Chapter 10 The Patient
The Patient
Nai‘a: dolphin, porpoise
Minnow woke in the middle of the night, hit by a wave of panic. She had been dreaming of spiny sea urchins surrounding the
house, leaving no path for her to escape. Her eyes flew open and her heart pounded against the inside of her chest. The odd
fluttering sensations made her wonder if maybe this time she really was having a heart attack. Alone in the boonies in Hawai?i.
She sat up, feeling the need to flee but having nowhere to flee to. Just breathe. Four seconds in, hold for four, four seconds out, hold for four.
But as she was holding her breath, Minnow felt her palms go clammy. Suddenly her head began to feel lighter, as though floating
away from her body. Yep, for sure she was dying, so she started to cry—big, heaving sobs. She sat there for a few minutes,
her body tensed into a ball on the bed, clutching the thin blanket in her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.
After a time, as her therapist had promised, her lungs loosened and the tension began to slowly drain away. Remember, the attacks will subside on their own. You just need to ride them out. Your body knows what to do if you let your
mind stay out of it.
So, why did her left foot burn like someone had shoved a fire poker into it?
She sat up, felt around on the card table, found the lantern and turned it on. There, on the top of her foot, between the
tendons of her big toe and second toe, was a red mark. Upon closer inspection, she saw two tiny holes in the middle of it.
She knew enough to know what it was.
Instinctively, she flew off the bed—again, yanked her top sheet off and shook it out. Something long and red and leggy flew
off the sheet and disappeared in the darkness. The idea of such a heinous bug crawling on her while she slept was almost too
much to bear. This was worse than Mexico with its giant scorpions or Australia with its spiders. She had no idea how poisonous
centipedes in Hawai?i were, but she remembered seeing a first aid kit on a shelf in the bathroom. By the time she came back
to the bed with the blue plastic box, her whole foot felt tight and hot.
Please, let there be antihistamine in here. But when she opened the lid, her heart fell. The box was full of fishing lures. This wasn’t the first strange thing she’d
found in the house. Last night she opened a drawer in an old dresser against the wall, looking for another towel, only to
discover it was filled to the brim with small pieces of coral—all of them heart-shaped.
The pain began to run up her leg and she felt a wave of wooziness, so she lay back on the bed. What were you supposed to do
with a centipede bite? Elevate the foot? Apply heat? Cold? She realized she had no idea. But the sky behind the house had
lightened, thank God, so at least morning was here. The only person she could think to call was Nalu, at his hotel.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Minnow. I need help.”
He yawned into the phone. “With what?”
“Can you come get me as soon as you can? I got bit by a centipede and I’m starting to feel kind of prickly.”
A brief pause. “Can you breathe?”
“Yes, I can breathe, but my foot is ballooning up and I’m dizzy.”
She could hear rustling around in the background. “On my way, Doc.”
As Minnow lay in the emergency room bed waiting for the doctor, she could hear everything going on around her. Only curtains
separated the beds, and nurses and technicians rolled equipment around, talked on the phone to someone who wanted to know
what kind of cough medicine to give their baby, and gave coffee orders to an intern. There was a man in the bed next to her,
groaning, and with only a paper-thin sheet separating them, she couldn’t help but overhear he probably had a horrific case
of food poisoning from bad sushi.
Right away, the nurse had given her an antihistamine, but the fire still seared all the way up to her knee. As she stared
at the stark white ceiling, hoping for something to numb the pain, she wondered if this was the same bed Angela Crawford had
been in. Maybe Minnow would even get the same doctor, the same nurse. Thinking of Angela made her feel almost silly for coming
in with just two tiny pricks in the top of her foot, rather than large pieces of her body ripped and torn.
The curtain swung aside and a youngish woman walked in. “Minnow Gray? I’m Dr. Bush. I hear you had a run-in with a centipede?”
“I was sleeping, so I never really got a good look at it. But yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
Minnow pointed at her foot, which was still ballooned up.
The doc leaned down and examined the bite. “Nasty buggers but generally not dangerous here in the islands. No trouble breathing,
right?”
“Right. I felt pretty woozy, though. Tingly head, prickly hands and feet.”
“Sometimes our own adrenaline does that to us, not the poison.”
Minnow defended her reason for coming. “And the pain—it’s off the charts.”
Dr. Bush pulled out a stethoscope and listened. “Heart sounds good. The antihistamine should kick in soon. We’ll give you
something for the pain and you’ll be good to go. If you want, I could call in an antibiotic to have on hand in case it seems
like it’s getting infected.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Pretty low.”
She just hoped she could walk and put her fins on. “I’m in the middle of an important job and I really need my foot to be
in working order.”
“What kind of job?”
“I’m looking into the recent shark incidents on the coast.”
Dr. Bush’s face went white, but she didn’t say anything, just looked down at the chart.
Minnow had to ask. “Were you here when they brought her in?”
Her.
When their eyes met, she had her answer already. The doc had the haunted look of someone who’d seen something they wished
they could unsee.
“Wait, are you a reporter?” Dr. Bush asked.
“No, I’m a scientist. I study white sharks.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I was here from the beginning. You think you’ve seen it all, and then something like this comes in. It
shattered even the toughest of our crew.”
“How’s she doing now?”
“She’s alive. Look, I can’t really give out patient information—confidentiality and all that.”
Suddenly Minnow had forgotten about her own bite. “What I really need is to talk to Angela herself, if at all possible, but
I haven’t had any luck getting through. Is there any way you can help me?”
Doc looked surprised. “You know who it is, then.”
“Yeah, and trust me, the last thing I would do is go to the press with this. I’m just trying to put together the puzzle pieces.
Is she in any shape to talk?”
“I thought you were here for that centipede bite.”
A nurse came in holding a paper cup and two pills.
“I am, I swear, but I was going to come up here anyway, so I guess the timing worked out. Look, I really need to see her.
Please, help me.”
“Take those, and I’ll see what I can do,” Dr. Bush said, ducking out behind the curtain.
“What is that?” Minnow asked the nurse.
“Tylenol, and I have some lidocaine cream to rub on the bite.”
Minnow swallowed the pills and lay back, head on the pillow, and let the nurse rub the cold cream on the top of her foot and
lower leg.
A moment later, Nalu popped his head in. “You gonna make it?”
She rolled her eyes. “That remains to be seen.”
“When do you get released?”
The nurse answered for her. “I just have a few forms for you to fill out, and then you’re free to go.”
“Good, because there is someone who wants to talk to you over in the main wing,” he said, wearing a smug look.
“What? Who?”
He glanced at the nurse. “You know who.”
Once the nurse left to get the paperwork, Minnow peered at Nalu. “How did you manage to get to her?” she whispered.
“I bribed the guard with malasadas.”
“Oh, get real.”
“No kidding. It turns out I went to school with his nephew, so we talked story for a while, and then he went in and spoke
to her. She said you could stop by. Not me, just you.”
“Was Zach around?”
“No sign of him.”
Twenty minutes later, Nalu wheeled Minnow through the freezing hospital halls to Angela’s room.
Minnow felt ridiculous riding in the wheelchair, but the way her foot felt, limping there would have taken her half the day.
As the guard let her in, she asked Nalu to give her a moment so she could have a word alone with the woman.
A wave of nervous energy pulsed through her as she stepped out of the wheelchair.
She was about to meet the Angela Crawford.
There was no one else in the room at the moment and Angela lay slightly propped up, staring out the window.
Minnow spoke softly. “Hello.”
Angela slowly turned her head and their eyes met. “Hey. You’re the shark lady?” Her words came slowly, undoubtedly due to
heavy medication.
“I am.”
She was almost unrecognizable with her hair smashed up against one side of her face, no makeup, skin as pale as milk and the
stitched gash that ran from her upper lip almost to her ear. But then she smiled, and there was no hiding who she was, even
with her hugely swollen lip. “You’re pretty. For a scientist,” Angela said.
The words caught Minnow off guard, and she smiled as she walked closer. “Thanks, I guess?”
“Did they tell you the story?” Angela asked.
“I heard a secondhand report. But when we investigate incidents like this, it’s really helpful to speak directly to the person
involved.”
Angela shifted under the sheet and then groaned. “I’m on some kind of horse tranquilizers or something, but I remember everything
from that morning. It plays like a movie in my mind, except at times I’m sitting on the bottom of the ocean looking up watching
the whole thing unfold. And then I’m there in the shark’s mouth, and it keeps shifting perspectives. Weird, huh?”
“That kind of thing is common. It’s your mind’s way of trying to process the trauma. And we humans are masters at protecting
ourselves in any way we can. We mask, distort, dissociate, block out, relive . . . you name it.”
“So you don’t think it’s the drugs they’ve pumped me with?” Angela asked.