There’s no signs of the other life rafts, or the slides. They don’t spot any debris from the wreck, either.
It’s nearly nine o’clock in the morning, according to my watch, when George suggests we inventory our water and other supplies.
During the night, under the cover of darkness, I slipped two bottles of water out of my purse, and I now hand them over. One I’ve taken a few sips from, and had Connie take a couple of sips. She looks practically catatonic now and I hope I can keep her alive.
Fuck, I hope I can keepmealive.
“We need to be careful with our water,” George says. “We could be out here a couple of days.”
If we’relucky, but I don’t say that.
I’m sure there are some who will think I’m a shitty human being for hiding the water I have, but here’s the thing—I don’t fucking care what they think.
My last order was to stay safe.
I’m going to have a difficult enough problem with that as it is, under the current circumstances.
If there were kids in our life raft, totally different situation.
But these are adults, and my orders were to stay safe.
It might be the last thing I ever do, but I’m damn sure going to try.
Chapter Twenty
It rains off and on for the next two days. We use the mylar emergency blankets to help hold and catch rainwater to replenish the empty water bottles, and we alternate drinking that with drinking fresh water, because there’s a little salt spray in what we capture. We hope there’s less chance of it making us sick if we do that.
At least it leaves us hopeful we might not die, if we can keep this up. We’re all hungry, but it’s not the biggest worry, for most of us.
Seasickness is mine. I’m trying to limit my sipping water to the evening and overnight hours, when my nausea abates a little and I can keep it down.
God, I fuckinghaaaaateboats. Daddy learned early on that I didn’t do well in them, after my first canoeing experience, delayed due to that guy killing himself during what was supposed to be my first canoe trip, ended up with me puking all over him an hour into our trip.
That was the last time Daddy ever took me canoeing.
Future attempts I made to go on boats, even large ones, never end well. I am apparently allergic to anything but pool rafts. I usually have to dose myself with a crap-ton of seasick meds to function on a boat, but they practically knock me out, so it defeats the purpose.
Ironic, because I love shows likeDeadliest Catch.
Pat, however, admits to us at sundown after our first full day adrift that he’s a severe insulin-dependent diabetic. His condition rapidly deteriorates over the next twelve hours, until he falls into a coma around sundown on the third day.
Day four dawns with us staring at Pat’s lifeless body, where it lays on the other side of the life raft as morning’s light reveals his passing. He lasted longer than I thought he would, because I was ready to murder him less than an hour into this, when he wanted to shoot our flares.
I didn’treallywant him dead, though. Maybe he’s with his wife, who died a row or two behind Mike.
I feel shitty for thinking this, but at least Pat didn’t waste any of our damn flares. We haven’t fired any of them yet.
“What do we do?” Sarah whispers as she stares at his body.
“He can’t hear you,” I say, and George dryly chuckles, which earns us both a glare from Sarah. The two of us, George and me, have sort of banded together as co-leaders of this hellish little survival cruise. We’re both snarky. At forty-four, he is the second-youngest in the raft. He’s also the lieutenant governor of Tennessee, which doesn’t work the same as in Florida. He’s actually the Speaker of the Senate, who is, in their state, by default their lieutenant governor.
Technically, he might currently be theactualgovernor of Tennessee, but whether or not the other man escaped the aircraft and survived is still up in the air, so to speak. That man, and his wife, insisted on heading toward the forward exits instead of aft, despite George trying to get them to come with him.
It was George’s wife, Ellen, who perished in the window seat a row directly ahead of Mike.
I notice he wears a woman’s wedding band and engagement ring on his left pinky, in addition to the wedding band on his left ring finger. I’m reasonably certain he took them off his wife’s body before escaping the cabin. I saw him sadly staring at a necklace he pulled from his pocket yesterday, before he kissed the charm on it and then tucked it back into his pocket.
I’m not sure I’d be doing as good as he is, or even as good as Connie is, if I’d just lost Owen or Carter.
