Page 71 of Tourist Season
But there’s no way I’m letting it take her. Not without a fight.
I haul myself onto the deck with the boy’s help, and the moment I’m onboard, I scramble to Harper’s side.
“Do you have a defibrillator on board?” I ask as I tear her shirt open, buttons pinging across the deck, her suspenders slipping from her shoulders.
The man shakes his head. Dismay is a heavy weight in his weathered features when I look his way. “No, just a standard first aid kit.”
“Bring it.”
As the man takes off below deck, I return my attention to Harper, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused. Years of training are there, ingrained in my actions. But it’s as though the motions happen on the other side of a veil. I check for a pulse. I tell the man to send out a distress call. I ask the boy to bring blankets. I start chest compressions, counting each rhythmic press of my hands to Harper’s chest, each thrust pushing water from her mouth and nose. But on the other side of it all is the riot of desperate panic.
I’m watching her die. The thing I once thought I wanted. It’s what I came all this way and waited all this time for, and now I would give anything to stop it from happening.
“Not like this, Harper,” I whisper as I push down on her chest.
“Anything?” the man asks when I pause just long enough to check her for a pulse. I shake my head as I resume chest compressions, and he lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Don’t give up, son.”
Tears glaze my eyes. Though my hope is fading with every moment that passes, I won’t give up. I won’t stop until someone pulls me off of her, and even then I know I’ll fight them to get back to her side. To keep trying.
I stare down at her beautiful face, begging the universe for a sign. A beacon. A candle in the fog.
Images of Harper scatter through my thoughts. The way she smiled at me the first time we met. The ferocity of her glare as we faced off in her garden. But now, it feels like the abyss is still stealing my thoughts of her. When I push my weight into my palms, I’m haunted by the way her chest spasmed as it filled with water. When I press my lips to hers to force air into her lungs, I catch her taste and her scent, but they’re marred by salt and the fragrance of the sea.
“You can’t leave like this,” I grit out as I pump her chest with a metronomic pulse. “We have unfinished business, Harper Starling. You don’t get to tap out. Come on.Come on.”
I pinch her nose and tilt her head back and deliver a breath. Then another.
And as I’m pulling away, I feel it. A convulsion in her chest. A spasm that becomes a cough. White foam bubbles from her lips and nose, and I turn her to the side, each cough growing more violent. I lodge my fingers beneath her jaw and feel the faint thrum of her heart. It grows steadier with every passing beat.
I hold her head, keeping it steady as she vomits and coughs,frothy liquid spilling from her mouth. Every blink feels like a fucking miracle when just a moment ago she was unseeing.
“Can you hear me?” I ask, and her eyes squeeze shut in pain before focusing on me. She’s disoriented, in shock, floating on the edge of consciousness. “Squeeze my hand.”
Her eyes flutter open and she looks down at her hand engulfed in mine, and though it’s weak, she squeezes back. I hear a boat racing toward us, hitting the waves with force as it turns. The captain of the sailboat pats my shoulder. “Good job, son,” he says, then heads for the bow to exchange information with the Coast Guard crew as they cut the engine and pull alongside our boat.
When I look back down at Harper, her steady, exhausted gaze follows me, a thread whose pull I feel deep in a dormant place in my chest.
“I thought …” My words drift away, carried from my lips on the breeze that rustles the slack sails above us.I thought I’d lost you. I thought I couldn’t get you back. Those words all float away. “I thought you were calling it quits on our deal there for a minute, Meatball.”
A weak smile fleets across her lips. My own chest aches when I see it, as though someone has just beaten me up to keep me alive. “Couldn’t go …” she whispers through lips that tremble with shock. I tuck the blankets around her and rub her arm as she shakes, in part to keep her conscious and warm, but in part because I feel suddenly unsure of what to say or do or how to act. “Unfinished business. Need to stab you for that nickname.” When I meet her eyes, they solder to mine. The gray seems brighter, the gleam that was missing only moments ago now shining in the sun. “Thank you.”
I give her a single nod and break my focus away, but still I feel her watching.
Two crew members from the Coast Guard ship board our boat with a portable defibrillator, and I talk them through what happened and Harper’s condition in a way that feels oddly reassuring in its familiarity. When they’ve had a chance to assess her, they organize with the sailor and his son to keep her aboard so they can escort us to the marina where an ambulance will be waiting. And though they keep an eye on Harper’s vitals and ensure she remains stable, a residual panic still ebbs and flows through my veins. Relief that I can feel her pulse beneath my fingertips as I keep hold of her wrist. Distress and desperation every time her eyes drift closed with fatigue. Intense, all-consuming fears chew through my thoughts with every moment that passes.What about secondary drowning? Aspiration pneumonia? What about infection? Fuck knows what bacteria is already climbing around in her lungs. What if I broke her ribs during CPR? Her sternum? Will she have chronic lung damage? What about PTSD? What if—
“Son,” the sailor says, shaking my shoulder. I blink, a haze dispelling from my mind as I look up at him and realize he’s been talking to me for I don’t even know how long. He gives me a gentle smile as he extends some folded clothes balanced on his other palm. “I brought you a change of clothes. Might be a little small for you but they’ll fit close enough. Do you want to go below deck and get yourself settled for a minute?”
Cold. Stress. It’s the first time I become aware that I’m still soaking wet, shaking beneath a towel that’s appeared on my shoulders without me even realizing it. I look down at Harper, her eyes barely open, her breathing still erratic, a cough racking her body every few minutes.
I shake my head and squeeze her wrist, her pulse still a steady thrum that answers back. “I’m okay. Thank you.”
The man nods, giving my shoulder a sympathetic pat. “I’ll put them in a bag. You can take them with you to the hospital and change there. We’re nearly at the marina,” he says, nodding toward the shore. I follow his gesture to where an ambulance waits by the docks, its lights flashing. “How does that sound?”
“That sounds great, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”
The man leaves to pack up his gift, and my gaze lingers on the door he disappears through until Harper coughs, drawing my attention back to her. “I’ll be fine,” she whispers. “You can go get changed. I’ll survive a few minutes on my own, don’t worry.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
