Lieutenant

by Lesli Richardson

  Day four dawns with us staring at Pat’s lifeless body, where it lays on the other side of the life raft as morning’s light reveals his passing. He lasted longer than I thought he would, because I was ready to murder him less than an hour into this, when he wanted to shoot our flares.

  I didn’t really want him dead, though. Maybe he’s with his wife, who died a row or two behind Mike.

  I feel shitty for thinking this, but at least Pat didn’t waste any of our damn flares. We haven’t fired any of them yet.

  “What do we do?” Sarah whispers as she stares at his body.

  “He can’t hear you,” I say, and George dryly chuckles, which earns us both a glare from Sarah. The two of us, George and me, have sort of banded together as co-leaders of this hellish little survival cruise. We’re both snarky. At forty-four, he is the second-youngest in the raft. He’s also the lieutenant governor of Tennessee, which doesn’t work the same as in Florida. He’s actually the Speaker of the Senate, who is by default, in their state, their lieutenant governor.

  Technically, he might currently be the actual governor of Tennessee, but whether or not the other man escaped the aircraft and survived is still up in the air, so to speak. That man, and his wife, insisted on heading toward the forward exits instead of aft, despite George trying to get them to come with him.

  It was George’s wife, Ellen, who perished in the window seat a row directly ahead of Mike.

  I notice he wears a woman’s wedding band and engagement ring on his left pinky, in addition to the wedding band on his left ring finger. I’m reasonably certain he took them off his wife’s body before escaping the cabin. I saw him sadly staring at a necklace he pulled from his pocket yesterday, before he kissed the charm on it and then tucked it back into his pocket.

  I’m not sure I’d be doing as good as he is, or even as good as Connie is, if I’d just lost Owen or Carter.

  Or, god help me, both of them.

  “We should wrap him in one of those blankets and leave him there,” Ivy finally says.

  “Like a baked potato?” George mutters, making me chuckle.

  We fist bump, ignoring Ivy and Sarah’s disapproving frowns. Lisa tsks at me.

  “We’re adrift in a goddamned life raft in the middle of the fucking ocean,” I snap at her. “If you think I’m not going to make jokes, then just jump your happy little ass out and swim for it and pick another life raft. Be my guest.” I look around. “Oh, wait—”

  Connie lays a hand on my arm. “Susa,” she implores, “please.”

  It’s the first words she’s spoken in over a day.

  I sigh. “Fine. We should search him, find out if he has a wallet, keep anything like that, take his jewelry, and give him a water burial.”

  “Why take his jewelry?” Ivy asks, giving me a suspicious glare.

  “If he’s got family who wants it.”

  Ivy blinks. “Oh.”

  “What? You think I want to steal his wedding band and hustle my ass down to a pawn shop? Look around!” I sit up on my knees and hold my arms out, sweeping them in a circle. “We’re in the middle of a fucking ocean!” I scream, close to snapping.

  “You don’t have to be rude,” Sarah scolds.

  Yep. I can see it now. When we get out of here, evvvvveryone will hear about the Florida biatch. I’m sure Kevin Markos will love to nod sympathetically and tsk-tsk with them as he gets them to recount how the mean woman yelled at them.

  If we get out of here.

  Please let us get out of here.

  “Susa’s right,” George says. “He’s going to decompose.”

  Ivy wrinkles her nose. “That’s disrespectful.”

  “It’s biology,” George says. “And as he decomposes, it puts us at risk of diseases.”

  He moves to do exactly what I suggested—stripping the body. I help. A few minutes later, we’ve recovered his wallet, passport, $22.48 in cash from his pockets, sugar-free breath mints—the rat bastard was holding out on us—his wedding ring, watch, a dead cell phone, and one of those small souvenir pocketknives, with Pat emblazoned on it, likely purchased at our last stop. Since we were on charter flights, they weren’t dinging us for little shit like that.

  “We might need that,” I whisper, and George nods and pockets it. The rest of the stuff, except for the breath mints, we put in one of the zipper cases for the rescue packs. The mints go into the community pot, which isn’t much.

  “What about his clothes?” Allen asks.

  I might regret this later, but I shake my head. “I don’t want them. Does anyone else need something?”

  They shake their heads.

  I share a glance with George and we realize it’s time.

  “Don’t tell my voters, but I’m a hard-core atheist,” he whispers, nearly cracking me up. “You want to say something?”

  “I’m not…anything,” I admit. “But I can wing it.” I clear my throat. Maybe it’ll help rehab my rep for later. “Heavenly spirit, we release Pat to you, and hope his soul has found its way to whatever eternal reward he believed in. Please let him go in peace, and…blessings. Or whatever.” I admit I sort of stumbled at the end, not knowing what else to say. “Amen,” I add.

  Soft amens from the others echo through the raft. Then George and I roll Pat out of the raft through a dip in the side where a mounting ladder is. There, his body slips into the water with a gentle splash.

  As we watch Pat’s body slowly disappear, sinking below the surface, George sighs and catches my eye. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” he whispers…

  And I cackle. Making him smile, at least.

  Whelp, there went my rehabbed rep.

  Carter and Owen would be laughing with me.

  That thought nearly drives me insane with grief, so I remain there for a moment, kneeling at the raft’s side and staring at where Pat disappeared under the surface. I dig my nails into my palms and ride it out, the pain helping bring me back to myself as I raise my gaze and look out over the endless expanse of ocean.

  Stay.

  Safe.

  * * * *

  We lose Ivy in the pre-dawn hours of day five. The sixty-four year old doesn’t tell us she has a heart condition until a few hours after Pat’s burial at sea. She also doesn’t have her medication with her. She admits she’s been having chest pains off and on since we hit the raft, but they’re getting worse now, including her jaw and shoulder now hurting, burning like they’re on fire.

  The heart attack doesn’t kill her immediately, unfortunately. She suffers for hours as we try to comfort her, listen to her sob and grieve for her husband, who was the governor of Virginia. She lost sight of him in the cabin, had gotten separated from him when he shoved her into the center aisle first and she ended up being carried aft by the press of other passengers. She doesn’t know if he made it out.

  We promise her we’ll talk to him, tell him, and their children and grandchildren, everything she tells us.

  It’s almost a relief when she finally lapses into a coma and an eerie silence fills the raft, broken only by the sound of the wind and water lapping against the inflated sides.

  I keep two fingers on her throat, checking her pulse. When I find she has none, reflexively I move to start CPR, but it’s George who stops me by reaching over and gently grabbing my arm as he slowly and grimly shakes his head.

  He’s right, of course. Even if I could resuscitate her, how do we keep her alive?

  It’s kinder this way.

  Since George and I are the two youngest and most physically fit, and we’ve sort of taken over and taken charge, we’re now also apparently the official body-deal-withers. I mean, we’re not undertakers or morticians, right?

  Do they have a title for this shit?

  All I know is that another good reason to remove bodies quickly, besides risk of disease, is that they’re not a grisly reminder of what likely awaits the rest of us.

  Or, god fucking help me, yes, I thought this, we won’t be tempted to eat th
em.

  Heavy is the head that wears the fucking crown, I suppose.

  As George and I roll her body over the side after removing her jewelry and saying a brief prayer, I start recalculating the remaining water supply in my purse and on the raft. I can’t help it. As George and I exchange a glance, I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.

  Who’s next?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Carter

  The next few days pass in an exhaustion-blurred haze. Less than twenty-four hours after this shit-storm hits my life, we’ve landed in Manila. We’re put up in a decent hotel there, with the press strictly corralled and kept away from us.

  Our main representative is a guy named Ocampo, a local official who does his best to strike a tone between cautiously hopeful and grimly realistic.

  The seas are rough, and persistent cloud cover from typhoon systems training through the area are hampering aerial search efforts. But the using the plane’s last known location, triangulated with its rate of descent and direction of travel, they put boats in the area and map out a grid to search. Forty-eight hours after the plane disappears from radar, they discover and home in on the black box’s ping, and locate the wreckage in two hundred feet of water.

  It’s still too rough to mount a recovery operation, though.

  Meanwhile, nineteen bodies are recovered, including that of the pilot and co-pilot—none of them Susa, Connie, or Mike.

  All of them drowned, half of them wearing life vests.

  From that, and the lack of trauma on their bodies, it means they likely escaped the cabin after the plane ditched, but before it sank, and they drowned later.

  I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.

  Late on day three, a life raft is located with eighteen survivors. My brief flash of hope is cruelly extinguished when I learn Susa’s not among the survivors. It was from the forward port-side exit, and none of the survivors recall seeing Connie, Mike, or Susa. Also, four more bodies are discovered.

  Not them.

  Day four, two more bodies—not them.

  Day five, two of the slides are located, one with the body of a flight attendant still on it. She’d used strips of fabric ripped from her skirt to tie her left wrist to the slide.

  The other slide is empty.

  Day six, two more bodies.

  Followed by a body a day—still not them—being recovered until day nine.

  Day nine, a second life raft is located by an Australian naval vessel. The life raft is overturned and empty.

  Day ten, the seas finally settle enough they can get an ROV down to the wreckage, where more bodies are spotted inside.

  Including Mike’s.

  I ask officials to let me break the news to Mike and Connie’s two sons, who have made their way to Manila with help from Benchley. The men had gone to bed for the night when Mike’s identity is confirmed by me. I recognize his clothes and watch from family pictures I’ve seen over the past couple of days. It looks like he died in the crash, or in whatever caused the crash, because he’s still belted in his seat.

  There is no sign of Connie or Susa.

  Day eleven begins the start of recovery operations to retrieve the black box and cockpit recorder, as well as the bodies. It’s decided they’ll try to float the plane, so that clusterfuck happens.

  Two divers die when an airbag shifts and pins them under a wing, but I don’t get a say in this. Other family members, including Mike’s sons, want them to float the wreckage and recover the rest of the bodies and personal effects, instead of using ROVs or just trying to ID them and leave them.

  I…get it. I do.

  Along with other family members of unaccounted for passengers, I fade back and stay quiet, hoping for resolution.

  I try to talk to Owen at least twice a day, his morning and my evening, and vice-versa, through video chat. I talk and text with Dray several times a day to get reports.

  Dray should get a fucking raise for what he’s dealing with.

  If I was chief of staff for any other governor, Dray would also be getting a promotion, to my job, but I can’t abandon my boy.

  I won’t.

  As long as Owen is in office, I will be there with him.

  But as we cross the two-week mark and there is no sign of Connie’s or Susa’s bodies…

  I’m a realist.

  I’m almost completely out of patience and self-control.

  And my heart is…

  My heart, which I thought had been completely destroyed in Germany…

  That heart, which returned when I met Owen, which only healed more with Susa’s love…

  That heart, which I thought was full and complete?

  That heart is completely broken.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Owen

  Her.

  It becomes my pulse, my background noise, the filter through which everything first must pass before making it to my conscious brain.

  Even talking to Carter doesn’t erase it.

  Her.

  I’m no idiot. I know even from halfway around the globe that Carter is managing me.

  It’s what he hasn’t said to me yet that I try not to focus on.

  I know the odds.

  I take a screenshot of the last series of texts we exchanged with Susa and stare at it every day.

  I spend hours looking at a picture of her and me that Carter took of us last Christmas. She’s sitting in my lap and wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts and a red bow I’d just playfully stuck on her head, and we’re sitting in front of the Christmas tree in the mansion. The smile on our faces as we stare into each other’s eyes tells a story of two people very much in love.

  I have the security detail stop by the townhouse every day. Ostensibly, so I can bring in the mail for Carter and Susa, but what I do when I unlock their front door and walk inside is go upstairs and press my face against Her pillow. And His, but mostly Hers.

  I’m afraid, because I think it smells less like her now than it did, and I don’t know what will happen when I can’t smell her there anymore.

  I’ve started using her shampoo every day.

  Every day, after I smell her pillow, I set my phone’s timer, drop into Devotion on the floor next to her side of the bed, and spend the next five minutes crying.

  Once my timer goes off, I wash my face, blow my nose, use eye drops to help take some of the red out, and return downstairs so my detail can drive me to the mansion.

  The troopers are professionals and never mention my red eyes or puffy nose when I emerge from Carter and Susa’s townhouse.

  Dray is amazing. When he realizes that I’m not eating before I arrive at or after I leave the office, he starts bringing food in for me. Sometimes smoothies, sometimes more, if I can handle it. He makes sure I’m at least taking in some calories during the day, and hounds me every bit as hard as I know Carter would, if he were there.

  I give one official statement about the crash, on the first day, a statement that Carter drafted with Dray’s help and signed off on before the charter from LAX took off.

  It was short, concise, and I still managed to break down in tears before I finished reading it.

  I don’t watch the news. When I asked Dray, he said that clip, of me crying, was looped on nearly every channel for four days straight, the summation of collective grief, until the survivors were found and bumped it off the top of the charts.

  I don’t want this anymore.

  I can’t do this.

  Maybe if Carter was here, yes, but I can’t do this. Not like this.

  Carter hasn’t said it yet, but I suspect he thinks she’s gone.

  I know she’d want me to continue, to run for re-election, but if she’s really gone…

  If Carter tells me to, I will, especially if he says we have to do it for her memory.

  But…

  All I want to do is curl up in Carter’s arms and cry.

  Just…

  Cry.

  Esp
ecially when one of the last memories I have of us making love is from that night, when Carter called me to the townhouse, when she finally broke down and I had to be strong for her, holding her, trying to love the grief from her soul, letting her use my body in a different way than usual, trying to be the one to pull her soul back together when she spent so many years being the one to tie my loose parts in place.

  She gave me a ring that I wear on my left ring finger. It doesn’t look like a wedding band, but that’s what it is, to me. Just like the ring I wear on my right finger is a wedding band from Carter. The ring she gave me is black with silver Celtic knots scrolling around it.

  Inside, it simply says, MINE.

  I hope she understands how much I love her.

  I hope, if I end up giving up and leaving office early, that she forgives me, wherever she is.

  I hope, despite his own grief, that Carter is strong enough to keep me living, because, honestly?

  I really don’t want to.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Susa

  Sarah is seventy-two on the night of day eleven, when I watch her slip off her life jacket, remove her rings and necklace, and carefully ease herself through one of the cutouts where the boarding ladders are located. It’s the cutout closest to where I’m sitting.

  I’m the only other one awake. I’ve started trying to sleep during the days, under a mylar blanket, for what little shade it gives me, and staying up at night. It helps me not feel as thirsty—or miserably sick to my stomach—and I usually take a night watch. It also allows me to sneak sips of water. I’m down to four bottles in my purse. I’ve been sharing with Connie and George, swapping out bottles of rain water with bottles of fresh water. I don’t know if they’ve caught on or not. If they have, they don’t say anything.

  We’ve been lucky that intermittent rains allow us to capture enough salt-tinged rain water in the mylar blankets to refill our bottles, but our luck will eventually run out. We are careful to only drink a full bottle each when we have enough collected in a blanket to refill them, and all the empties are full.