Chapter 12
Twelve
Angie
Angie, Reesa, and Leo were the last in class on Saturday morning, and Angie’s gaze trailed to Dr. Williams once she took one of the last three seats smack center in the front.
He had his back turned to them, arms folded across his chest, and shifting his weight incessantly from side to side while he stared at the projector screen in front of him.
The small auditorium was filled with the entire biology department, the faculty seated on the right-hand side, and students packing the center and left-hand seats.
Dr. Williams finished whatever he was doing and the polished floors squeaked as he spun on his heel with a quick smile.
“Ah, good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming.” He adjusted the lapel microphone on his collar.
“I know it’s Saturday, you’re all supposed to be off, sleeping off your hangovers from last night.
Or maybe you’d rather be playing video games or hanging out with your friends.
Not stuck here with me.” Chuckles rumbled across the room.
“But I think you will all find this as fascinating as I did. Look at this.” Dr. Williams stepped aside, waving his hand up and down in front of his projector screen.
Angie leaned in for a closer glance. What exactly did he want them to see?
It was a point-of-view of something or someone swimming through the ocean.
A diver?
“That, my friends, is a mermaid.” He put his hands on his hips, his voice booming and triumphant, grinning so wide that Angie could see his gums.
“Don’t tell me he made us get out of bed to see a mermaid,” Leo said under his breath.
“Leo, come on, just because you’re not interested doesn’t mean no one else is.” Reesa rolled her eyes, her attention rapt on the mermaid and Dr. Williams.
Angie swallowed hard as the point-of-view made a one-eighty, and the telltale caudal fins of a mer brushed past the camera. She sucked in a breath, darting her eyes to Reesa, Leo, and Dr. Williams.
A faculty member, who Angie recognized as her Marine Conservation professor, raised her hand. “Dr. Williams, how exactly did you get hold of a mermaid? They are elusive, no?”
Angie wanted to know the same thing.
“I spoke with my colleagues from SMOSA and local fisheries, and they assisted me with locating a mermaid. I only put a tracker on her and have been watching her movements for the past few days. Apparently—” He paused when the video panned down the mermaid’s copper tail, where she had an open wound.
“—Victim of a shark attack. But look at her the next day.” Dr. Williams’ voice was breathy and held an air of wonder as he skipped to the next video. Still from the mermaid’s point-of-view, she had turned to look at her tail in the same area where the wound was the day before.
“Her tail is completely intact. No scarring. No blood. No signs that the wound was ever there. A deep wound like this would take weeks to heal, but her? One hundred percent healed in a day.”
A collective gasp rang out through the audience.
Angie thought to the healers that healed this mermaid’s wound, drifting momentarily to Kaden.
With any luck they could help him with his odd condition too.
He swore it was nothing and he needed rest, but the last time she saw him, he looked, well, like what she would look like if she were coming down with an illness.
She had to ask him again the next time she talked to him because she couldn’t shake the niggling feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her.
“But wait, there’s more.” Dr. Williams skipped to his next video clip.
This one, the mermaid had surfaced on land and was sitting at an unknown location.
The professor ran the clip for thirty more seconds and paused it.
“Look. They can breathe on land and the sea. Their skin and senses must adapt so quickly.”
A pause as he scanned the room.
“I want to research how they heal wounds so quickly. This could be a breakthrough for the medical community.” He was fully facing them now, his stance wide, chest puffed out, stretching the buttons on his white dress shirt.
His dark brown eyes were wild behind his glasses. “Miracles could be performed!”
Murmurs of ‘incredible’ and ‘intriguing’ rumbled through the faculty section, and ‘wow’ and ‘so cool’ through the students.
Angie raised her hand and Dr. Williams called on her. “How do you plan to do that? Are you going to capture this mermaid?” She willed him to say no. The mermaid deserved to be free, not taken into human custody for study.
To her relief, Dr. Williams shook his head. “No need.” He turned off the projector and strode to the center of the room where he rolled out a worktable with something wrapped in a black bag atop it and turned on the projectors at the side of the room.
Angie’s trapezius muscles throbbed and she hadn’t realized she was holding her shoulders so close to her ears. The bag was large and she estimated it to be longer than a tall human.
It can’t be.
Her heart dropped into her work clogs and she sat back in her chair when Dr. Williams unzipped the bag and rolled the creature out: a merman with short, dark hair and a copper tail. The lifemate of the mermaid in the video. Dr. Williams was going to dissect him. Angie was going to be sick.
“Excuse me, Ty, did the fisheries and SMOSA get you this one too? Where are they finding these mer?” A different professor asked.
“He was with the mermaid when I went out with some of my colleagues to the fishery. The merman was already dead, beached, and the mermaid was with him. Probably the same shark attacked them both if I had to guess by the wound on him—” Dr. Williams moved his camera down to the merman’s side where there was a jagged, semicircular wound.
“And on her. Looks like she might have escaped and came back for him when we found her.”
Or they had been attacked and chased by a shark to the surface and the merman died trying to protect his lifemate. Angie let out a hard sigh and closed her eyes, slumping in her chair.
“And your colleagues were okay with you taking both mer? They didn’t want to study it for themselves?” the first female professor piped up.
“Of course they did. But my chief of staff asked me to head this research study if I disclose my findings to them. As for the mermaid, her video feed is broadcast to my department, so they see what she’s doing twenty-four-seven.”
It didn’t surprise Angie that they treated the mer like animals to be followed and studied.
Again, the thought came to her to take it on herself and educate her classmates and professors.
The mere thought of outing herself as a friend of the mers, and all the attention that would come with it, made her limbs shake.
Worse was the thought of being in the public eye and speaking on her experiences, dredging up painful memories of the horrors she was subject to and witnessed.
No, she wasn’t ready for that. She pushed the notion from her mind.
Dr. Williams kept going. “Not only can we help people, but this could win us awards for the university and for SMOSA. We could truly put forward the importance of ocean conservation and protecting these beautiful creatures. It is my hope that I can make this department proud by becoming a celebrated marine biologist. We could learn about the mer. Educate others, so the knowledge we gain from this can be passed down to each incoming class. Make the seas a better place for all.”
A boisterous round of applause rang through the high ceilings, and the professor gave a humble smile, holding a hand to his heart. “But back to this merman.”
He moved the camera back into view, revealing the merman’s pale, lifeless face, and down to his smooth chest.
Save for a quiet gasp, the room fell into silence, their gazes glued to the projector screens.
Angie rubbed her eyes to reaffirm what she was seeing. She didn’t want to leave, but she didn’t want to think about the merman—Kaden’s kin—being cut open, his innards exposed for the entire class to see. Bile rose to her throat and she forced it down, gasping.
“Angie,” Reesa hissed. “Are you okay?”
Angie took in a purposeful inhale. “Yeah.”
“I will now make the first cut,” Dr. Williams announced.
Angie’s pulse pounded in her temples as she watched him make a perfect V-cut across the merman’s chest followed by a straight line down to his waist, stopping at his tail.
Excited chatter filled her ears, but Angie could not bring herself to say a word.
“Utterly fascinating. Look at their organs. Smaller than ours, yet they’re so efficient in their movement,” Dr. Williams said, motioning from the merman’s head down to his waist. “I can’t wait to show my wife. She loves mermaids.”
A pang rammed Angie’s chest. She was once the same, and her niece, Rosie, was the same. Dr. Williams had talked about his wife before, a marine scientist at the University of Washington.
Dr. Williams kept cutting and talking, and Angie didn’t join them, checking her phone for the time. Forty-five minutes until the end of class. She wasn’t sure she could handle it anymore.
Thirty minutes passed, and Angie had excused herself from class three times.
When she came back after the final time, the merman had been cut all the way down to his tail, flayed open, before Leo nudged her in her side.
“Want to get out of here? You keep stepping out and you look like you’re going to puke all over the floor. ”
“What?” Angie slid her gaze to him. “Do I look that bad? Is it cold in here?”
“No, but you’re really white. Come on. I want to get out of here, too.” Leo led the way, and they left the auditorium. Angie kept her steps to a near tiptoe as to not disturb the rest of the class.
“What happened? Do you want to go to the health center?” Leo asked once they were outside.