A Star to Steer Her By

by Beth Anne Miller

  The people on the boat were shark finning—luring in the sharks, hacking off their fins, and then tossing them back to die. It was a horrifying example of animal cruelty and also had an enormous environmental impact. And, like any other kind of poaching, it was illegal. But shark fins were a delicacy in some countries, so greedy bastards like the people on the boat above didn’t care about the environmental impact or the torture of innocent animals.

  And to be honest, right at that moment I didn’t particularly care, either. We were surrounded by a swarm of sharks frenzied by the blood in the water. It was only a matter of time before we became chum.

  A tiger shark swooped in from the left and bit into a struggling reef shark that was ten feet away. Another one came in from the right and clamped on to the dying shark’s tail. The two tigers tore at the reef shark, each shaking its head vigorously to tear off a chunk. Still others joined in the fray.

  Pieces of shark were everywhere, floating in a bloody cloud. Something bumped my leg, and I looked down to see another tiger swim right between my fins.

  I screamed into my regulator. I was hyperventilating, and it felt like my heart was going to burst.

  There were muffled shouts from the boat, and a sickening thought suddenly occurred to me. I slowly turned to look at the bright yellow line leading up from the reel in Tristan’s right hand to the equally bright red-and-white dive flag that bobbed at the surface, a “witnesses are right beneath me” sign to the guys in the boat. Tristan stared at me, his eyes wide with horror.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! What was that? There were little jets in the water, zipping toward us…

  Holy shit, they were shooting at us.

  Tristan dropped the reel and yanked on my hand, and we turned back the way we came, kicking like hell. We descended as we swam—it would take us out of the range of their bullets, which I knew would slow down as they hit the water. The engines rumbled overhead. Oh God, please let them be getting out of here and not coming after us!

  Moments later, Tristan jerked, then his hand slipped from mine. I turned to see what was wrong…

  Blood. Streaming behind Tristan. His right hand clutched his left biceps, where swirls of blood trickled through his fingers.

  Oh God, he’d been shot! And there was a shitload of frenzied sharks behind us! I looked into Tristan’s wide eyes. We have to get back to the boat!

  A dark shape came up behind him, just a few feet away.

  The figure resolved into the conical snout of a shark. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t escape. Its bloody mouth gaped open, its black eyes vanished behind the white nictitating membrane. I could see every razor-sharp tooth as it drew closer…

  This was not happening! Not again!

  I ripped the dive knife from the sheath strapped to Tristan’s leg. Shoving him aside, I thrust the knife up with all my strength. There was resistance as the steel blade pierced the underside of the shark, and then I jerked the knife down and watched the white flesh part and a river of blood pour out.

  I turned back to Tristan, whose eyes were starting to look glassy. He was losing too much blood. I grabbed his BCD and started kicking, as hard as I could. We had to get away from the shark I’d just cut open. I dared a glance behind me.

  The wounded shark was being torn apart by three others. I felt a pang of guilt for what I’d done, but I’d had no choice.

  We rounded the corner of the reef and started to ascend. It was getting harder to swim now, as if something was holding me back. I looked at Tristan, and my heart stopped.

  His eyes were closed, and his hand had fallen away from his bleeding arm. He was sinking, his limp body pulling me down. Oh God, no!

  I had to get him to the surface. I didn’t know if he’d be able to keep the regulator in his mouth if he was unconscious.

  I jammed the knife into the strap of my BCD in case I needed it again, then released our weight belts and quickly pumped air into our BCDs. I dragged him upward, praying that he’d only passed out.

  We broke the surface. I pulled the regulator from his slack mouth, pumped more air into his BCD so he would float, and ripped off his mask. Was he breathing? I held my hand in front of his face. A slight draft of air wafted over my wet hand. Thank God!

  I shook his uninjured arm. “Tristan! Tristan, open your eyes!” But he didn’t respond, and I couldn’t wait. We had to get moving. I looked around for the boat. There! Maybe a hundred feet away. I got behind him and tried to get my arm around his chest. But the tank and BCD were too bulky for me to hold him and keep pressure on his arm.

  I had to ditch his tank. I sliced through the straps that secured it to the BCD, glad I’d kept the knife. I unclipped the hoses from the BCD and shoved the tank and regulator away.

  I stretched my left hand around his biceps and held on as tightly as I could, trying to keep pressure on the wound as well as hold on to him, and began to swim. Thankfully, the BCD kept him afloat—there was no way I could have towed his dead weight otherwise.

  I stopped to adjust my grip, pressing harder on the wound. He grunted in pain. Was he waking up? Oh, please…

  “Tristan? Tristan, can you hear me?” No response. I had to keep going—there was no telling if the sharks had followed us. I started swimming again, ignoring the burning in my muscles.

  Finally, finally, we reached the boat. How was I going to get him out of the water? I’d have to climb out first and then pull him aboard from the swim platform. But I couldn’t hold on to him and get myself out of the water.

  I had to wake him.

  I tipped his head back on to my shoulder and splashed some water on his face. Nothing. “Tristan! I need you to wake up. Come on, Tristan. I did most of the work here, but I need you to wake the hell up so you can help me get you on the boat!” I lightly slapped his cheek, then did it again. “Dammit, Tristan, please!” I said, trying to hold back a sob.

  His eyelids twitched, then slowly opened. “Red?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  Thank God! “I’m here, Tristan.”

  He blinked a few times, then opened his eyes again, this time looking a little more focused. And alarmed.

  I brushed a lock of his hair off his brow. “Listen to me, Tristan. You were shot in the arm.”

  “I remember that…and, Christ, I remember you knifing that shark,” he muttered, wincing. “Where are we now?”

  “We just got to the boat. I’m going to need you to help me get you out of the water. Can you do that?”

  He blinked. “You towed me all the way to the boat?”

  “Yeah, and we can discuss how awesome I am later. Right now, we need to get on the damn boat.”

  “I think I can do it.”

  He faced the boat and grabbed the bars of the swim platform with both hands. It was a weird parody of our first dive, when he had to help me out of the water. With his teeth tightly clenched, he hoisted himself out of the water. I crawled up beside him and pulled off our fins, chucking them up on the deck. Leaving him to rest for a minute, his hand clutching his wound, I stepped onto the deck and shucked my BCD, then returned to him and removed his.

  I stepped over him so I was on his uninjured side, and bent to slide my arm around his waist. “Okay, MacDougall, help me get your sorry ass up. I can’t be doing all the work here.”

  “You’re doin’ such a braw job of savin’ my ass that I didn’t think you needed me.” His white face and strained voice belied his teasing words.

  I stared into his glassy eyes. “I do need you, Tristan. So come on, up you go.”

  I got him onto the deck and sat him down against the gunwale under the awning. I grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to him. “Drink.”

  I reached behind him to unzip his wetsuit, then carefully worked it down his arms. When I started to pull the neoprene away from the wound, he gasped, and I looked into his pain-filled eyes.

  He smiled weakly. “You know, I’ve spent a fair amount of time imagining
you stripping me, Red. But it was never quite like this.”

  “I like to be unpredictable,” I quipped. “Now hold still.” I carefully peeled back the sleeve. There was a ragged tear in his tanned skin, and the wound was still bleeding. I peered around to look at the underside of his arm, and my breath caught. “Tristan, the bullet is still in there.”

  “Aye, I know. You’ll need to stop the bleeding. Do you still have my knife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cut a long strip from the wetsuit sleeve.” I did as he said. “Okay, tie it around my arm above the wound.”

  I wrapped the strip of neoprene around his upper arm and pulled it tight. “It has to be tighter,” he said. He took an end in his free hand. “Let’s try again, now.”

  With him pulling one side, his arm quivering from the strain, and me pulling the other, we got it as tight as possible. “Good, now tie it off.” I quickly knotted it, using a slipknot so it could be released easily.

  “You’re doing great, Red.”

  He was so very pale. “We have to get you to the hospital. I don’t know how much blood you’ve lost. Try to hold your arm up over your head.”

  I found the keys and started the engine, then ran to the stern and hauled up the anchor, dropping it to the deck with a thunk.

  “Do you know how to drive the boat?” he asked.

  I finally allowed myself a small smile. “Please. I’ve lived in the Florida Keys all my life. I’ve been driving boats like this since I was old enough to see over the bow. Brace yourself, MacDougall. This is going to get bumpy.”

  I turned us left out of the cove, and gunned the engine, pushing the throttle as far as it would go. The little boat bounced and slammed against the surface of the water. It had to be excruciating for Tristan, but he didn’t say a word. After a particularly hard slam, I looked over to see how he was holding up.

  His eyes were closed and his head was slumped on his shoulder. Shit! “Tristan! Tristan, wake up!” But he didn’t move.

  I scanned the shore to the left. There! It was a beach that had a bunch of people on it. I could see the thatched roof of some sort of snack stand or bar. Surely someone there had a phone.

  There was a roped-off swimming area. I headed straight for the beach, aiming the little boat to the outside of the ropes so I wouldn’t kill anyone. The people on the beach looked up in surprise at the sound of the engine, then scattered, probably thinking I was a crazy drunken tourist. I barely remembered to throttle down before the hull scraped the sand and eased to a stop.

  People came running over, screaming at me, including a man in uniform—a cop or security guard of some sort. “Please, call an ambulance!” I shouted. “My…boyfriend’s been shot! Please!”

  I shouted it over and over until the uniformed man finally stopped yelling and actually listened to me. He came around the side of the boat and peered over the gunwale. When he saw Tristan, unconscious and bloody, he whipped a phone from his pocket and called an ambulance.

  It was maybe fifteen minutes before I heard the sirens, and Tristan still hadn’t come to. The ambulance pulled right onto the sand and two paramedics came running over with a stretcher. Within moments, they loaded Tristan into the back of the ambulance and I climbed in after them. The uniformed man, who had turned out to be a security guard, promised he’d call the authorities and take care of the rental boat.

  During the ride to the hospital, I held Tristan’s hand and tried not to worry. The paramedic assured me that although his blood pressure was a little low, it wasn’t dangerously so.

  We screeched to a stop in front of the hospital and they whisked him away, leaving me standing helplessly in the lobby, hugging myself for warmth, tears running down my face. It all felt so surreal, like I’d just watched a movie. Had Tristan really been shot? Had I really just dragged him through a horde of frenzied sharks? Had I really killed one of them? But I was standing in the lobby of a hospital, with all the sounds and smells I’d hoped never to experience again. It was all terrifyingly real.

  Would he be okay? He was young and strong, and the bullet was only in his arm, but so much could go wrong…

  “Miss?” I turned to meet the kind eyes of a nurse. “Come along, honey, they’ll take good care of him.” She put her arm around my shoulder, then drew back, clucking at me like a hen. “Honey, you’re drippin’ wet—you must be freezing! Do you have a change of clothes in that bag?”

  I hadn’t realized I was still in my wetsuit, the backpack I’d somehow remembered to grab from the boat slung over my shoulder. I nodded, and she directed me to the bathroom. Numbly, I stripped off the wetsuit and pulled a T-shirt and shorts over my damp bathing suit.

  Two police officers were waiting when I came out. “We have some questions for you, miss,” said the older one, escorting me to a small break room. They asked my name and if I was a resident of the Bahamas.

  “No, we came in on a schooner—oh my God, the captain!” How could I have forgotten? “You have to notify Captain MacDougall of the schooner Megaptera Novaengliae, docked in Nassau Harbor, that his son, Tristan, has been wounded.” I spelled the ship’s name for them.

  “Do you have a phone number for him?”

  “No—wait. I think I do.” I rummaged in my purse and found the card with the captain’s satellite phone number on it. We’d all been given the card on our first day in case of an emergency while ashore. Oh God, how was I going to tell him? He was already furious with me. “Is there a phone where I can—?”

  “I’ll call him.” The younger cop took the card and stepped away. My shoulders slumped in relief. I really didn’t think I could have told the captain that his son had been shot and was in surgery. The officer returned a moment later. “I didn’t reach him. I’ll try again in a little while. In the meantime, why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  I managed to get through the story without completely losing it, though there wasn’t much I could tell the officers other than the general location of where we’d been diving and what direction the boat had been traveling in.

  “Isn’t there anything else you can remember about the boat, Miss Goodman?” asked the older officer.

  Seriously? I shoved back the chair and stood. “Look, I told you everything I know. We were under the water, so I didn’t see the name of the boat. And I certainly didn’t notice it when I was dragging my unconscious, bleeding boyfriend away from it. Believe me, if I knew anything else, I’d tell you. Those assholes shot Tristan, not to mention slaughtering countless reef sharks. I’d love to see them pay for that. But there’s nothing else I can tell you. I need to see how Tristan is. And you need to try again to reach the captain. Please.” My voice broke, and I choked back tears. “The captain’s wife died last year—he needs to be here for Tristan.”

  They let me return to the waiting room, promising that if they couldn’t reach the captain by phone this time, they’d send someone to get him.

  Nearly an hour later, I still hadn’t heard anything on Tristan’s condition, and now I worried that I might not be told anything. I wasn’t, after all, a relative.

  The doors to the emergency room burst open, and in stormed Captain MacDougall. Thank God! I jumped up from my seat.

  “What the hell happened?” he roared. “He goes off somewhere with you and gets himself shot?”

  My heart sank. “Captain, I—”

  He turned his back on me and stalked over to the information desk. After a brief exchange with the receptionist, he disappeared through a set of double doors.

  I alternated between pacing the waiting room and sitting huddled in a chair, shivering from the air-conditioning. The receptionist brought me a blanket and tried to convince me to get something to eat from the cafeteria, but the very thought of food made me sick to my stomach.

  It seemed like hours went by. I checked with the receptionist every fifteen minutes, and every fifteen minutes I got the same response. No news yet, honey. I tried not to worry. After all, it wasn’t his chest or
abdomen, where it might have hit an organ, and it wasn’t his thigh, where it might have nicked the femoral artery—something that had been a real fear with my shark bite. It was his biceps. All they had to do was remove the bullet, right? Why was it taking so long?

  I sank onto the uncomfortable chair and pulled up my feet, tucking the blanket around me. It was so cold in there, and I was so tired…

  “—wake up now.”

  I jerked awake—when had I fallen asleep?—and blinked up at the receptionist. “What’s wrong?” I tried to stand up, only to get tangled in the damn blanket.

  “Take it easy, darlin’,” she said in her lilting accent, a kind smile on her face. “Everyt’in’s all right. Your man is out of surgery and in a room.”

  My whole body sagged with relief. “Thank you for letting me know. Is he going to be okay?”

  “That’s all I know.”

  I finally extricated myself from the blanket and got to my feet. “What room number?”

  “He’s not allowed to have visitors yet, honey. Why don’t you get some rest and come back to—”

  I took her hand. “Please. Just for a minute. I need to know he’s okay.” I felt tears well up in my eyes.

  “Oh, honey, don’t cry.” She returned to her desk, tapped on her keyboard for a moment. “He’s in Room 117. But just for a minute, okay? He needs to rest.”

  “Thank you!” I handed her the blanket, slung my backpack over my shoulder, and ran through the doors.

  I reached Room 117, but before I could turn the handle, the door opened and Captain MacDougall stepped out, almost slamming into me. I stepped back. He looked up, startled, and then his eyes narrowed.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Checking on Tristan. The receptionist said I could.”

  “I don’t care what the receptionist said, you’re not seeing him.”

  Was he kidding? I licked my dry lips. “Captain, please. I just want to see him for a minute, to know that he’s okay.”