Carter
Something made him wake, but he closes his eyes again, slipping once more into the whiteness of peace and no pain. Then he hears shouting—snatches of words, a man’s voice. Big, bold. Desperate.
Gramps.
Gramps is holding his ankle.
“Help, somebody help us! Please!”
Gramps is straining to pull him up. He’s tugging hard on his leg. Carter’s other leg dangles free. He’s helpless. He can’t find anything to grasp hold of.
“Hang on, Carter! For God’s sake, hang on!”
Gramps heaves until he manages to maneuver Carter’s hips up to the edge of the railing.
He grabs him around the waist and gives him a heavy tug.
Together they thud down onto the wet deck.
Gramps wraps his big arms around Carter, holds tight.
Carter feels him shaking—the old man is crying, gasping for breath.
“Thank God,” he whispers against Carter’s ear. “I’m so sorry, my boy. Thank the Lord for giving me the strength to pull you back. I should . . . I should never . . . have brought . . .”
His arms slacken. They fall away from Carter. His grandfather slumps onto his side, then sinks to the deck. His head hits with a dull thump. His mouth hangs open.
Carter realizes with a jolt of horror that his grandfather is covered in blood. His white dinner shirt is saturated with it. The blood is all over Carter, too. He holds out his hands—they’re slick, crimson. He’s sitting in a thick, shiny pool of blood.
Carter’s heart clean stops. His body begins to shake so hard he can’t think or breathe, and nothing seems real, and it’s all slow motion again.
Under the roar of wind, the clang of metal, and the groan of the ship, a new sound rises—boots pounding. Along the deck. Coming closer. Men shouting. Louder. Closer. Two brilliant spotlights bob toward him. They flood him and Gramps with blinding white light. The blood gleams under the glare.
More deck lights flare to life, illuminating everything.
Carter can see spray and foam flying through the beams. His mother is running behind the men—her hair and dress streaming behind her.
She’s calling his name, and the wind is snatching her words and flinging them out to sea.
She slips, falls hard on the wet deck as the ship tilts and turns sharply.
The two men stagger violently sideways for a moment, fighting for balance.
When they reach him, one sets down his light and grabs Carter by the shoulders. The other shines his beam on them.
“Shit! Medic! We need medics!” he yells.
Another crew member—a woman in a white uniform—arrives. She calls for help on her radio.
“Are you okay, son?” one of the men asks.
Carter can’t speak. He turns toward Gramps as the crewman feels for a pulse at Gramps’s neck.
His mother reaches them. More searchlights sweep over the deck and across the water. An alarm begins clanging.
His mom drops to her knees beside him, right in the blood.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, what happened?” she cries, staring at Gramps. The female crew member tries to move her back.
“Give them some space. They need room for the EMTs.”
Carter sees now that his grandfather’s body is completely limp, his mouth agape, eyes open but pupils rolled back.
“No pulse,” one of the crew mutters. “Can’t find a pulse.”
“Where’s all the blood from?” the other asks. “I can’t see any wounds—are you okay, son? What’s your name?”
Carter still can’t talk. He has no idea how Gramps managed to catch his ankle and haul him back over the railing. It’s as though some hidden force—some magic or miracle—helped him.
A dull roaring starts in Carter’s brain as he stares at Gramps, and all the blood. Somewhere far, far away, beneath the chaos in his mind, he hears someone ask, “Who went overboard, son? What happened? Did you see who went over?”
More crew arrive and are peering over the railing, panning the water far below with big lights.