Chapter 10 The Patient #2
“Probably a little bit of both.”
The butterflies about meeting Angela had completely disappeared. They were just two women in a room talking about the blurred
lines between life and death.
“The weirdest thing is that my arm is gone. Just—poof—gone. And from what I gather, unlike with some species, human arms do
not grow back,” she said, cobalt eyes dropping down to Minnow’s foot, which was wrapped tightly in gauze and aching badly.
“What happened to you?”
“Centipede. Bit me while I was sleeping.”
“Ouch.”
“Yes, but . . . well . . . not as ouch as yours. How are you feeling now?”
“I hurt all over, even with the meds. Two hundred fourteen stitches, though I have to take their word for it. It didn’t hurt
while it was happening, though.”
Angela’s eyes teared up and she glanced back out the window. A sideways rain pelted the glass and hummed above them on the
metal roof. Weeping pepper trees flailed in the wind, and mist hung low on the hilltops. Minnow remained quiet, giving Angela
whatever time she needed.
“The shark left me a souvenir,” Angela finally said.
“Oh?”
“Zach took it back to the room with him. He moved up here to some inn. A tooth.”
This was news. “No one mentioned a tooth.”
“He pulled it from my shin bone on the way in to shore. Zach seemed to think someone might take the tooth and try and sell
it or do something weird, so he put it in his pocket. He tends to be paranoid, but in our world you never know.”
Her words reminded Minnow of who she was dealing with. “I’d like to see the tooth. It can tell us a lot about the shark.”
“I’ll ask him to bring it.”
“In the meantime, are you up for telling me your story?” Minnow asked gently.
Angela closed her eyes and remained silent for so long, Minnow thought she had fallen asleep. But then she said, “Even before
we got in the water, I had this bad vibe. The ocean was clear and blue, but we were so far out and . . . I don’t know, I just
had this sense that we should just leave the dolphins alone and go back in. I even told Zach, but he was hell-bent on swimming
with them. It was one of his bucket list items, so there was no swaying him.”
Minnow remembered Joe saying that Angela was the one who wanted to go in, but she kept quiet.
“Zach is really comfortable in the ocean, but I brought a boogie board in with me just to hang on to. I grew up in Idaho,
you know? The dolphins were still a ways off, and it was deep—deeper than any water I’ve swam in. I started to feel panicky
but didn’t want Zach to know, so I put on a good face, but my heart was jackhammering in my chest.” She paused, rubbed her
right shoulder, and winced. “They say sharks can smell fear. Is that true?”
“They can’t smell fear, but they can pick up on a rising heart rate from pretty far away. It’s an electro-sensory thing that
helps them identify wounded or stressed animals—easy prey.”
“That’s why it came after me and not Zach?”
“Who’s to say? You were also on the boogie board, so your outline was more seal or turtle-like.”
“It all happened so fast. One minute I was floating in this pristine water, looking down at sunbeams, and the next something
slammed into me. I remember thinking for a split second that somehow it was the boat, because the force was so strong, but
there was this fishy, animal smell. I heard Zach screaming, “Shark!” and I went numb.
“It had my arm and the board in its mouth and it was dragging me out to sea. In my head, there was this voice saying to punch it in the nose—I guess I’d heard that somewhere—so I did with my other hand.
” She held it up and showed Minnow the laceration lines.
“But I kept hitting teeth. Then something popped and I was free, just floating there as I felt the tail whack me and then disappear. I was in complete shock, and at the same time I seemed hyperaware that the situation was critical. The water was red all around me and that’s when I realized my arm was mostly severed and I was probably going to die. ”
Angela’s face paled and Minnow could see she was taking only tiny sips of air.
“Take it easy, Angela. Remember, you’re safe now and you’re alive. Deep breaths.”
Minnow took a few long, deep inhales and Angela matched her. The tension in the room, which had begun to feel crushing, lessened.
“Again, I was above my body, looking down in this immense bloom of red, flowerlike around me. It was strangely beautiful,
and I know this sounds crazy, but I didn’t feel scared. There was almost this acceptance, like, Hey, this is how it ends. Then Stefan and Zach were beside me, and they pulled me out of the water and lay me on the floor of the boat. Stefan wrapped
a leash around my upper arm and tightened it hard. That’s the first time I really felt any pain. I asked him if I was going
to die and he told me, ‘Not today.’ And that there was an ambulance on the way—he’d called on his cell phone. I’d seen it
on the center console earlier and wondered why you’d need one out in the ocean with you. I guess this was as good a reason
as any.”
“Thank God he had it,” Minnow said, knowing neither of them would probably be sitting here otherwise.
“One of the many little things that went in my favor that day. It was weird, though. Zach was pinching my ear really hard,
and I asked why the fuck he was doing that. He said to distract me,” she said with a hollow laugh. “As if that was going to
do anything.”
“He must have been scared.”
“Oh, he was shaking in his boots, weirdly pale, with this blank look in his eyes. I’d never seen him like that. But then, I had never been attacked by a shark right in front of him, either.” Angela looked up at the ceiling as if remembering.
Minnow brought her back a few moments later. “Did you get a good look at the shark? Its coloring, the shape of its nose. Like,
was it blunt or more pointed?”
“Pointed. And it was dark—surprisingly dark. But when I caught sight of its underside, it was bright white,” Angela said with
a sigh. “I’m tired.”
Minnow had a hundred more questions but decided not to push her luck. “I’ll leave you be. But before I go, is there any way
I could see your wounds? All signs point to a white shark, and seeing the bite pattern can help confirm. That and the tooth.”
Angela pulled the sheet down as far as she could and leaned forward. “Can you help? This is as far as I can move. My ribs
are cracked and I don’t want to pull any stitches.”
Minnow helped lift up Angela’s hospital top, revealing a crescent-shaped wound that ran from her shoulder down the whole length
of her side. The shark had been big enough to swallow her whole. She also wondered about the interdental distance present
in the bite, essentially the distance between the tips of the most labial teeth that could help identify species. A measuring
tape would be needed to help narrow her guess. But with Angela’s description and the sheer size of the bite, there was little
doubt in Minnow’s mind.
A darkness came around the edges of her vision. Suddenly she was standing in the cove in Catalina, ankle deep in water. Nearby,
a crow cawed. The middle of the bay was reddish, and she could no longer see her father, just the yellow kayak floating calmly.
She shivered as she stood, soaking wet and terrified. There was nothing, no movement.
Fog smudged the edges of the scene, but Minnow was sure she was seeing an actual memory fragment, not a dream. Something that
had been eluding her for her whole life.
“Minnow?” a voice said.
Was that her mother?
Louder this time. “Minnow? Here, sit.”
Angela’s voice brought her back into the room. The actress was patting the bed next to her, and Minnow obeyed. Her stomach
clenched in on itself and her mouth watered with something tangy.
“It’s a lot to see, I imagine. Strange, though, if you’re squeamish being in this line of work,” Angela said.
The Catalina memory began to fade, and Minnow grasped at it with her mind, clutching to keep it fresh. She wanted to stay
there, to explore the deep folds of her psyche, to go just a little bit further back in time. She rubbed her forehead. “Sorry,
it’s not that. I was just . . . I was remembering something.”
Angela looked more closely at her. “Did something happen to you?”
“No, my father.”
Minnow had no idea why she was telling Angela this right now. Her own story had little bearing on anything. It was her private
deal.
“I’m sorry. Did he survive?”
“He didn’t.”
The door opened, and a nurse and doctor burst in. By the looks on their faces, both seemed surprised to see Minnow.
“Ms. Crawford, how are you feeling today?” the doctor in scrubs asked.
“Everything hurts, but I guess that’s a good thing. It means I’m alive,” she said with a weak smile.
He looked at Minnow. “Your sister?” he asked.
Angela focused on Minnow, ice-blue eyes meeting her own and studying her face for a moment. “She could be, couldn’t she?”
“I’m Dr. Gray, with the university. I study sharks.”
The doc eyed her. “Could have fooled me. Anyhow, sorry to interrupt, but I want to do another scan, so I’m going to need to
borrow the patient.”
“No problem. We’re pretty much done here,” Minnow said, relieved she didn’t have to get into her story with Angela.
“Actually, we aren’t, but that’s okay. Come back for the tooth tomorrow and we’ll finish,” Angela said. “Zach would have you sign a confidentiality paper, but I get the feeling I can trust you.”
“No offense, but I don’t care who you are, and I have no problem keeping it to myself.”
One side of Angela’s mouth curled up. “I knew it.”
Minnow said her goodbyes and limped out the door.