Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

“Like hell,” he snaps as he stands. “I know this sucks, Bear. I know it hurts. But you can’t give up. You just can’t. There’s too many people who depend on you. People that need you.”

“What about what I need!” I shout at him. “Why is it always about everyone else? What the hell about me!” I turn to start back toward the water, but a hand reaches out and latches on to my arm, holding me tightly.

“Now’s not the time to be selfish,” Isaiah growls at me. “I may not know everything that’s happened to you, though I’m starting to get a good idea. I know how your friends see you, Bear. They know you’re strong, that you’ve gotten shit all of your life but that you’ve survived. Somehow, you survived. I haven’t known you that long, but even I can see that. When Anna called me and told me what had happened and asked me to come here and get you, I could hear it in her voice. Your family needs you, Bear. You’re the one thing that holds them all together, and without you, they’re just as lost.”

No. What he’s saying can’t be true. I’m not the strong one. I’m not the pin. I’m Bear. I hold things in and overreact to other things and make decisions that I think will keep us alive at least another day. I’m weak. And frightened. And selfish and wrong and desperate. I’m a self-serving martyr who doesn’t give a rat’s ass except for those that are closest to me, those that I think I can trust but know that I’m really just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And it has, it points out. It has dropped, and the world is crashing down around you, and the man you love is lying by himself, because you can’t even think of anything besides how it makes you feel, how insanely fearful you are. And what of Mrs. Paquinn? Are you yelling at your God for her?

Do you think of her when you scream at him to give them back? You say

“they,” but we know what you mean. If there’s a choice to be made, if you had to choose, we know what you would do. That little dark voice doesn’t just sound like you. No. Much like myself, it is you. It’s time for you to stand up, Bear. It’s time for you to stop getting knocked down and cowering down in the sand. It’s time to get the fuck up.

“Is he still alive?” I ask him quietly, the wet tux hanging heavily on my frame. “Are they both?”

Isaiah watches me for a moment, as if judging the sanity in my eyes. He must like what he sees, or at the very least understands it’s all he’s going to get when he says, “Anna indicated so when she called. Bear. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this. But you’ve got to be strong now. You’re family needs you. Otter and Mrs. Paquinn need you.”

He’s right. I hate him, but he’s right. I might not believe the voice in my head completely, I might not believe God doesn’t have it out for me, but the little box now covered in my blood and Otter’s blood is real. It’s there. It’s in my hand and that is enough for now. It has to be.

I walk toward the cars, and Isaiah trails after me. I tell him we’ll stop by the Green Monstrosity to change our clothes. He nods and agrees to follow me there. I turn on the car and crank the heater. And, without allowing myself to think too much about what it could mean, I open the box in my hand, find the little ring, and slip it on my finger.

It fits perfectly.

THAT first day was the hardest. That first day was the day that there were so many questions, so few answers, and when we all had to dig in for a wait that we didn’t know how long would last. When I got back to the hospital, Otter was still in surgery and Mrs. Paquinn was undergoing countless tests that I didn’t quite understand. The Kid saw me first, walking down the hallway, and ran toward me, leaping into my arms. His face was dry and his eyes were cautious, and he told me that he’d heard about Otter, that he knew he needed to help me be strong and that he’d make sure we got through it.

Because, he said, didn’t I know that Otter was a big guy? Didn’t I know that Otter wouldn’t dare leave us because of how mad it would make the both of us? I nodded at him. Sure, Kid, I told him. It’d piss us both off. He wouldn’t dare.

Everyone saw the ring on my finger. No one said a thing about it.

We were told that Mrs. Paquinn had had a CVA, or a cerebrovascular event, which led to an ischemic stroke caused by a clot. The doctor indicated that per the CT scan and MRI done, they believed her stroke had been of a rare variety: a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, which is essentially a clot in the dural venous sinuses which drain blood from the brain. Mrs. Paquinn had mentioned a light headache earlier in the day, the Kid had said, but that she said she was fine. His eyes went wide at this, as if he thought there was some way he could have stopped this from occurring, and it took all of us, including the doctor, to convince him otherwise. Even then, I don’t think he believed us. The doctor said that treatment was usually with anticoagulants to suppress the blood clotting, but that there was indication of raised intracranial pressure, and that they might need to operate to put a shunt in to help relieve that pressure.

No one else seemed to dare ask the one question we all wanted to know, the one question that danced across all of our minds. Whether they didn’t want to know the answer or they didn’t think it was their place to ask, I don’t know. But I’ve never been one to have a filter, and I asked what everyone was too scared to.

“Will she live?”

The doctor sighed as he watched me, obviously having been expecting that question. I wondered how practiced his answer would be. What I didn’t expect was his bluntness. “Chances are not good,” he said quietly, and the Kid started to shake. “The CVST occurs mostly in women, and while the mortality rate is moderately low, given Mrs. Paquinn’s age, it is definitely going to be an uphill battle. Should she survive, the chances of there being significant aftereffects from the stroke are high. Most likely she would need round-the-clock care for the rest of her life. Our biggest concern right now, though, is the probability of further strokes. They may not be as severe as the first, but they could do irreparable damage. Think of them like aftershocks to an earthquake. While they may not match the original in intensity, the foundations have already been shaken and don’t need much to fall down.”

Aftershocks. Earthquakes. “Thank you, Doctor.”

He nodded and said he would let us know when we could see her before he got up and walked away. Before I did anything else, I turned to the Kid and pulled him into my lap. “You did everything you could have,” I whispered to him as he shook in my arms. “There’s nothing more that you could have done. Even if she had a headache, you could not have stopped this. You hear me?”

He nods but continues to shake.

Aftershocks. I know a thing or two about aftershocks.

Otter’s surgery went well, or as well as it could have gone. Dr. Moore and Dr. Woods joked around with us that now that he had a steel rod in his leg, he was going to set off metal detectors no matter where he went, just like he was a robot. We all tried to smile at this, but it was strained. He was moved to recovery, and we were told that we could go in and see him a couple at a time and only for a few minutes. I started to sit back down to allow Alice and Jerry to go in first, when they stopped me without so much as exchanging a word to each other.

“You should go,” Alice said. “You go first.”

I started to protest, but Jerry shook his head. “If it’s true,” he said roughly, “if he can hear us even though he can’t respond, then he’s going to want to hear your voice first. He’s going to want to know you’re there. He needs you now, Bear, and you need to be first. If anyone can bring our son back, it’s you.”

I thought about arguing, to tell them that they were so wrong, but in the end I didn’t. Not necessarily because I believed everything that they said, but because I needed to see him. I needed to touch his hand, rub my fingers along his skin just to prove to myself that he was still alive, that the doctors weren’t liars and that he hadn’t died the moment he’d been struck. I needed to see him to prove to myself that he was still real.

I was led down a hallway and through a pair of double doors with a red line across the floor, a warning not to cross. I hesitated, the nurse holding the door open for me, and then crossed anyways. We walked past rooms, some doors opened with machines beeping quietly, some doors closed to hide whatever grief lay inside. I didn’t know what time it was but was sure it was very early morning. Would they allow me to come back? Was there such a thing as visitor hours when it was the man you loved who lay there, his body only doing God knows what? I wanted to ask the nurse, but I couldn’t seem to find my voice. We passed another room, and a woman was crying in a corner, a man quietly consoling her as the person in the bed in front of them did nothing. He looked up as we walked past the door, and for a moment, our eyes caught and something passed between us. An understanding, a knowledge that I couldn’t shake.

Room 403. The numbers added up to seven. That was my first thought. I don’t know why I had it. The nurse paused at the door and turned to me, and again warned me about what I would see, that he was not the Ott

er that I remembered. I nodded almost impatiently, and I think she saw this because she smiled quietly at me and opened the door.