A Change of Plans

by Donna K. Weaver

  Braedon sat with his fingers still clenched around the wheel, his forehead resting on his hands. When I touched his shoulder, he sat up. He looked beyond exhausted. I peeled his fingers free, massaging the cramps from them.

  He stared at me as I worked on his fingers. I wanted to say something about Jimmy, but when I tried to speak, my throat closed up. I blinked burning eyes and finally squeaked, “Rest.”

  The engine sputtered and died. With a cry, I reached for the ignition key. Braedon put his shaking hand on mine. “It’s out of gas. We’re lucky the captain did so much sailing during the excursion, or we’d have run out during the storm.”

  I turned to find Maria behind us, her knees curled under her bedraggled form, her muscles tense. When I reached out to her, she pushed my hand away.

  “Maria, you should lie down.” Braedon staggered a little as he tried to take her hand.

  She jerked it from him, her eyes blazing, and let loose a stream of words in Spanish. I couldn’t make them out, but her rigid posture and the venom in her tone said plenty. When she was done, she returned to Jimmy’s body.

  I looked at Braedon. He shrugged and sat in the captain’s seat, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. He looked like I felt. I dropped to the bench and buried my face in my hands, rubbing my aching temples, and fighting the lump in my throat. At the sound of a clang, I looked up. Braedon had pulled a bucket from a bin.

  I went over to him. “What’s that?”

  “Hopefully an emergency kit.” He got the lid up on one corner, and I reached to hold it in place as he eased the rest of it off. Lifting two plastic containers from inside, he handed one to me.

  I peered at a package of green tubes.

  Braedon tapped one. “Glow sticks.” He unzipped the bright orange bag on his lap and removed a first-aid kit, also handing it to me. “Well, that’s something.” He held a mirror and a white plastic package with the words ‘SOS flag’ printed on it.

  Balancing the two packages, I craned my neck to see inside the pack, the bright light of the moon casting eerie shadows inside. “Are there any flares?”

  Using his foot, he slid the larger plastic container toward me, making a little ripple in the water. I set my items aside, reached inside the bucket, and pulled out a long yellow tube. “There are three more of these.”

  His expression lightened, and he stuffed everything back in the orange bag and handed it to me while he took the tube. “Anything else?”

  I removed a package with four yellow and silver tubes and held them for him to see.

  Still sniffing, Maria came over to look at them. “What’s the difference between them?”

  Braedon acted as though her little explosion hadn’t happened and held up the sickly yellow—distorted in the bright moonlight—and silver tube. “This is a regular flare. Sometimes they have locators built in that are activated when lit. None of these do. This larger one is a rocket parachute flare.”

  As I unscrewed the red cap of the regular flare, I asked, “How long do they last?”

  “Only a few minutes, so we won’t use it unless we spot a ship or a plane.” He touched a little string that came out of the now exposed end. “Pull on this when we’re ready to use it.” While Maria picked up the mirror, I screwed the cap back on the flare and handed it to Braedon. “How do you know all this?”

  “My mother was into sailing and insisted Aislinn and I knew the basics.” He returned them to the plastic bin. “We’ll need to take turns standing watch. The first twenty-four hours are critical. Our chances of being found go way down after that.”

  Maria handed me the mirror, and we watched in silence as she opened a bin and dug around, finally pulling out a tarp. She took it and covered Jimmy’s body with it, then sat down. I wished I knew what to say to her to offer comfort. I did, after all, know exactly how she was feeling, but I wasn’t Elle who always knew what to say.

  My stomach growled. How absurd—with us adrift at sea, Jimmy dead, Elle and Jori who knew where—for my stomach to need something as mundane as food. I bit back a laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation but then had to choke back a sob.

  I had to think of something else. My stomach gurgled again, and I remembered we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I scouted out our uneaten box lunches and found them in a galley fridge stocked with cold water bottles.

  “Braedon, can you come here?”

  “What is it?”

  I handed him one of the bottles.

  His eyebrows shot up. “That’s the first bit of good news we’ve had.” He frowned at the refrigerator. “Where’s it drawing its power from? A battery?” He knelt and tried to examine the wiring but straightened when a cloud covered the moon, hiding most of the light. “Too dark. At least the food will last longer.”

  I took Maria a bottle and a box, but she barely looked at me before resting her head against her knees. The light breeze shifted the tarp around Jimmy’s foot, exposing the water shoe that covered it, the partial light from the moon making it a sickly green color. We were all so fragile. Life could be taken from us in a moment. I set the box and bottle beside her.

  Returning to the food, I gathered boxes for Braedon and me. He had returned most of the emergency items to the bin and took my offering with a soft “Thanks.” He riffled through the lunch, settling on the large chocolate chip cookie, his expression contemplative.

  “Lyn, what was it you were telling me before Hawaii?”

  “What?” I blinked, confused.

  “About the stars and navigating on this side of the equator.”

  My eyes darted to the controls. “Isn’t there a GPS?”

  He finished his cookie and moved on to the sandwich. “They shot it along with the radio.”

  “No compass?”

  “Not that I can find.”

  I sighed. “We can’t see the North Star here and there isn’t a South Star.” My tired brain still understood what he was really asking. “We have no way to guess where we are, do we?”

  He shook his head and took a bite of his sandwich, mumbling, “Doesn’t appear so.”

  I held my unopened box. “How long before they come looking for us?”

  Braedon eyed me over his food. “Which ones?”

  A chill ran up my spine. I hadn’t thought about the pirates finding us before the authorities did. My stomach twisted, hunger gone.

  “Eat.” Braedon stood, squeezing my shoulder, the warmth of his fingers comforting. He remained there until I finally opened the box and took out the cookie. “We’ll need our energy.” He went over to Maria and knelt beside her.

  I sniffed the tuna in the sandwich. It didn’t smell spoiled, so I took a bite, watching the two. Braedon kept his voice low, so I couldn’t make out what he said, but it wasn’t working considering how tense Maria looked while she waved her arms. I wondered if I had been like that a year ago. I didn’t think so. Not quite the same, anyway.

  Poor Braedon. I didn’t know how he did it. Did they teach classes like Calm Demeanor 101 in medical school?

  I was closing up my box when he returned and dug out a tarp from a cupboard. “I’ll take the first watch.”

  Maria, who had followed him, held out her hand for the tarp. “I’ll do it. I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”

  When she started to walk away, he grabbed her arm. “Don’t forget these.” He handed her large, heavy looking binoculars and two kinds of flares. With a nod, the tarp over her shoulder, she stepped on a chest and climbed on top of the canopy.

  “Hey, there’s a solar panel up here,” she called from above.

  Braedon jumped on the chest and looked over the top of the canopy. “That explains the fridge.” His finger appeared through a hole. “We’re lucky they missed it.” He touched Maria’s shoe. “Wake us if you see anything—ship or plane.”

  She jerked her foot back. “I get it, Braedon.”

  He held up his hands and stepped off the chest, turning toward me. The odd shadows gave his face an almost sk
eletal look, accented by the fatigue that radiated from him.

  I took out the only remaining tarp and held it up. “We’ll have to share.”

  He hesitated. “Only if you’re okay with that.”

  We stretched out as best we could on the netting. The captain’s blood had washed away in the rain, for which I was grateful. I doubt I could have lain there otherwise. With nothing but rope underneath us, I hoped the ocean stayed calm or we would get splashed from below.

  Staring at Maria’s shadow, outlined by the night sky, I worried about Elle and Jori. What had the cruise people thought when our excursion hadn’t come back? How long before they notified my family back in the States? What would Aislinn, who had just lost her mother, do when she was told her brother was missing?

  I rolled away from Braedon, trying to cover my mouth so my crying wouldn’t wake him. Then he was next to me, his body molding around mine, and his arm around my waist. I felt his body behind me shudder with a sob he tried to swallow. I moved to turn over, but his arm held me in place. “No,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Just let me hold you.”

  We clung to hope and each other. I covered his arm with my own and offered what comfort I could.

  THE SUN had just begun to lighten the horizon when I woke, bleary-eyed after my middle-of-the-night watch. Maria still slept, so I slid off the netting, trying not to wake her. When my feet touched the remaining water on the deck, I shivered and hurried through it.

  Braedon sat in the captain’s chair, documents spread on the instrument panel, the binoculars hanging around his neck.

  Feeling a little awkward after the previous night, I glanced over his shoulder. “Found anything that might help us?”

  “Nothing yet.” He let a map drop onto his lap. “We may be okay if we’re rescued soon.”

  I scanned the vast expanse of empty ocean again and took a deep breath, overcome with a feeling of insignificance. “What if that doesn’t happen?”

  He gathered the papers into a stack. “We have more food than water.”

  As soon as he mentioned the water, my throat went dry.

  Braedon glanced over to where Jimmy’s body lay covered. It would be exposed to the full sun soon. “We won’t be able to keep his body aboard if we’re out here very long.”

  Tears swelled in my eyes. I hadn’t wanted to consider that.

  He reached a hand out for me. I stepped back. If we managed to survive this, I could never tell Jimmy’s parents that not only was he dead but we had dumped his body in the Pacific.

  Braedon stood and took me by the shoulders, forcing me to look at him. “We have to be practical.” He tilted his head toward Maria’s resting form.

  I regarded her for a moment. He was right, but I hated it. She needed to know what would happen. I sniffed. “She’s going to have a hard time with this.”

  Braedon gave me a quick hug and released me. “I think we all are.”

  I needed to think about something else and glanced up to where the sails were tied to the mast. “Do you know anything about actual sailing?”

  His eyes followed mine. “Some.” He looked at me. “You?”

  “Nothing.”

  Braedon let out a deep breath. He considered the rigging again. “We need to find out if those bullets did any damage.”

  He set the stack of paperwork neatly aside and put a flare on top. I woke Maria to take the watch while Braedon unlashed the sail. We painstakingly searched it, finding only one bullet hole. The mast had been hit a handful of times but seemed intact.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow and sat in the captain’s chair. “Until last night, I’d never sailed a multihull before. The rudders worked fine through the storm. All we need now is to harness the wind.”

  The hot sun had given me a headache, and my stomach rumbled. “And figure out which way to go.”

  Braedon gave a soft grunt as he poured over the map again. “We need to go west.”

  Something nagged at my memory but slipped away. I touched his sleeve. “Can we really make it back?”

  A cloud blew across the sun as his eyes met mine, the shadows making his expression inscrutable. I could imagine him wearing this face when he spoke with the family of one of his patients ... and didn’t want to tell them the truth. My shoulders drooped under the weight of everything we had been through.

  We were going to die.

  CHAPTER 13

  UNTIL THAT moment, I hadn’t realized how much confidence I had put in the man before me, and now he was signaling that he couldn’t save us. My entire body turned cold.

  He put one hand over mine and cupped my cheek with the other. “There’s always hope. We can beat the odds.”

  I leaned my head into his palm, wanting to believe him— needing to believe him.

  Maria jumped onto the deck, and I pulled away.

  Braedon regarded her with a frown. “You okay?”

  She looked awful, but she nodded.

  He moved to the cooler and pulled out three lunch boxes. After handing me one, he sat by Maria.

  In a flash, I knew what he was planning, and I jumped to my feet. A sick feeling stabbed my stomach, and I set my box down. I couldn’t be here when he told her. The knot in my throat told me I would be no help.

  “I’m going to wash up before I eat.” I grabbed the bottle of liquid soap by the portable toilet and looked at him over my shoulder.

  His eyes were reproachful as he mouthed ‘Thanks.’

  When I returned, Maria was crying over her sandwich, her eyes red and swollen. Braedon’s didn’t look much better.

  “I need a wash,” he said, rising from his seat as I approached.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “I can tell.” He practically grabbed the bottle of soap I held out to him from my hand.

  “I just thought—”

  “What? That since I’m a doctor, I was trained to handle all the crappy bad news jobs?”

  “No, I ....” Yes. I had assumed that very thing, but I was also honestly sure I would have made it worse.

  “Thanks for nothing.” He pushed past me.

  When he returned, I pointed at the portable toilet. “Speaking of crap ....” I paused, waiting for some sign of humor. He gave none. Fine. “We need to empty it. Soon.” I couldn’t help a slight gag.

  After we dumped it, we decided not to put it back, simply tying up a couple of large towels to have some semblance of privacy. I took the next watch while Braedon and Maria napped. I hated the sense of being alone while they slept. It made me feel small and helpless. The fact that it was Elle’s towel flapping in the increasing breeze around the toilet didn’t help.

  Staring at the cloudy horizon and trying to listen for the sound of an airplane gave me a headache. It did beat the night watch, when I had strained my eyes hoping to see a distant light. Both were better than thinking of Jimmy’s lifeless body or worrying about Elle and Jori.

  When they woke, Maria took the watch while Braedon and I checked the lines for the sails.

  He shielded his eyes as he examined the sun’s position midway between its peak and the horizon. “That’s the way we need to go.”

  Maria put down the binoculars. “I heard if you’re lost at sea, you’re supposed to just drift and let the current take you where people can find you.”

  Braedon squinted at her. “That’s fine if the current will take you where you want to go.”

  She jumped to her feet. “How do you know it won’t? Why do you just assume I’m wrong?”

  Braedon’s eyes narrowed, the veins in his throat pulsing. He stabbed his finger toward the sun, his words barely understandable through his tight jaw. “Does it look like we’re drifting that way?”

  Maria moved closer, her fists clenched, her jaw working. She was going to lose it. Alarmed, I jumped between the pair, raising my hands to keep them apart. I pulled out my teacher voice. “Let’s look at this calmly. See the way the water—oh!” The memory that had been playing hide and
seek in my mind finally showed itself. I grabbed the map and turned it so both of them could see it. “Look here. The ocean in this area has a circular current, kind of like an oblong hurricane. Braedon’s right. This current will take us away from American Samoa.” Maria gave me a crusty look. “How do you know we’re not in the part that would take us west?”

  I ground my teeth. Had I been this horrible after Jace died? “The current that flows west is above the equator. If we’d gone that far north, I’d have been able to see the North Star last night.”

  “Whatever.” Maria curled her lip. “No surprise you’re going to agree with him.” Without another word, she stomped over to Jimmy’s body. She jerked to a stop, her hands going to her mouth and nose. Turning, she hurried back, not taking another breath until she reached us.

  Braedon and I exchanged quick glances, and my stomach dropped. “Is it time already?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not time!” Maria glared at us. “Why are you in such a hurry to dump him?”

  Her unfair accusation irritated me but must have really pricked at Braedon’s raw nerves because he spun on her. “Why are you in such a hurry to pick a fight?”

  Maria made an obscene gesture and ran to the trampoline, muttering in Spanish. I didn’t want a translation.

  I rubbed his arm, hoping to calm him. “Anger’s the third phase in the grief cycle.”

  He jerked away. “I don’t need a clinical analysis.”

  With a sigh, I glanced toward the girl. “Why is she mad at you?”

  Braedon blinked, his throat working. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “Because I couldn’t save him.” He turned and went over to Jimmy’s shrouded body.

  My eyes burned at his unexpected show of emotion. I hurried after him. “But that’s not your fault.”

  The smell of rotting meat brought me to an abrupt halt. Choking, I covered my nose and mouth and stepped behind him, peeking around at Jimmy’s covered body.

  Braedon looked to the back of the boat. I turned to see Maria watching us, tears running down her cheeks, her lips trembling. Braedon extended an arm out to her, but she shook her head. “Maria,” he called, “how bad do you want us to let him get, lying there in the sun?”