from the doctor. Liz pushed for news, and finally was given word that Jamie was comatose, and still in ER. She went to the hospital cafeteria to have something to eat, waiting for a chance to speak with the doctor, and then returned to the waiting room, hoping for news. Into the evening, Liz waited, unsure how to move … what to do. In the unnerving setting of the hospital waiting room, she ran over the events that had led to the accident, reminded of the incident she’d had with the dolphins, and tried to put it together in her mind.

  The admitting nurse finally came to speak to her. “I’m sorry—there’s no change so far, I’m afraid,” she said. “It might be better for you if you return in the morning. It’s getting late.”

  “No, no thanks, I’ve got to be here,” Liz replied.

  “There’s a motel just up the street. Why not try to get some rest?”

  Liz thanked her again, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

  In the ER, meanwhile, the electroencephalograph showed a flurry of brain activity. The doctor was called in immediately.

  “Come on, Jamie. Open your eyes,” he said, loudly.

  Jamie could hear him, but she couldn’t open her eyes. She simply could not.

  “Jamie. Come on, girl, open those eyes.”

  Jamie found her way out of the haze of that gray zone she had been in for hours, and she awoke in that moment. She looked curiously at the doctor, disoriented, not realizing where she was or how she had gotten there.

  “Welcome back,” he said, patting her on the hand.

  “Where am I?” Even with her eyes open, she could barely see. Her vision was cloudy and blurred.