by Cap Daniels
“I can appreciate that,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I can do. I can put us well within chopper range of the canal and still stay out of sight. I’ll get our coordinates to Leo, and he can put his Huey on my helipad. Meanwhile, you come up with a plan to exfiltrate your man and do what the doctor says. That’s an order.”
“I don’t take orders very well,” I said.
“No problem,” said the captain. “I’ll have the bosun drop your dinghy back in the water, and you two can be on your merry way. But as long as you’re on my damned ship, you’ll follow my damned orders.”
I’d apparently met my match. “Aye, Captain. I’ll do what the doctor says . . . within reason.”
The return trip to sick bay was much more pleasant than the trek to the bridge, primarily because it included an elevator ride.
“When should I expect my vision to return to normal?”
“It’s impossible to say for sure,” said Dr. Shadrack, “but I plan to send you back into the chamber for another dive either this evening or first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Another chamber ride?”
“I’m afraid so. Hyperbaric medicine isn’t an instant fix for anything. We’ll continue the treatments until you stop showing improvement. Your condition is complicated by your physical injuries. We simply don’t know what percentage of your symptoms are related to the concussion of the explosion, and what percentage is strictly due to the rapid decompression you experienced.”
The feeling of dread over being shoved back in that big glass coffin sent my heart rate soaring.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” I protested. “I don’t have time to lie in that chamber when we’ve got a man out there relying on us to get him out.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “You’re going back out there to recover. Your man isn’t an option right now. You can’t even climb a flight of stairs without nearly passing out. What good do you think you’re going to be out there trying to rescue anybody?”
I surrendered. “Fine, put me back in the chamber now.”
20
On a Leash
The most bizarre things happen in the human mind when it’s removed from its natural environment. My ears popped and my sinuses protested as I headed back to simulated depth in the chamber I so loathed. I was imprisoned, encapsulated, and infuriated.
The dive, as they called it, consisted of a somewhat rapid pressurization until I’d reached a pressure equivalent to that of being one hundred fifty feet underwater. After that, I’d spend the allotted time before beginning my ascent. That bottom time was the arena in which my brain refused to relax. While confined to the chamber, I thought about every problem that could arise.
What if the boat sinks? What if there’s a fire on board? What if the doctor forgets I’m in the chamber?
That’s when I remembered my water bottles. Therein lay the solution for my anxiety. I squirted a long swallow into my throat and tried to relax, but relaxation required three more squirts.
I wondered who’d arrive during my psychedelic trip this time. Would it be Anya again? Or maybe my father. I knew enough about the mind to know the hallucinations weren’t real, but I still wanted them to come.
My eyes became heavy, and I watched the fields of blurred white fade to black. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t recognize the apparition standing just beyond the glass. He was holding a clipboard in one hand and a pen poised just above the paper in the other. He stared at me and pursed his lips.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He simply continued to stare.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
Still no answer.
His hair was short, almost as if he were military, but his posture and stance made me doubt he was a soldier. I pounded on the glass with my fist. “Answer me! Who are you?”
The man flinched and took a step back. He turned as if to check whether anyone else had seen me beating on the glass. I followed his gaze into the empty room. He and I were alone, but he had an enormous advantage. He could leave. I was stuck.
Instead of scurrying away, he picked up the handset. “Mr. Fulton, are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right. I’m stuck in this coffin and trying to figure out who you are.”
“I’m Benny Collins. I’m a nurse. How are you feeling?”
“I can see you. Am I awake, Benny Collins?”
He continued staring at me, and then his eyes narrowed into a slow, deliberate squint. I could see the lines around his eyes and the tiny hairs of his eyebrows.
“Yeah, you’re awake. Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”
“Three,” I said. “And the back of your clipboard reads, research vessel Lori Danielle, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”
He turned the clipboard and studied the back. “Yeah, that’s right. It does. I think I should go get the doctor.”
“Yes, I think you should,” I replied.
A few minutes later, Dr. Shadrack appeared beside the chamber with an eye chart in his hand.
“I hear you’re trying to convince Benny that you can see,” he said.
“Yep, that’s me,” I said. “Always pretending to have superpowers like being able to read, Dexter Shadrack, M.D.”
The doctor looked down at the embroidery on his lab coat and tossed the eye chart aside. “I guess we won’t be needing that.”
“Dexter? That must have been hell in high school.”
He smiled. “Yes sir, it was. That’s why I went to medical school. Doctor sounds a lot better than Dexter.”
“Tell me something there’s no way I could know,” I said.
“What?” He furrowed his brow.
“I think this might be a hallucination, so I need you to tell me something my brain doesn’t know. I can’t learn new information from a hallucination—only from a source beyond my own psyche.”
“Psych major?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Okay, then, psych major. The serial number of the chamber you’re in is RSI3200561, and my middle name is Rosenblum.”
“Dexter Rosenblum Shadrack? Are you serious?” I tried not to laugh.
He pressed his Florida driver’s license against the glass.
“Whatever was causing your vision to fail was clearly associated with your decompression sickness, and this second dive seems to have resolved it. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to see when we bring you up, but it’s a very good sign.”
“Well, get me out of here, and let’s find out. Besides, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“I can’t just yank you out of there,” he said. “I have to bring you back up slowly, and you’re out of luck for a bathroom. You should’ve thought of that before you insisted on going for a walk. If you’d stayed in bed, you’d still have your catheter, but now you’ll have to wait at least an hour for me to resurface you.”
I lifted my black plastic water bottle and removed the lid. There was, perhaps, three or four ounces of the narcotic-laced water left in the bottle. I deliberately inverted the cylinder, poured the water into the chamber, and then refilled his bottle. “Take all the time you need, Doc. As long as I don’t get this bottle and the fresh one confused, I can stay here for a while.”
He shook his head and went to work turning dials and recording readings from the gauges. According to the clock on the wall, which I could clearly see, it took fifty-two minutes to depressurize the chamber and return me to the atmospheric pressure of the world around me.
The doctor pulled my gurney from the chamber. “How do you feel?”
“Much better than before I went in,” I said.
I tossed him the bottle I’d filled, and he swatted it from the air with the back of his hand, sending it rolling across the floor.
He held up the eye chart ten feet in front of me. “Now, read the smallest line you can.”
I made out all the letters on the 20/40 line, but that was the best I could d
o.
“That’s great,” he said. “I was afraid I’d have to deal with you being blind and an asshole, but now my workload has been cut in half.”
I endured a battery of pokes and prods from the doctor and discovered I wasn’t badly injured. I was just bruised, beaten-up, and extremely sore. There were no broken bones, and all the parts that were supposed to be on the inside still were.
“I don’t have to go back in that chamber, do I?”
Dr. Shadrack grimaced. “You don’t have to do anything, but if there are residual symptoms from your DCS, continued recompression is the only method of remediating them. Continued recompression will not hurt you. There are no potential risks; only potential benefits. If you choose not to get back in the chamber, the DCS symptoms you’re currently experiencing, if there are any, aren’t going to improve.”
“Since we now know my blindness was part of the DCS, will it continue to improve if I go back in?”
“I’ve been practicing hyperbaric medicine for a long time, and I’ve learned one very important thing. Sometimes we just don’t know, but more important than that, we do know how to find out. We simply shove you back in there after a few hours of rest and watch what happens.”
“When can I go back in the chamber?”
“I think we should wait at least eight hours, maybe more, but that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Our bodies aren’t designed for compression and decompression. It’s unexpected stress that our body doesn’t know how to handle. I can put you back in now, but it would be better if you get a good night’s sleep and some nourishment before another treatment.”
“Okay,” I said. “One more treatment in the morning. Do you know where Clark is?”
The doctor checked his watch. “It’s just past six, so he’s probably having dinner in the crew mess. Follow that corridor. You’ll see and hear the crew mess amidships. Eat whatever they’re serving, and I’ll get the quartermaster to set you up in a berth. I’m sure you’re tired of sleeping down here in sick bay.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
I rinsed off in the sick bay head and wondered why the shower on a ship that size was smaller than the one on my catamaran. Clark had said our gear was somewhere aboard the ship, but I had no idea how to find it, so I searched through a locker and borrowed a pair of scrubs that almost fit.
I found Clark in the crew mess devouring what I later learned was his second plate of chicken and dumplings, green beans, and cornbread.
“Looks like Cracker Barrel is catering tonight,” I said.
Cornbread crumbs clung to the corners of his mouth. “Hey! How you feeling?”
I took a seat beside him. “I’m doing okay. My vision’s returning. I’m up to twenty-forty, which isn’t good, but it’s better than this morning.”
“Hang on. I’ll get you a plate.” Clark hopped to his feet, then he came back with a heaping plate for me and a third one for him. “These dumplings are really good. It’s good to see you up and about.”
“Where are we?” I forked the first mouthful.
He looked around, presumably to make sure no one was within earshot. “We’re on Isla Cebaco, south of Santiago.”
In my mind, I drew the map of the peninsula west of Panama City and tried to calculate how far we’d traveled. “That’s got to be two hundred miles from the canal.”
Between bites, he said, “Yeah, something like that. Captain Stinnett thought it would be a good idea to get us as far away from the action as possible.”
“What’s his story?”
“I don’t know, but I think he’s an old agency guy who’d rather be running boats than playing spook. I can’t quite figure him out, but there’s more to him than meets the eye.”
He was right about the dumplings. They were amazing. It felt good to get some real food in my stomach. I was still a little groggy from the narcotics and sore from the explosion, but I was steadily improving.
“Any word from Leo?”
Clark wiped his chin with what was left of his napkin. “Oh, yeah. He’ll be here just after daybreak tomorrow.”
“Is he bringing that lying Javier with him? I owe that guy a few more broken fingers . . . at least.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I don’t think he was lying. I think he told us what he knew, but his knowledge of the overall operation was pretty limited.”
“You may be right,” I admitted, “but if you were the one who’d been blown up and stuck in that tube for six hours, you’d want to break some fingers, too.”
Clark sighed deeply. “I don’t think I can eat another bite, but, man oh man, that was good.”
I glanced at the serving line. “Are you sure? That looks like peach cobbler they’re serving up.”
Clark turned his head. “Well, like Skipper says, there’s always room for a little dessert.”
“I’ll get it,” I said. “You might burst if you try to move.”
He didn’t protest, and I returned with two bowls of cobbler that quickly disappeared.
“I don’t know who the cook is on the tub, but something tells me he’s from the South.”
“I think you may be onto something.”
A young woman in jeans and a tight-fitting black T-shirt strode into the mess hall.
“Oh, there you are, Mr. Fulton. I’m Christine Billings. I’m the quartermaster. Dr. Shadrack wants me to make sure you’re comfortable for the night.”
Clark’s eyes lit up. Christine wasn’t the typical seagoing quartermaster. She was petite with deep brown eyes and long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her olive complexion made it impossible to determine if she was South American or maybe a Pacific Islander.
“I’m sure the doctor wants me to be comfortable, too,” said Clark, standing and extending his hand.
Christine smiled. “Nice try, Mr. Johnson. Tonight’s not your night, but stick around. You never know what tomorrow might bring.”
How does he do that?
I stood and offered my hand. “Thank you, Christine. Anything is fine. I just need somewhere soft for a few hours.”
“I have just the spot,” she said. “The executive officer is ashore working on a grant proposal for an upcoming research project, so his cabin is available. You’ll be very comfortable up there. The cabin is next door to the captain’s. It’s quiet, so you’ll be able to get some sleep. My cabin is on deck four amidships port side. Come find me when you’re finished here, and I’ll show you to the XO’s cabin.”
Her accent didn’t match her look. She was undoubtedly American.
“Deck four, port side, amidships,” Clark said.
She pointed a finger at him. “You behave and stay down here. I’ll come find you if I run out of ways to amuse myself.”
He pretended to pout. She pretended to ignore him.
“We’re finished,” I said. “Let’s go take a look now. Oh, and I could use some clothes. Do you know where our gear is?”
We returned our plates to the galley and followed Christine into the passageway.
“I’ll have someone bring your gear to your cabin,” she said. “And he can come, but only if you keep him on a leash.”
“I’ll do my best, but he chews through every leash I put on him.”
Christine keyed her radio and spoke into the mic in a language I didn’t recognize.
“Your gear will be here soon. Make yourself at home. The doctor will be up to check on you in a bit. And you”—she paused and stuck her finger in Clark’s chest—“you can stop by later if you have any questions about the ship . . . or whatever.”
Clark turned his head and exaggeratedly chewed on an imaginary leash. The gorgeous young quartermaster tried not to laugh.
21
Are You on My Boat?
Clark backed into the passageway outside my cabin. “I’ll make sure Christine kicks me out in time so I can wake you up before Leo arrives in the morning.”
“Feel free to sleep in,” I said. “I’m taking ano
ther ride in Dr. Shadrack’s magic coffin bright and early tomorrow. I’ll come find you when I resurface. Oh, and don’t hurt your back. I have a feeling we’re going to need our strength.”
“I’ve never hurt my back.”
“Yeah, well, before yesterday, you’d never had the bends either, Romeo.”
Clark offered a mock salute. “Aye aye, XO.” He disappeared down the passageway.
A deckhand arrived with two rolling Pelican cases. “Is there anything else you need, sir?”
I laughed at being called sir. “No, thank you. This is all I need. Did you happen to take the other two cases to my partner down on deck three?”
“No, sir, but I’m headed down there next.”
“Do me a favor and tell him the quartermaster said she’s sorry, but she has to stand watch tonight.”
He scratched his temple. “Okay, sir, I’ll tell him. You can ring three-three-four on the XO’s phone if you need anything overnight. I’m on watch until oh-four-hundred, and my name’s Cricket.”
Had he been a bellman, I would’ve tipped him, but I doubted that was proper protocol on a ship skippered by a former CIA agent.
The doctor arrived just as Christine said he would. He gave me pills to help me sleep and then rechecked my vision. 20/30. Improving. It must’ve been the peach cobbler.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow,” I told him. “I’d like to get in the chamber as early as possible.”
The doctor looked at his wristwatch. It was a Vostok Komandirskie, a Russian naval officer’s watch, nearly identical to Dr. Richter’s.
“Nice watch,” I said. “I have a friend who has one just like it.”
Dr. Shadrack smiled. “I’m sure you do.”
Is everyone a spook?
He pulled the sleeve of his lab coat down over his watch. “I’ll be in sick bay at oh-three-forty-five.”
I set a windup alarm clock for three thirty and fell asleep almost instantly.
* * *
Dr. Shadrack pulled me from the chamber after two hours, and I resurfaced to find Clark pacing the deck and incessantly checking his watch.
“It’s about time,” he said. “Leo will be here just after sun-up. That’s less than ten minutes.”
