Page 153 of The Love Haters

“I’m so sorry, buddy,” I said to George Bailey, pulling a pillow out of its case and tying the fabric around his paw as a very ill-fitting bandage.

During another lull, I tried to figure out a better place for George Bailey to shelter. Hutch’s closet seemed like a good spot. I could fill itup with pillows and blankets for padding. And of course watch for water under the door.

I took all of Hutch’s hanging clothes out, gathering them in my arms and getting a big whiff of Hutch’s scent that I was too nauseated to enjoy, and I dumped them in the bathroom in a pile and closed the door. Then, as I did the same to the storage boxes at the bottom, I remembered my hibiscus hair clip. Was it still there, I wondered—shoved back in the corner behind Hutch’s neat stack of storage tubs? For a second before I looked, I felt this superstitious flash:If the flower is there, we’re going to be okay.

But it wasn’t there.

The back corner was empty.

For a second, I felt so irrationally disappointed in Hutch. Would it have killed him to just send meone tiny spark of hope? I really wasn’t asking for that much.

And yet, here we were.

That moment gave way to the next, and I found myself seriously wondering where the flower had gone. Had Hutch thrown it away in a fit of disappointed rage after I’d turned out to be a terrible person? Or maybe tossed it overboard? Or lit it on fire and watched the ashes float off on the wind over the water?

Or maybe it was worse than that. Maybe he had just swept it into a dustpan with all his other unremarkable trash—and thrown it away without even noticing.

In the face of the larger questions dominating my life… questions like,Can you die from seasickness dehydration?AndDo whales eat people?AndHow deadly are jellyfish stings, exactly?In the midst of all those, you could argue thatWhat became of my hibiscus hair clip?was, perhaps, the least pressing.

But I loved that question the best.

It gave me something Hutch-adjacent to turn over in my mind as I padded the closet floor with pillows and gestured to George Bailey to step inside.

George Bailey, like a perfect angel who had never stranded us on a houseboat during a hurricane, stepped easily in. Then he settled into a lion position on the pillows and gingerly lowered his bandaged paw to wait for what was next.

What would be next?

Drowning? Dismemberment? Ripped apart by sharks?

I thought about Hutch saying sharks were always everywhere.

Then I put a fervent request out to the universe. Of all the ways I might be about to die… couldsharksplease not be one of them?

Of course, the universe didn’t care about my requests.

I’d just have to care about them myself.

I closed the closet door with George Bailey inside, leaned back against it to keep it that way, and braced myself against Hutch’s built-in bed frame. If the boat started sinking, of course, I’d let George Bailey out. But he seemed safer in there for now.

Though what didsafereven mean?

My senses were all haywire. The motion was the worst—but the screeching and howling of the wind, and the angry creaking of the boat, and the rolling of the thunder… it was incessant aural chaos. Clanking, wailing, crashing, howling—all of it so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. And, from inside the closet, George Bailey still whimpering, like I was being mean.

It wasn’t long before I’d thrown up everything I’d ever eaten in my life, and then, in the wake of it, continued dry-heaving on principle. I lost all sense of equilibrium. The room in my head was spinning worse than the churning sea. During lulls, I would lie on the floor, panting, longing to die.

But I didn’t die.

And neither did George Bailey.

We survived.

I don’t know how many hours the storm raged. I lost all sense of time—and everything else. But at some point when it was still dark out, almost without my realizing it was happening, the churning watersslowed down. And then it got quiet. And the water itself—if not the motion in my head—became calmer.

George Bailey was still whimpering.

I opened the door, and George Bailey stepped out gingerly, his paw still wrapped in the pillowcase, now stained and bloody where the cut had reopened.

“How are you?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

---