Her heart isn’t beating.
I remove her soaked life jacket. Interlocking my fingers together, I position them flat against her chest to begin compressions.
“You will not die,” I tell her sternly as my palm pulses in steady beats. “I forbid it. You hear me?”
She’s so still. And so small, I worry her ribcage will crack under the force of my hands. But I don’t stop. My eyes never shift off her face. It’s gone white with cold. Ghastly white. Ghostly white. Her lips are the only point of color — and it’s not a good one. They’re blue.
I keep up the compressions.
“You will live,” I growl. My voice is gruff — with rage, with regret. My face is wet — with rain, with tears. I give her two more useless rescue-breaths, trying like hell to breathe her back to life. “Live, dammit. Live.”
My heart isn’t the one that’s stopped beating, but it might as well have. In this moment, staring into the face of the girl I love, the girl I have always loved, lifeless and limp… there are no words for the pain bolting through my bloodstream.
Jo.
My Jo.
Please, please, please.
Come back to me.
The thought that she’s gone — not just from my life, but from the face of this earth… My mind refuses to process it. I cannot even think the word dead, let alone contemplate the possibility. I watch my own tears falling onto her pale face. My arms are beginning to ache, exhausted from my efforts. I’m not sure how long I’ve been doing this. Two minutes? Ten? I’m even less sure how much longer I can continue on before I admit…
She might not be coming back.
Something is breaking inside me, the longer I stare down at her. Painful memories claw at me, excruciating reminders of our past. A pigtailed girl with chalk-dust hands, playing hopscotch in the driveway. A gawky preteen at the pool, eye-rolling over the brim of her book as my cannonball splashes her pages. A stunning vision in a silk gown, ditching her senior prom date to spend the night with me.
So full of light.
Of life.
This cannot be the same woman I hold in my hands now. Blue and still and so very, very cold. So very, very empty. So very, very…
Dead.
A scream builds inside my throat, presses at the back of my teeth, demanding release. I let it out as I give one final compression. An animal sound, primal with anguish.
She’s gone.
My Jo.
My world.
Gone.
My arms fall to my sides in defeat. My eyelids slam closed to trap the flow of useless tears. And as my agonized yell rends the heavens… another sound reaches my ringing ears. Not the slapping of waves against the hull, not the patter of rain, not the booming of thunder.
But a cough.
Small.
Weak.
Alive.
“Jo!” I gasp out, eyes flying open. I bend over her, cupping her face in my hands. “Can you hear me? Oh god, Jo! Jo!”
It isn’t like the movies. She doesn’t snap back into consciousness, sit straight up and throw her arms around me in a fit of joy. Water gurgles from her mouth like a kinked hose, a feeble trickle. She coughs again, more urgently this time, eyelids fluttering. She’s drowning on the contents of her own lungs. I roll her onto her side so she can clear her airway. For a long moment, I simply hold her there, paralyzed by relief as I listen to her taking ragged breaths. Rubbing her back as she spits and coughs and wheezes her way back to life.
She’s breathing.
Thank fucking god she’s breathing.
Without warning, the boat rocks under a particularly large wave, wooden deck planks creaking ominously as the stern see-saws up and down. I grab hold of Jo before she’s launched back into the water, pulling her into the circle of my arms. I’m afraid to embrace her too tightly, but I’m even more afraid to let go.
“You’re okay,” I whisper against the crown of her head, holding her close. Her hair is slick with water, the strands plastered against her cheeks in a wet curtain. “You’re going to be just fine, Jo.”
Above us, the storm rages on, wild winds stirring the ocean into a fury that’s liable to toss us directly onto the rocks. With no one at the helm to guide her, the Ebenezer spins in dizzying circles, completely untethered amidst the thrashing tides. But I can’t bring myself to move to the wheelhouse. Can’t bring myself to put even an inch of space between myself and the half-conscious girl in my arms.
Not yet, anyway.
For several long moments, I merely press my lips to her hair and listen to her breathe. Reassure myself that the thready pulse I feel at her wrist is not going to stop again. Allow my brain to catch up to my own thudding heart.
Lightning cracks.
Rains plummet.
Waves crash.
And I hold her.
She’s alive.
She’s alive.
She’s alive.
ELEVEN
josephine
I’m alive.
In an unforeseen stroke of fate, I find myself breathing and back on solid ground. Or… not exactly solid. The first thing that registers in my sodden brain — besides the fact that I am, in fact, still able to use my brain — is that the ground seems to be shifting up and down like a bad carnival ride. I hear the distinctly fluid melody of waves crashing against the hull, and realize I’m still at sea.
Someone must’ve heard my distress call after all.
My eyes peel open, each lid heavy as an anvil. My surroundings are unfamiliar, but I’ve been on enough boats to recognize the inside of a wheelhouse, partially shielded from the pelting rain. Someone has propped me against the port-side wall of the cramped space. That someone is standing with his back to me — one hand on the wheel, the other adjusting the frequency knob of a corded VHF radio. My mind feels sluggish as it works to catalogue his details.
Dark hair, slicked with rain.
Thick rubber boots.
Orange neoprene coveralls.
A lobsterman.
“This is the vessel Ebenezer,” he’s saying into the receiver, his voice barely audible over the steady drumbeat of rain against the deck. “We have responded to a MAYDAY call from the vessel Cupid. One sailor rescued from the water. She needs immediate medical attention. Over.”
There’s a murmur of static across the line, followed by a muffled response from the Coast Guard operator monitoring the channel. I can’t make out the individual words. The lobsterman lifts the radio to his bearded mouth again.
“We’re tied-off to a day-mooring in Cocktail Cove on the north side of Great Misery Island at the moment, but we can’t stay here for long — it’s not going to hold in this weather. Over.”
I catch only fragments of the operator’s response — words like hurricane-force winds and take shelter and wait for rescue — as a large swell rocks the boat sideways. Water crashes over the rail, sluicing across the flat bottom of the boat, draining out the scuppers. My heart, which has only recently resumed beating, quails within my chest.
I cannot go back into that dark ocean.
I will not make it out a second time.
My eyes fix on the man at the helm. My unknown rescuer. His knuckles are white with tension on the wheel. His tone is thick with impatience as he barks a response into the radio.
“Wait it out? That’s your grand plan?” His head shakes, sending water droplets flying all directions. “That’s not good enough. She needs medical attention now, not in two hours when you finally get your asses here. You’re the fucking Coast Guard!” He sighs, then tacks on a terse, “Over.”