Page 48 of The Captain
A man with a phone started to edge closer. One of Atlas’s plainclothes appeared like humidity and politely blocked the shot with his body. I didn’t look at him. I pretended the world was full of good people without thinking about where their checks cleared.
“Do we move her?” the firefighter asked low, so the circle wouldn’t hear.
I looked at the water, the width of it, the way it wanted to take and take. “Not yet,” I said. “Surf’s wrong. And I’m not bringing another adult female into my pen unless I can keep her breathing quiet. We wait for the long sling and more hands.”
His eyes softened like he could feel the edges of my voice going frayed. “Copy.”
I checked the blowhole rim with my thumb and flicked away a grain of sand. When she exhaled it misted my wrist. I felt something hitch in my chest that wasn’t anatomy. It was grief with a knife tucked under its skirt. I made it wait. There was work.
The next wave hit me in the ribs and pushed the thought I’d been sitting on up into my mouth.
“This isn’t fair,” I said to the animal. To the water. To myself. “You hear me? I am so tired of this not being fair.”
My voice broke on the last word and I hated that I was the kind of woman who would cry in front of strangers. The crowd went hush-shy. Someone said, “She cares,” like it was news.
I pressed my forehead to the curve of the animal’s jaw for a second longer than the professionals would have liked and I let the tears run hot and humiliating down my face and into salt that didn’t need help being salty.
“I am so tired,” I said again, softer. “Je suis fatiguée, ma belle. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I thought about the calf we’d just put on a boat and the calf this mother had maybe lost and the way the ocean keeps its own book of names for each of them that I will never get to read. I thought about the tonal in my recorder and the piece of plastic in my pocket and how much easier it would be if I could lay the whole weight of this on one uniform and set it on fire.
I thought about Jacob—no. I pushed his name away like a palm on a stranger’s chest.
“Take a breath,” the firefighter murmured, thinking he was talking to the whale. Maybe he was. Maybe he was merciful to me without trying.
I took one. It scraped. I took another. It scraped less. The next one found a place to sit.
The radio on my belt hissed. “Allard,” Becca said. “Kogia One holding. Lactate down point two. Resp slow but steady.” Her voice had that careful point to it like she’d seen some part of me through the phone and was steering around it on purpose.
“Copy,” I managed. “Good work.” The words bought me a slim piece of belief. We were not losing everything today.
Another wave. Another lift. A change—a small hitch of muscle under my palm that said pain had shifted shape. I checked her belly again. The mammary slit was raw and stretched. The line of her body under my hand had that deflated quality nursing gives. Milk had been asked of her recently. Rage rose in me like bile.
Where was that baby now? What had we done? What had we let into their world?
“Can we get her baby?” a girl’s voice said from the line, honest and brutal.
“Sometimes,” I said, because I will not lie to children. “Not today.”
That was the moment the tears I’d already let loose decided to be a wave. Not the tidy kind. The kind that knocks you sideways and fills your mouth with water you didn’t want. My hands stayed. My professionalism stayed. My face betrayed me. I made a sound in my throat that felt like tearing something I had kept stitched.
The firefighter’s arm pressed warm against mine. He didn’t look at me. He kept the blowhole clear and pretended his shoulder was not there on purpose. Bless him for that.
Time went soft at the edges. Minutes piled up wet and heavy. The long sling arrived with two more firefighters and a park ranger who looked like he had been waiting all year to be useful at the right thing. We slid canvas under on the lift of a set and set stakes in sand where the ocean couldn’t have its way without asking. We made a small, ugly altar out of salvage and hope.
“Tamika’s five out,” Miguel said over the radio. “Quiet pen is clear. Kogia calf is moving like a poem.”
I laughed, unlovely, and then backed it down. “Good.”
The bottlenose’s rate steadied into something I could call a rhythm. Every third breath had a catch. Every tenth was clean. Progress without a promise. The sun moved. My back burned where my tank had slipped. The crowd thinned to the ones who could stand to watch a slow thing matter.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. My body knew whose name it wanted to see. I didn’t look. I couldn’t. Instead, I pictured an empty horizon and ran my hand over the whale’s flank until the vision faded enough to let the present back in.
“Should we try to move her?” the firefighter asked. “Surf’s easing.”
I tasted the water. I watched the crest. I measured the weight of the ring of people I could pull from the crowd if I asked for hands and whether they would listen. I thought about what would happen if we rolled her wrong and took hope out of her spine.
“Not yet,” I said. “We give her the dignity of breath before we give her the indignity of our plans.”
