We should talk. “Theo, is that what you needed to tell me? That my dad’s sick?” I demanded.
He hesitated, but when he looked at me, the guilt in his eyes said it all. It hadn’t been about us. It had been about my dad. I exhaled sharply. If anyone had told me, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. I wouldn’t have endangered my dad.
He stepped toward me quickly, his hands up in surrender. “Olive, I’m sure he’s fine. He’s a great diver. He probably just turned off his light to explore something. And maybe when the boat’s light went out it panicked you, so you lost sight of his and—”
“His light was off.” I was having a hard time controlling the volume of my voice. How could they have done this to me? I would have talked him out of it, would have come up with another way. How could they all have lied?
“The water ambulance will be here soon,” Theo repeated, and Vasilios nodded nervously behind him.
I thought I knew what it felt like to wait long periods of time. I’d sat through tests and bad news. I’d waited years for my dad to call or show up. But none of those experiences meant anything in comparison to how this felt. Vasilios kept clumsily patting my back and murmuring things in Greek that I’m sure were comforting, but I couldn’t even try to understand them.
I couldn’t tell if I was crying steadily or if it was salt water dripping from my hair. Either way, it wouldn’t let up. If he was in trouble down there, then every second mattered. I was completely numb. How was it possible to be this scared of losing something I’d already lost so many years before?
Theo stayed close, but not touching. I couldn’t even look at him. He’d known.
After what felt like a million years, the water ambulance appeared, its pointed wide front moving quickly toward us, a man poised at the front. Vasilios yelled to them, and before long a man in red shorts and a hat had boarded our boat and was asking us questions in Greek, then English when he realized I couldn’t understand him. I did my best to answer, but all I could really tell them was that my dad was scuba diving, he was in kidney failure, and he might be in trouble.
“How long has he been down?” He was probably around Geoffrey’s age, and his skin was a dark even brown, his voice calm.
Days? Decades? “How long?” I asked Theo.
He glanced at his watch. “About thirty-five minutes.”
“Okay,” the man said. “A typical diver on a typical tank can swim forty-five minutes. This is nothing to worry. Was he in good health this morning?”
Theo and I looked at each other, both of us thinking about the deep circles under my dad’s eyes, the puffiness in his face. The signs had been there the entire time; I’d just been too wrapped up in myself to notice them. Whatever self-control I still had dissolved, and tears began pouring down my face. “I don’t think so.”
The man put a kind hand on my arm. “I have called a professional diver. He is coming now. We will prepare for a rescue dive, okay? No need to worry. This is just a precaution. We will prepare.”
I was past worrying. I was numb. The only thing I could feel was Theo’s arm around my shoulder. When had that happened? “Please find him,” I pleaded.
“Here!” Vasilios suddenly yelled. “Is here!”
Relief shot me forward, and we all ran to the side of the boat. Down below, I saw an orb of light. He was coming up.
“Help him, help him!” I said.
Theo and the rescue worker both reached in to pull him aboard. My dad looked a bit woozy, but mostly he looked worried, and he pushed through the others to get to me. “Olive, are you okay? I saw the GoPro fall. I thought…” He grabbed my face, as if trying to convince himself I was really here.
I hadn’t even realized I’d dropped it. “Dad, I’m fine. I had a panic attack, but Theo pulled me out. Your light went out.…” I shook my head, trying to see through the tears. “Dad, why didn’t you tell me you were sick? Why didn’t—” And then the edges of my vision pulled inward, and Theo was trying to help me to the floor, and then I was hot, then cold, then hot again, and there were arms on me, catching me, and I had one last glimpse of the sky before I couldn’t see anything.
* * *
The next two hours were a blur.
The ambulance couldn’t decide who needed help more—my dad, whose blood pressure was low and who also began vomiting shortly after his summit, or his daughter, who kept blacking out every time she tried to stand. We were both taken to the hospital in Fira, where we were set up in separate rooms for monitoring—my dad on the upper level, where they’d check his blood levels post-dive, and me on the main floor in an innocuous little room, where they monitored my blood pressure and oxygen levels and told me over and over that I would be just fine. It was my body’s reaction to stress.
Stress wasn’t the right word for it. Betrayal? Abandonment? Guilt? That was a bit closer.
Post-dive, my thoughts were about as cohesive and focused as a handful of confetti, but I managed to pick up most of the story on our way to the hospital. According to what I could understand from the Greek conversation Theo had with the medical professionals, my dad had been in kidney failure for almost five years. And although he had been actively treating it with dialysis, this past year he’d suffered a steady decline in his health. He’d had to make several emergency trips to a hospital in Athens over the past week, which made his decision to dive all the more dangerous.
As I listened, I felt my body tighten up over and over. This was all information that I’d had a right to know, not just as his visitor and collaborator in Santorini, but as his daughter. And it wasn’t just my dad who had let me down. It was Ana. And Theo. Maybe even Geoffrey the Canadian. All those conversations we’d had, all those days on the water, they’d all known. Rage overtook me, eventually turning on me. If I hadn’t been so distracted by Theo and my overall desire to flee, would I have noticed that my dad was sick?
Maybe.
And then there was the grief. It lapped up over the edges of my rage, reviving the sinking, heavy feeling I’d carried with me through my childhood. This was why I’d worked so hard to keep my father at bay. Losing someone once is miserable. Losing them twice is cruel.
As they were strapping a blood pressure cuff around my arm, a horrible thought hit me. Did my mom know? Is that why she’d been so adamant about me coming here? No. She wouldn’t do that to me, would she? My thoughts spiraled into darkness. Someone had made sure I had my phone with me, and as soon as I was alone I tried calling her, but when I dialed, my call went straight to voicemail. Again. Why wasn’t she answering my phone calls? Why wasn’t she calling me back? I called James. Nothing.
It was just me, a rotation of nurses attempting to communicate with me in a mixture of Greek and English, and the angry hornet’s nest that had overtaken my body.
I’d done grief and sadness and loneliness. I’d managed anger. But this? This was unprecedented.
A few hours later, when the nurses decided I was sufficiently stable for a visitor, Theo came bursting into my tiny hospital room, not even bothering to knock. My expression stopped him dead in his tracks because he froze midway, his mouth set in a worried line.