“That’s quite a statement.”
“It’s the truth. And, for reasons I’m not ready to talk about, it scares the living shit out of me, okay?”
“Ooookkkkaaay. I’m not sure what you want me to do with that information.”
“I just need some time.”
“Looks to me like you can take all the time you need. I can’t exactly pack up my toys and go home to Mommy.” She straightened herself to her full five foot nothing. “Dylan, I don’t mean to scare you. Can’t we just have a good time together? Really. I’m perfectly fine with everything.” The smile was convincing and made me miserable.
I put my head in my hands and stared into my steaming mug. She was right of course. ‘I’ll call ya, babe’ wasn’t exactly an option. Not that that was an option I wanted to take.
I watched her body move as she lined up a few more mugs for the guys out on deck. There was an awkward stiffness to her normally easy movements. I knew what I had to do and there was no better time than that moment, hangover or not. She deserved the truth—ugly and sad as it was. It was gut spillin’ time.
She moved toward just slightly past the table, I reached out to touch her arm and guide her into the seat beside me. I needed to explain, at least a little, why I had been such a jerk.
Then I heard it.
Chapter 19—Rene
"Fish on! FISH on! FISH ON!" They were urgent words I only half understood.
Dylan's ice-crystal eyes flashed at me for the briefest moment. He sprang up from his seat at the table and knocked the tray out of my hands. Cups crashed on the floor as long urgent strides carried him toward the salon door. The predator in him came alive and I thrilled to witness the beast awake. He seemed almost comatose only moments before.
The mess of broken china and the brown coffee stain spreading over the polished hardwood could wait. The awkward conversation that we needed to have could wait. The door was just closing behind him when I pushed my way through on his heels. Captain Stephen came flying down the ladder from the bridge. His feet never touched the rungs; he just slid, fireman style, down the side rails.
The two men vaulted the transom in unison. "Right rigger, Boss," the mate announced. It was hardly necessary. Even my untrained eye could see the bent rod and the whizzing reel playing out yard after yard of line.
Dylan grabbed the pole and steadied his feet on the dive platform that jutted out from El Loco's stern. Captain Stephen grabbed a wicked looking contraption and strapped it around Dylan's waist and between tensed thighs. Then both men jockeyed the notched end of the rod into the gimbal on the fighting belt. The rod rose from his crotch singing with the release of line as Dylan adjusted the drag.
He seemed calm but perspiration beaded on the taut muscles of his neck. Soon the inky curls above his collar began to droop with the weight of his sweat. The spooling line slowed and the tip of the pole bent ever so slightly.
Dylan leaned back and pulled the tip of the rod high over his shoulder. "Set," he told Stephen.
The Captain was peering off into the distance. I assumed he was looking for the fish, hooked at line's end somewhere far in the distance. Dylan wasn't looking. He was bringing back line as fast as he could put it on the reel. He pulled the tip of the rod up as far as his strength would allow. Just when it seemed that the rod was bent to the breaking point, he would furiously reel back line as he lowered the rod. He repeated the arc time and again.
I was mesmerized by his display of force and finesse. There was a grace in it that made his movements seem like a dance. Of course, that didn't surprise me.
"Shirt!" He growled at Stephen. The Captain stripped Dylan's torso with a few expert strokes of his knife. Apparently, the prey was more important than a shirt, however expensive it might be.
His naked back shimmered with sweat. I watched each sculpted muscle ripple with the to and fro of battle. His back was chiseled and tight. The trapezius muscles strained in steely resistance each time he pulled up and reeled back down.
He turned to follow the fish's desperate attempt to escape and his chest undulated under bronzed skin. His pecs looked ready to pop from his chest, nipples clenched and hard as the teak under his feet. His flat abdomen pulled taut, folding into his slim torso every time he heaved himself into one impossible show of strength after the other.
The shorts he was wearing drifted well below his navel and revealed the line of fur that pointed down. I fought the fish with him in my mind. I felt the arousal of the hunt and the desperation of the hunted all at once. Lust for blood fogged the air. Lust for him crashed like breaking waves inside me. He was a magnificent animal in his element. I forgot my confusion and my hurt. The drama in front of me wiped everything else away.
One of the mates handed down a fighting chair that was quickly mounted onto the center of the platform. Dylan shifted the pole to the slot on the chair between his legs. His body shook with exertion as he brought in the line. I stood above him against the transom but I caught the scent of salt and man. I studied the movement of his arms and watched the patches of hair in his armpits grow wet with his effort. My heart beat quickened as the utterly masculine dance played out in front of me. There was heat spreading through me that had nothing to do with the blazing sun above our heads.
Stephen ladled water from a bucket over his shoulders and mopped his brow with a bandana. Occasionally the Captain would massage the straining muscles of Dylan's shoulders as he worked the line. Having never caught anything more exciting than a catfish in a lake, I wasn't prepared for the marathon the fight became. It seemed to me that a normal human being couldn't possibly continue to pump and pull for so long. But Dylan wasn't a normal human being; continue he did, hour after grueling hour. He'd turn his head and Stephen or the mate would fill his mouth with water. After the first hour, I was sent back to the kitchen for some Gatorade and he downed bottle after bottle. Dylan had been fighting the fish for more than five hours when he finally brought it close enough to the boat for us to get a good look at her. According to the Captain, she was a 'grander'—a behemoth of at least a thousand pounds. I had witnessed her many acrobatic leaps above the water as she fought for her life. She exuded raw bestial power against a predator who wielded what seemed to me an impossibly fragile stick against such a creature.
Every movement morphed into cinematic slow motion as she made a desperate final jump across the dive platform. Dylan was at the bitter end of the line the angry fish was trying with all her might to lose. She was glowing—'lit up' the men called it. Her skin wore a miraculous palette of iridescent shades of blue—electric blue to dark deep indigo. She slashed her massive head back and forth with such force that we could hear the sound of her rapier through the air. When the sharp sword of her bill viciously bit into Dylan's leg she won her freedom. Blood fountained from the huge gash in his leg and his hands dropped reflexively to his injury. She sounded, rod and reel trailing behind her and was gone.
***
Blood formed a sickening pool on the island's granite counter top. The inky slick spread out and started to seep over the edge.
His blood. The red of life.
Captain Stephen and two of the mates maneuvered him into the middle of my kitchen. He passed out by the time they got him into position. That was a blessing.
Short hours before puff pastry for last evening's meal of shepherd's pie stretched over the cinder colored marble of the work island. The polished surface was perfect for keeping butter nice and cold. For a gravely injured man? Not so much.
My shaking hands ripped through the first aid kit and I could barely get the gloves over my clammy fingers. I found compresses I needed to slow the blood so I could get a look at the jagged tear in his muscled thigh. His gorgeous leg had been carved up by a dull knife in the hands of a bad chef.
The mate mopped away the mess under him and the Captain hailed a medical team on shore. The wound was serious. The fish's bill had sliced nearly to the bone. Fortunately for Dylan, she had hit the fr
ont and side of his leg. The bleeding was profuse, but I knew that if her slashing had found the femoral artery it would have been deadly.
My trembling eased as I realized how vital it was for me to stay in control. I'd been hired as the chef, but I also had the most advanced first aid training on the crew. Pushing my emotions to the back of my brain, I forced myself to deal with the crisis mechanically. The pale, still body under my care was Dylan. Dylan, the man who scared me with delicious fear. Dylan, who made me feel alive. For his sake, I needed to forget who he was, at least for the moment.
A steward fetched pillows from the salon and so we could elevate Dylan's legs and feet. Stephen peppered me with questions from the doctor on the radio. How long was the cut? How deep? Could I see evidence of cut tendons? Was the patient in shock?
The fight for the fish was enough to exhaust even a man in the shape Dylan was in. Most men couldn't take an hour of what he'd been doing for five. I had watched him pit himself against the beast and it awed me. He gave himself to the fight in every way a man can—his mind and body and, yes, his soul too—engaged in an epic struggle. It was Ahab against the whale, the old man against the sea.
Only this was no embittered one-legged captain. And Dylan was certainly no old man. But still, add a traumatic injury to the exhaustion and probably a terrific hangover and you had a recipe for serious shock. He was undoubtedly dehydrated in spite of all the fluid he'd consumed. I relayed his blood pressure and pulse to the doctor.
There were several bags of saline in the kit, but I wasn't trained for that sort of thing. I was petrified that the doctor across the ocean would ask me to get an IV going. I looked at Dylan's large, elegant hand and wondered if I could even find a vein with the needle. Thankfully, the calm voice on the radio told me just to concentrate on keeping pressure on the wound.
The blood flow from the gash finally began to slow. I followed the doctor's instructions to irrigate and sterilize the nasty cut before attempting to close it. Because it was inflicted by the marlin's bill, infection was a very real possibility.
To my great relief, he didn't even suggest that I suture the wound. Trussing a turkey or mending a hem is a far cry from sewing human flesh and the thought terrified me. I was instructed to close the wound with strips of duct tape. Carefully drying the surrounding skin, I taped the gash closed leaving quarter inch spaces between each strip as the doctor had instructed. Finally, I covered my 'surgery' with clean gauze and lowered myself onto a kitchen stool. I peeled away the bloody second skin of my soiled gloves and started to cry.
My tears didn't surprise anyone. I had earned them. I watched them plop onto my jellied knees and brushed them away. They felt hot against my clammy fingers. If anyone thought I wept for any reason but relief, they didn't let on.
Sooner than I could have hoped, his chest began to rise and fall in a far less ragged rhythm. When I checked his pulse, it was almost back to normal. I marveled at his miraculous strength and felt a rush of gratitude. The doctor advised us to let him stabilize further before we moved him to his stateroom.
In the panic, I hadn't heard Lady Delaney wailing on the other side of the kitchen door. I found the little monkey pressed up against the partition standing in a puddle of her own urine and feces. She leaped into my arms and tried to scramble over my shoulder to get to Dylan.
"Poor Lady D.," I told her as I let the door close behind me. "You can't be with him now. But he's going to be okay." I stroked her tiny head and let her whimper into my chest. As always, the capuchin seemed to understand whatever was said to her. "Let's get cleaned up. I can't blame you for having an accident. I almost wet my pants myself." I found someone to mop up the mess and took the monkey toward her stateroom.
It was comforting to clean and tend to his beloved pet. I looked around the monkey's stateroom and saw that it was sparkling as usual. Dylan had worked with Lady Delaney and a professional 'monkey whisperer' for months. With patience he hadn't known he possessed he was able to potty train her. Not only did she know how to use a toilet, but after he figured out how to adjust the mechanism to match her lack of strength, she could flush it too. Consequently, her room on board El Loco was as pristine as the rest of the boat, except around her food bowl. He hadn't been able to teach her to eat neatly.
I didn't want to leave her alone. I knew she wasn't going to be able to settle down until she was sure Dylan was okay. I dried her carefully and took her back to the kitchen with me intending to keep her in my room behind the galley while I showered and changed. I had blood all over me and monkey poop prints on top of the sticky clothes I had worn all morning through the fight with the fish. I held her loosely away from my body so she wouldn't get soiled again.
As soon as I pushed the swinging door open with my hip, Lady Delaney bounded from my grasp and onto the granite slab. She wrapped herself around Dylan's head and began cooing at him while she groomed his matted hair. His eyes fluttered open and he smiled weakly at his little buddy.
"Lady D." He raised his hand to stroke her. Then he tried to raise his head to see the rest of his body, but Stephen stopped him with a hand on Dylan's shoulder.
"Steady, Boss. Give yourself time to come around."
He found the monkey's hand and she circled his thumb in her tiny fist. His eyes closed and he slept again as Lady D. snuggled into the crook of his neck. His tender relationship with the little beast was so sweet and so out of character. He lavished her with warmth and understanding he rarely bestowed on members of his own species.
I left men and monkey on watch and slipped into my cabin, sliding my nasty garments into a pile that I pushed into a corner with my foot. The shower washed the grime and the blood away but couldn't erase the morning's memory. The porthole above my head said the sun was still blazing over a gentle sea. It seemed to me that it should have been the dark of night. Breakfast was a lifetime ago. I had watched an epic fight that nearly cost me someone I wasn't ready to lose. I leaned back and let the water take my tension down the drain. I could still hear the crackle of the intercom in my head announcing the deadly behemoth's arrival.
Chapter 20—Dylan
My leg was on fire. My head was on fire. I didn't know where I was or what had happened to me. I opened my eyes and Nurse Kelly was standing over me with a glass of water and a straw that she put to my lips. I drank because I was supposed to. Because she wanted me to.
It was so, so hot in that room. Where was the air? I tried to reach through the mist and tell someone to open a window. But I was trapped in a fugue state and couldn't break through.
"Just drink, Dylan. Don't try to talk." Nurse Kelly was so sweet, so kind. Sometimes it really seemed that she loved me and it wasn't just a job for her from seven to three.
I hated the nurse who came in at three. She was mean. She was on my mother's team. It was always about how difficult I was, how heavy my mother's burden must be to bear.
"Dylan, listen to me." The nurse had such kind brown eyes. "You were hurt. By a marlin. Some kind of sepsis has set in. You've been out for three days. We're almost close enough to London now for the medivac to pick you up."
None of that made any sense to me. I wasn't sick. My mother was sick. In her head. I knew it even if no one else did.
Nurse Kelly put a cool cloth over my head. She was always doing things like that. Cool cloths. Warm water bottles. Once in a while she'd sneak in a piece of candy or some potato chips. I wasn't supposed to have those things, but she did it anyway.
If my mother went out for the day Nurse Kelly always took me outside. She said sunshine was good for me. She told me I needed fresh air and exercise. I loved fresh air and exercise. I didn't care what my mother thought, it didn't make me sick. I swear.
"Stephen, he's delirious. He keeps babbling on about going outside. He keeps calling me Nurse Kelly. What's that all about? Do you know?"
"Sorry, Rene, I can't help you there. We're nearly at the mark. The 'copter can land on deck and he'll be on his way."
"I tried to get that antibiotic in him. I really did. But every time he was lucid enough to take a pill he spat it out at me. He called me names. Silly childish insults."
"It's the infection. Maybe it's having some effect on his brain. Or the fever. Didn't you tell me it was around 103?"
"He spiked up to that, yes. I'm scared. He could go into convulsions."
"No. No convulsions. I won't do it!" I yelled at them at the top of my lungs and they wouldn't listen. I was confused. Who was that stranger talking to Nurse Kelly? It wasn't my father. My father had black hair. I didn't know him well, but I'd know his hair. This man had light hair like the orderly in that last hospital. I didn't like that orderly. He was too rough when he bathed me. He made the water too cold. Nurse Kelly always got the water just right.
"Dylan, I can hear the chopper coming, bro. We're in position and we're going to get you the help you need."
"Is Dawn sick too?" We usually got sick together. We did everything together.
"Dawn's fine, dude. She's just fine. Stop talking now, Dylan. Save your strength."
Two men came in with a rolling bed. A stretcher. I knew about those. I had to be real, real sick to be on a stretcher. The helicopter was super noisy. It looked like a giant scary dragonfly. I didn't want to ride on it but nobody could hear me when I screamed. Or maybe they didn't want to hear me. Maybe Mom told them not to listen to anything I said. She was always doing that.
I was so confused. Usually there wasn't this much pain. Usually it wasn't like this. They were bumping me around and I thought my leg was going to fall off. So much pain. So. Much.
***
She was sitting by the window. There was sun streaming through lighting up the gold in her hair. I blinked several times to make sure she wasn't a hallucination. I knew her! It was Rene. Rene Waters. She worked on El Loco. I couldn't remember why, but I thought I might be in love with her.
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