Page 7 of The Captain
“Good.” My whole body exhaled. “We’ll meet them at intake. I want to run a quick decibel log first.”
She grimaced. “You think it’s bad?”
“I think it’s worse than anyone wants to admit.” I trudged up through the surf toward our gear. Becca followed, and together we hauled the hydrophone case to the waterline. Knees in the sand, I fed the cable for the transducer into the sea, my fingers slick with salt, the line sliding like silk through my hands. “Set the recorder at thirty-second intervals. Gain at mid.” I glanced up. “You okay?”
She blushed, startled. “Yeah. I just—I’ve never been this close. It’s … intense.”
“It is.” I smiled without showing teeth. “If you cried when the truck pulled away, that means you’re doing it right.”
She blew out a laugh. “Maybe a little.”
We logged five minutes of water and wind and the distant grumble of boats. Nothing overt. Nothing like the throat-singing that rattled me earlier. The ocean pretended innocence.
We packed the gear and shouldered the cases. Becca took the umbrella. I palmed the cooler. At the access path, I turned back for one last look. The beach had already swallowed the grooves our gurney had carved. The crowd had dissipated, attention migrated to the next bright thing.
As we climbed, my phone buzzed with an email chime. Map. Specs. Compliance checkboxes like confetti. I didn’t open it. Not yet. I let the tightness in my chest sit there and kept walking.
At the top of the stairs, the smell of frying shrimp from a beach shack hit me like a memory. My stomach growled. Becca grinned and elbowed me. “Post-rescue hushpuppies?”
“You’re learning,” I said.
We ran inside, slapped a twenty on the counter, and came back out with a to-go bag hot enough to sting our fingers, the smell of cornmeal and fryer oil chasing us.
“Is this … is this really where you thought you’d end up?” she asked as we crossed the lot. “Like, after your PhD? Coming back here?”
The honest answer rose. “No.” I opened the SUV and slid the cooler in, cool air spilling over my overheated skin. “I thought Miami would keep me. But Charleston has a way of hooking into you.” I paused. “And sometimes the thing that needs you is the thing that bruised you.”
Becca went quiet in the way of someone storing a line to take out later and turn over in their hands. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said finally.
I was glad, too, and I hated it. Both truths could live in me at once, like cold and heat, like the drag of a wet shirt and the promise of a dry one later, like the way I craved a pair of stronghands at my hips and the way I didn’t trust anyone to hold me properly.
“Seatbelt,” I said, and she clicked it.
When we pulled onto the road, my phone lit again—this time a text from an unsaved number that began with a local area code. A link followed. No words. The map Pincense had promised. The corridor lines cut the water into neat boxes like a surgeon’s mark-ups.
I didn’t answer. I let the message sit there while Becca cued up a playlist and hummed along to a summer song about bodies and bad decisions. I drove with the windows down and let the wind dry the wet fabric over my skin, let it trace the shape of me for anyone who cared to look.
A pickup full of surfers passed and one of them whistled low. I lifted one eyebrow in the mirror and ignored him. I might have wanted to be touched, but I didn’t have the energy for boys who thought they were men.
At the causeway, pelicans drafted the air currents over the marsh, prehistoric and perfect. The truck carrying our patient crawled ahead of us, and I kept my distance. We were a small convoy of hope, bright against the green.
“Hey, Dr. A?” Becca said softly, chin propped on her fist as she watched the water.
“Hm?”
“When you talk to him,” she said, meaning the dolphin, “why French?”
Because it feels like my mother’s perfume. Because it makes me soft when I want to be sharp. Because if I’m going to beg, I want to do it in the language I learned first. “Because I’m rude in English,” I said instead. “And he deserved sweet.”
Becca smiled. “He did.”
He absolutely did. All of them did. Even the ones that didn’t make it. Especially them.
We reached intake. The team moved like a muscle: triage, fluids, an oxygen rig that always smelled faintly of rubber bands and salt. I stood shoulder to shoulder with Miguel while we watched numbers print out. I chewed the inside of my cheek and tasted copper. The lactate dropped a fraction. Not enough. But not nothing.
“Hold,” I told him. “We give him every chance.”
“Always,” he said.
