17. Nick
Nick
It’s been twenty-four hours since we arrived at the small regional hospital. Seth’s been in and out of consciousness for all of it, receiving heated fluids through an IV and lying in bed, nested beneath a pile of warm compresses.
He’s stable now, if exhausted. I know the feeling. The staff have been kind enough to offer me one of the empty beds, but mostly, I rest in the chair in Seth’s room. Watching him murmur and move in his sleep until eventually the steady sound of his breathing makes me doze off.
It never lasts long before I feel it all again.
The cold plunge of phantom water. The terror clawing at my chest as Seth is ripped away from me by thirty-foot seas.
I’m still gasping from the latest jolt when I decide to give up on sleep for the time being.
I stand up, take a walk down the hall for a cup of water, and drink the whole thing before I make it back to the room. It’s snowing outside. The peaceful kind. White and fluffy, casting a glittery sheen over everything it touches. Mocking the jagged ice that tried to kill us yesterday.
By the window, on top of the end table, there’s a landline. One I’ve been forced to look at every time I set something down. One I’ve been avoiding.
But there’s only so long I can delay the inevitable. Only so many times I can relive the day before and let my mind lie to itself that it was all a terrible nightmare.
I pick up the receiver, thumbing the smooth plastic as I hesitate to type the number I know by heart.
Telling my father makes all of this feel more real than the crick in my neck from sleeping upright in Seth’s hospital room. But he should know. There’s only one other person on this planet who cares about the Suoja like I did.
I press the ten digits and hit the call button.
He picks up on the first ring.
“Have you heard anything?” comes my father’s weathered voice, with a little extra grit from the static of the phone’s speaker. “Is he back?”
“Is he okay?” I hear my mother in the background.
They know.
A deep breath whooshes out of me. “Dad?”
“Nicolas. Fuck. Thank God. You’re alright?”
Am I? I don’t know. I feel drained. Raw. Cracked open and waterlogged.
“Yeah.” My chest prickles at the soft sound of my mother crying in the background. “I’m okay. You… uh. You heard?”
“The storm’s been all over the news. Eight vessels disabled, three wrecked. They released the names of the boats that sank last night, but not all the details.” Dad pauses. “One of them lost their entire crew. Three more people are still in critical condition.”
The news coils up in the pit of my stomach like an anchor chain. New links of guilt attaching to old.
An entire crew lost.
I know that what happened to us could have been so much worse. Of course I know that. We’re lucky to be alive.
But it’s different being faced with the reality that there were men who never made it through to the other side of that storm. Who won’t come home to their families. Men my father probably knows after over three decades in the business. Men I’ve probably shook hands with before.
“We’re all okay here,” I say. It might be the first time I fully believe it, knowing everything this storm took from our community. “Minor injuries, all things considered.”
And then my father lets out a ragged sigh, and says the last thing I ever could’ve expected. “I always knew you’d be a fine captain.”
I stagger back into the chair, crumpling forward and hugging that phone receiver to my head. I feel like a child again, dependent upon his approval. Only this time I know damn well I don’t deserve it.
I realize he can’t see me shaking my head and try to think of something to say. “I’m sorry.”
It’s all I’ve got.
I’m sorry for the things that weren’t my fault. The lives that were lost, the devastation, the heartache my parents went through waiting to find out if I was dead or alive.
But most of all, I’m sorry for every choice I made that led us to be where we were that day.
“Why? About the Suoja? I need you to listen to me right now, son. I don’t give a shit about the boat.
I know you made the right decision out there.
You made the decision that saved five lives and brought everyone home safe.
I understand it’s hard to see it that way right now.
It’s going to be hard for a while. But I hope you can be proud of what you did someday.
Because I have never been more proud of you. ”
My hand, still clutching the phone, trembles.
“It’s not your fault,” he says firmly. “Remember what I told you when you started driving the boat?”
I close my eyes, thinking back to the first time I closed my hands around the wheel—for real—standing side by side with him.
“Being in command isn’t the same thing as being in control. Out here, the control doesn’t belong to you. The command—that’s in how you adapt. The choices you make with the conditions you’re given, no matter how rough they are.”
“Out of my control,” I murmur.
Somehow, I’ll have to learn to accept that.
“I would’ve done the same thing. Okay?” he says. “Where are you now? We’ll catch the next flight into Anchorage.”
I open my eyes, blinking back at Seth’s sleeping form, and I find more things to be sorry for. All the things I’ve never told the two people who have always been there for me.
“You don’t have to do that. I’m at the hospital right now. Not sure when I’ll be back.”
“The hospital?” Mom cuts in. “I thought you said you weren’t hurt.”
“I’m, uh…” I don’t know why I’m still staring at Seth like he’ll have the answers I need while unconscious. Like he’ll tell me what I should say and how I should say it. “I’m with Seth. He’s being treated for hypothermia.”
“Seth, your first mate, Seth?”
I gather from Mom’s tone that she wouldn’t ask any further questions upon confirmation.
They know me and Seth have been working together for years now.
They know I consider him a friend, that I speak highly of him.
They probably assume I’m doing the right thing, the way they raised me to, and making sure he gets home safe.
“Yeah,” I say.
Unconsciously, Seth shifts onto his side. He’s held back by the IV, but it still reminds me of the way he’d roll over to get more comfortable when I slept with him. Wedging his calf between both of mine and making a contented little hum in my ear.
I think about going home with him—if he still wants anything to do with me—and falling asleep next to him for real this time. For more than just a few hours. A whole night of him curled up against me and around me, until we wake for no other reason than finally feeling well-rested.
I think about the way Orlov and Jorgensen and Perry reacted when they found out, and how nothing big changed between us. How the small things that changed, changed for the better.
“Sometimes it can be... good. Trusting people. The right people.”
“Actually,” I say, “he’s sort of… more than that.”
A pause falls over the line.
“When did this happen?” Dad asks.
I try not to read anything into his tone. Focus only on his question and the facts that answer it.
“With Seth? It’s... new. But I’ve always been, uh, you know. Gay.”
“Well, now we’re definitely coming to visit.” Mom hijacks the phone. “I haven’t even met your Seth.”
My Seth.
Hell. I like the way that sounds.
“Don’t you think we should give him a chance to get settled?” Dad uses his captain voice. As if it’s ever made a difference when it comes to Mom. “He said it was new.”
Mom blows right past that suggestion. “Oh, kullanmuru, I’m so happy for you. All this time, I worried you were too in love with the sea to love anyone on land.”
I find my lips curling into a smile. One that deepens when Dad adds, “He didn’t say love.”
“He didn’t have to. I know our son.”
Seth shifts again. This time, toward me. His eyelids flutter open, his lips curving into a grin that makes me wonder how much of the conversation he heard.
My Seth.
“Hey,” I interject, “actually, he just woke up. Do you mind if I call you back in a little bit?”
“Of course,” Dad says. I’m pretty sure Mom’s in the background bartering to get Seth on the phone. “And, Nicolas… I’m sorry if I made you feel like you couldn’t tell us sooner. We love you. You know that, right? No matter what.”
“I know. I love you, too.”