Mehar
A gentle breeze lured me back to reality. And when I opened my eyes I realized I was sleeping on sand with a huge stacked pile of leaves propping up my head.
What. In. The. Fuck?!
So, it wasn’t all a dream. It was my reality. Our plane crashed in the ocean.
Quest was sitting next to me, staring out at the ocean like he was waiting for it to apologize.
The sky was barely lit, that soft grey-blue of early morning before the sun decides to commit.
I didn’t know how long I’d been out. The last thing I remembered was the raft, his shoulder under my head, the sky going dark, and then nothing.
He’d gotten us to shore while I was unconscious.
Pulled the raft onto the beach, moved me under these trees, and from the look of him, sat there all night watching the water while I slept.
My head was pounding. My mouth tasted like salt and blood. My sundress was still damp, clinging to my belly. My body felt like it had been picked up and thrown against something hard. Which, technically, it had.
It all rushed back at once and I broke.
I mean I broke. I turned into Quest’s chest and sobbed so hard my whole body shook.
He pulled me into him and held me tight.
I could feel how exhausted he was from the way his arms trembled against my back.
This man had paddled a raft across open ocean for hours, dragged us to shore, sat up all night watching the water.
His body was running on nothing but anger.
He put both hands on my face. His palms were raw. I could feel the torn skin against my cheeks. The salt from the blisters stung and I cried harder because his hands were destroyed but he was using them to hold my face like I was the one who needed tending to.
“Mehar. Look at me.”
I couldn’t. I was too far gone. The sobs were coming from somewhere below my ribs, from the same place the baby lived, from the deepest part of me where I stored every terrible thing that had ever happened and told myself I’d deal with it later.
Later was here. Later was a beach I didn’t know on an island I couldn’t name with no phone and no help and no way to tell anybody we were alive.
“We’re gonna die here,” I said. “Quest, we’re going to die on this island and nobody is going to find us and our baby is going to—”
“Stop.” His voice was firm but gentle and his thumbs wiped the tears off my face and he looked at me with those dark eyes that had never once lied to me.
“We are not dying here. Do you hear me? I didn’t pull you out of a sinking plane and paddle across the ocean with my bare hands to die on a beach.
That’s not how this goes. I promised you a life and I meant that shit.
On that balcony in Sedona, I told you I would take care of you and this baby, and I don’t break my promises. Not to you. Not ever.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to take his words and wrap them around me like a blanket and let them be enough. But the way shit was looking, I didn’t think it was going to get better. How were we gonna eat? I didn’t know anything about Survivor shit.
Hell, I’d never even watched the show Survivor. We were going to starve to death.
“I need you to calm down for the baby,” Quest said, softer now. He pulled me into his chest and held me and I could hear his heartbeat, fast but steady, and I pressed my ear against it and let the rhythm replace the panic. “Breathe with me. In and out. That’s it. Slow.”
I breathed. In and out. In and out. My hands were on my belly and the baby kicked and I cried again but softer this time because she was moving and she was alive and as long as she was alive I had a reason to keep going.
Quest pulled back and scanned the tree line behind us.
I could see his mind working, that CEO brain switching from comfort mode to survival mode, cataloging everything he saw and filing it into categories: useful, not useful, dangerous, edible.
He was already building a plan. That’s who Quest was.
While the rest of the world panicked, Quest made a plan and then worked the plan until reality matched whatever he’d decided it should be.
“There are fruit trees up there,” he said, standing up. “Stay here. I’m gonna grab some for you.”
He jogged toward a cluster of trees about thirty yards from the shore and came back two minutes later with his arms full.
Mangoes. Some kind of small green fruit I didn’t recognize.
And coconuts that he stripped by slamming them against a sharp rock until the husk split, peeling it away in chunks until he got to the shell underneath.
He used the tip of his knife to punch through the soft spot at the top and handed me one to drink from.
His hands were bleeding worse than before but he didn't say a word about it.
Eat.”
I nodded and scraped away the mango peel with my nails, revealing the succulent flesh.
I bit into it and the juice ran down my chin and mixed with the salt on my skin.
It tasted like the sweetest thing I’d ever eaten in my life.
I was hungrier than I realized. I finished the mango and the coconut water.
He handed me three more mangos and the other green fruit.
This could sustain us for a little bit, but the baby needed fats and other nutrients. Now, if it were just me, this lil fruitarian diet would get my waist snatched! But now wasn’t the time for that.
“I’m gonna walk the island,” he said. “See what we’re working with. Stay here and rest.”
“No.”
“Mehar—”
“I’m not staying here by myself. I’m not sitting under a tree on an island I don’t know alone. I’m going with you.”
He looked at me like he wanted to argue.
“Fine. But we go slow. You tell me the second you feel dizzy or cramping or anything.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
“I said I will, Quest.”
He helped me up and we walked.
· · ·
The island was small but it wasn’t flat.
The shore wrapped around in an uneven loop and beyond the tree line the ground rose into hills covered in thick green vegetation that looked like it hadn’t been touched by a human being in decades.
Maybe ever. There were no buildings, no paths, no trash, no signs that anybody had ever set foot here.
Just trees and rocks and birds and the constant sound of the ocean behind us and the hum of insects in the brush.
It was beautiful. And terrifying. Both at the same time.
We walked inland, pushing through low branches and stepping over roots, and Quest had his hands on me, making sure I was secure the entire time.
The terrain rose, the trees got thicker, the air cooler. Then I heard it. Water. Running water, steady and constant. Quest heard it too, because his head snapped toward the sound and he pulled me in that direction without saying a word.
We pushed through a wall of greenery and there it was.
A waterfall. Maybe fifteen feet high, pouring off a rock ledge into a shallow pool that was clear enough to see the stones at the bottom.
The water was moving, not stagnant, and the mist from it settled on my skin, and it felt like the first clean thing I’d touched in twenty-four hours.
Quest let go of my hand and stepped into the pool. It came up to his knees. He cupped the water in his torn-up hands, brought it to his mouth, and drank. I watched his face and waited because if this water was salt we were in trouble. If it was fresh we had a chance.
His eyes closed. He drank again. Then he looked at me and something shifted in his face, something that wasn’t quite a smile but was the closest thing to relief I’d seen since the crash.
“It’s fresh.”
I almost collapsed. I actually felt my knees give for a second, and he grabbed me and pulled me to the edge of the pool.
I knelt down, cupped the water, and drank.
It was cold and clean and tasted like absolutely nothing, which meant it tasted like everything because nothing was better than salt right now.
I drank until my stomach told me to stop and then I drank a little more because I had a whole human being inside me who needed water too.
“Thank God,” I whispered.
“Thank God,” he repeated.
We sat by the pool for a while. Not talking.
Just sitting in the shade with our feet in the water and letting our bodies absorb the fact that we weren’t going to die of dehydration today.
Tomorrow was a different question. Next week was a question I couldn’t even look at yet.
But today we had water and fruit and each other and a baby who was still kicking and that was going to have to be enough.
· · ·
We found the tracks on the way back to the shore.
I didn’t notice them at first. Quest did.
He stopped walking so abruptly that I bumped into his back and when I looked down at where he was looking I saw them.
Hoofprints in the soft dirt. Deep, wide, and fresh enough that the edges hadn’t crumbled yet.
Whatever made them was big and heavy and had been here recently.
“What is that?” I asked, even though something in my gut already knew.
“Boar,” Quest said. His voice had changed.
The warmth from the waterfall was gone and replaced with something flatter, more alert.
He was scanning the treeline now, his hand on the knife in his pocket.
“Wild boar. They’re aggressive and territorial and they don’t run from people. We need to get back to the beach.”
We walked faster. Quest kept himself between me and the trees and his hand stayed on his knife and I could feel the energy radiating off him, that coiled readiness that he carried underneath the suits and the charm.
When we got back to the shore he went straight to work.
He gathered branches, driftwood, and dried leaves and then built a pile in the sand near our tree.
He pulled his knife out and struck the blade against a rock until he got a spark.
He nursed it into a flame and within twenty minutes we had a real fire going.
Not a campfire. A real fire. Big enough to see from the water, hot enough to keep things away.
“Fire serves three purposes,” he said, feeding another branch into it. “Warmth tonight. Signal for rescue. And it keeps the boar away. They don’t like fire.”
I sat next to the fire, watched the smoke curl up into the sky, and wondered if anybody out there could see it.
A passing boat. A plane overhead. Anybody.
The smoke rose, thinned, and disappeared into the blue like it was never there.
I felt the hope that had been building since the waterfall deflate a little.
The sun was going down. Our first sunset on this island, and it was painting the sky in colors that had no business being that beautiful when everything about our situation was ugly.
Orange and gold and pink and purple and the ocean reflecting all of it back like a mirror.
I put my hand on my belly and felt the baby shift and tried to imagine explaining this to her one day.
You were conceived in a penthouse and born on an island and in between your daddy killed a man in his living room and your mama killed one in a warehouse and we survived a plane crash because your father refused to let the ocean win.
That was one hell of a baby book.
“I’m scared,” I said. It came out quieter than I intended.
Quest sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. His body was warm from the fire, solid against mine. For a moment, just a moment, I let myself believe that being next to him was enough to make this survivable.
“I know,” he said. “I know you’re scared.
I’d be worried if you weren’t. But we’re alive, Mehar.
We’re alive and the baby is alive and we have water and food and fire and we have each other.
And I’m going to get us off this island.
I don’t know how yet and I don’t know when but I’m going to do it.
Because I didn’t fight this hard to build a life with you just to lose it on a beach. ”
I leaned into him and closed my eyes, listening to the fire crack and the waves pull at the sand. Somewhere in the trees behind us, something heavy moved through the brush. I felt Quest’s body tense against mine. His arm tightened around my shoulders and his other hand went to his knife.
We sat like that for a long time. All we had was each other and hope. What I wouldn’t give to be laid in a bed, scrolling the ‘Gram, eating a slice of pizza right now. I thought about my sister and my brother. Were they concerned that they hadn’t heard from us yet?
Fruit and water wasn’t going to be enough. I could hear my belly growl. But I had Quest and I knew we could make it through anything.