Chapter Fourteen
Rylee
Thursday
Rylee got out of the taxi at WorldCares and slugged her way to the elevator. Her hand hovered over the button, and she was too emotionally wiped to push it.
That medical appointment had been the miracle that she had prayed for. The thing she’d plotted for. Hoped for. Worked for.
And now it was over.
And on the other end would be a phone call. A diagnosis. Answers were hard. Even when they were the things that she wanted most.
Someone else pushed the button, and the car arrived. “Are you going to your office, Ms. Jones?”
Rylee’s “Yes, thank you” felt burdensome to say.
As soon as Erica greeted her, it signaled Neesa that she was back.
Neesa read her mood instantly and shut the door softly. “We can talk about what happened later,” she said. “What do you need right now?”
“I don’t know,” Rylee said, plopping into her chair and turning toward the window. “I just want clear answers. No more running around. I hope it’s not ...” She licked her lips and turned to see her friend's worried face. “I hope it’s nothing worse.”
“It’s something, though. Yoga isn’t the fix. Baby steps.”
“It is something. And as I was lying there in the MRI with its ratatat that put me right back on the battlefield with all the images dancing through my head—” she stopped to close her eyes.
“I might be wrong. I might see my family and hear how they describe the sensations and say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s got to be it.’ But in the tube, with memories of war, now I’m thinking brain cancer or issues I developed from my time in the military.
I mean, I could smell the burn pit at night. I’m not immune.”
“What do you need to cope?” Neesa asked. “Something in nature. It’s a surprisingly sunny day. How about water? On the way in this morning, I saw that guy Jesus setting up his kayak rental booth. Why don’t we put on our drysuits and take a paddle in the river?”
“It’s chilly yet to be on the water,” Rylee said.
“Just what you need. A bite of cold, the feel of the waves. No wind, so it shouldn’t be too bad, and I’ve got some travel mugs, I’ll fill them with piping hot tea for when we get to the shore.”
For sure, sitting here in the office, swiveling her chair back and forth until quitting time, stewing in a broth of apprehension wasn’t a good way to cope. “Okay, yeah, that sounds good. I have my gym bag, so I’ll put a swimsuit on under my sweats.”
They walked to the park right outside the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where Jasper had his office. It was also where they came often on days when the weather helped them cope with the enormity of the global crises their organization helped address daily.
Neesa was right, sometimes, a little sun could bolster morale better than anything else.
The kayak guy, Jesus, recognized them and showed off a picture of his new baby girl. They were his first customers of the new year. Jesus said it was lucky for all three of them.
That was nice. Rylee felt like she could use some luck.
She pulled off her sweats and put on her dry suit and swim shoes. Then, packing up her dry bag, she pulled the straps over the turquoise life vest Jesus had lent her.
Off they shoved into the water, with the setting sun splashing gold across the Potomac's cyan waters. Birds flew low, gliding peacefully on the still air. Rylee had exerted enough energy in her paddle toward the center that she felt the stress lifting from her body.
Neesa was right; this was exactly what Rylee needed. It was wonderful to have a friend who knew her so well.
Rylee pulled the paddle across her lap, letting her body rise and fall with the current. As she dipped the paddle back into the water, she looked down.
And that’s when she saw a hand reaching upward.
It was shocking.
And Rylee’s brain stuttered as she stared at it.
White and swollen by the water, the fingers were about eight inches under the surface.
Dead. Obviously dead.
She should reach in and grasp that hand.
Someone loved the person beneath the water, and they were tormented because they didn’t know what had happened to their family member.
In all the disasters where WorldCares was present, the rescue teams knew there would be no peace for the survivors until they found their loved ones.
Reach for it, Rylee told herself, but she didn’t move.
On land, Rylee was very used to handling something like this.
She’d given artificial breath so many times, pressed her hand into gaping wounds so many times.
She’d seen people with their limbs melted away, the stumps burned black.
And one woman with her eyeball dangling from the connective tissues, resting in her hand.
Rylee had dampened a cloth and draped it over the eye.
Dampened another and lightly pressed it into the socket just to keep things moist, but careful not to stop the flow of whatever was flowing in her veins.
Hopefully flowing. That woman was triaged as walking wounded, not one of the ones in the worst shape.
So she had held her eyeball and waited for more medical help.
That one still gave Rylee nightmares.
And yes, Rylee had been around dead bodies. More than her share.
But bodies in the water?
Rylee only knew what Ed had told her when they dated last year.
Ed worked for the D.C.P.D. and trained with their swift water search-and-rescue team, so he could dive into the Potomac looking for evidence that had been tossed in.
And of course, that meant bodies too.
Ed had described the terrible conditions of those dives. The deeper he went, the colder it got. With zero visibility, he inched forward, feeling around with his hands, learning to identify items by touch through his dive gloves.
There were all kinds of dangers on the bottom: sharp objects, trees, rocks, and debris that could entangle and entrap him.
He said that bodies don’t behave the way they’re portrayed in movies.
They didn’t lie flat on the floor of the waterway.
The upper half suspends at an angle buoyed by air trapped in the body.
So if he was looking for a newly deceased body, he was feeling around in the water quite a bit above the floor, and he usually found the corpse when his fingers pushed into an eye socket.
After about seven days, depending on the temperature of the water, the body fills with decomp gases and floats to the surface.
Once it reached the surface, fish and birds looking for food punctured the skin, released the gas, and the body sank back down.
A floating hand, that could be on the way up or the way down, Rylee reasoned.
The water was cold but not that cold. The thermometer Jesus put in the water to warn people about how long they could safely stay out said the river was fifty degrees that day.
But still, if she was right about the float and descent, this was someone who had been in the water for ten to twenty days.
And her second guess was that the corpse would lead with the gaseous pocket, so abdomen first on the way up and lightest last on the way down.
If she was right, this body was on its way back to the bottom.
She should call the police.
If she lost sight of the hand and the team came out, Ed would be there for sure.
Rylee remembered asking him how he coped with reaching around in pitch black, hoping to put his hand into decaying flesh. He said he sang opera the whole time he was under. It took up a lot of the air in his tank, but singing at the top of his lungs kept him sane.
That, and the extra bubbles, meant his team would notice if he became entangled and needed an assist.
Rylee pulled out her phone and, through the protective plastic case, tapped the Maps app, got her exact location, and took a screenshot.
The family. All Rylee could think of was the family.
Should she call Ed? He was still in her contacts. They’d parted on friendly footing.
Rylee could call the D.C.P.D.'s non-emergency number.
Her instincts told her not to. She had no idea why.
Perhaps they would want her to stay with the body, and it might take them hours for a call-out to spool up—grabbing gear and getting on site.
There was no way Rylee could handle this cold for that long.
And she wasn’t willing to paddle away lest the body be lost forever, and the family have no closure.
If she reached for the wrist, would it detach from the rest of the body like chicken bones in a soup pot? Rylee wished she hadn’t made that simile. That one would stick with her. She was probably off chicken soup for the rest of her life.
If she reached and pulled, and she ended up holding the dead person’s hand, would the rest of the body sink away?
What if it were only the hand that came up? Wasn’t that better than nothing? There would be DNA at least.
And what if it was a whole body? What if she pulled the hand and Uncle Jim, in his blue jeans and National’s jacket, came gliding into sight?
That would be hard, but better.
At least she could take pictures. A visible tattoo or piercing, the color and length of hair, and possibly clothing might help identify the person.
That was really what a family wanted: to know what happened to their loved one.
Though those kinds of pictures wouldn’t be something to share beyond the forensic team.
She was done thinking.
Oh, she didn’t want to do this.
But she was going to do this.
“What’s going on?” Neesa called, letting the wind sweep her voice down the twenty yards of river that separated them.
Rylee didn’t look up.
I have to do this quickly before the remains get swept away by the current. Do it. Just do it.
Rylee tugged the sleeve of her dry suit down, covering as much of her hand as she could.
Her gut clenched. Her ribs tightened down to cage her breath.
With chattering teeth, she bladed her hand and tried to shoot it down into the water.
Her whole body flinched with heebie-jeebies.
She’d deal with a patient on the battlefield any day of the week. This was a level of gruesome that Rylee wasn’t prepared for. She imagined a lifetime of nightmares in front of her, then replaced that thought with a grieving family finding solace.
Too bad Rylee didn’t know opera like Ed did. The only song she could think of was Baby Shark and that seemed wholly inappropriate.
Do it!
Do. It.
Rylee looked up at the swirl of gray clouds.
“I’m coming over to you,” Neesa called, slicing into the water.
Yeah. Rylee probably looked like she was having an existential crisis, and Neesa would be worried that Rylee would freak the hell out on the water in her kayak. And that was no bueno.
Do it before Neesa gets here or even close enough to see.
You can do it to protect your friend. No need for her to have these images.
“Do it!” She hissed at herself, and she bladed her hand and lifted her elbow toward her ear. “Do it!” She spat through gritted teeth.
And with that, Rylee squeezed her lids tight and shoved her hand into the water, felt something other than water, and closed her grip on it as she pulled her elbow back up.
What happened next could only be described as a moment of brain warp.
Part of her mind wanted to tell her that she’d pulled the skin from a hand.
The rational part of her brain correctly identified the object as a surgical glove that, full of water, had been floating, hand-shaped and fingers up, eight inches beneath the surface.
Rylee began to laugh hysterically.
It was the culmination of everything that had been going on in her life, and she just let it flow from her chest—crazy and unfiltered.
“Crap, Rylee, what’s happening to you? I mean, we came out to the river for it to be cathartic – are you catharting? Is that a word?”
Rylee waved her hand through the air, then dropped it to her lap and lifted the surgical glove.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch that. You have no idea where it’s been.”
“It’s been in the water,” Rylee said, the bubble of anxiety burst, and she told the story to Neesa’s horror faces.
“That was so brave,” Neesa said. “I mean, you don’t know what you’re pulling up when you reach in the water.
The hand could have pulled away from the arm bones like a chicken in the stock pot.
Cripes, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m going to remember that image every time I try to make someone chicken soup. ”
“I had the exact same chicken thought,” Rylee said.
“That’s why we’re friends. Birds of a feather as well as dead birds in a pot with no feathers. I’m freaking out. I don’t want to be on the river right now.”
Rylee put her paddle in the water. “It was bad.”
“We have to change this mood because I am all kinds of wigged out.” Neesa searched along the surface of the water.
“Okay. I propose that we go home, take scalding hot showers, and put on some nice, comfy clothes, get some fast food, and go to the movies for something loud and violently therapeutic.” Neesa waited for Rylee to thumbs-up the idea.
“And we’re going to be grateful for all the things we have to be grateful for.
And one of them is that you didn’t fish a corpse from the river with the skin peeling off. ”
Rylee slapped her paddle in the water to splash Neesa.
Neesa laughed and yelled out, “Come on, I’ll race you back to shore.”