Whelp, there went my rehabbed rep.
Carter and Owen would be laughing with me.
Thatthought nearly drives me insane with grief, so I remain there for a moment, kneeling at the raft’s side and staring at where Pat disappeared under the surface. I dig my nails into my palms and ride it out, the pain helping bring me back to myself as I raise my gaze and look out over the endless expanse of ocean.
Stay.
Safe.
* * * *
We lose Ivy in the pre-dawn hours of day five. The sixty-four year old doesn’t tell us she has a heart condition until a few hours after Pat’s burial at sea. She also doesn’t have her medication with her. She admits she’s been having chest pains off and on since we hit the raft, but they’re getting worse now, including her jaw and shoulder now hurting, burning like they’re on fire.
The heart attack doesn’t kill her immediately, unfortunately. She suffers for hours as we try to comfort her, listen to her sob and grieve for her husband, who was the governor of Virginia. She lost sight of him in the cabin, had gotten separated from him when he shoved her into the center aisle first and she ended up being carried aft by the press of other passengers. She doesn’t know if he made it out.
We promise her we’ll talk to him, tell him, and their children and grandchildren, everything she tells us.
It’s almost a relief when she finally lapses into a coma and an eerie silence fills the raft, broken only by the sound of the wind and water lapping against the inflated sides.
I keep two fingers on her throat, checking her pulse. When I find she has none, reflexively I move to start CPR, but it’s George who stops me by reaching over and gently grabbing my arm as he slowly and grimly shakes his head.
He’s right, of course. Even if I could resuscitate her, how do we keep her alive?
It’s kinder this way.
Since George and I are the two youngest and most physically fit, and we’ve sort of taken over and taken charge, we’re now also apparently the official body-deal-withers. I mean, we’re not undertakers or morticians, right?
Do they have a title for this shit?
All I know is that another good reason to remove bodies quickly, besides risk of disease, is that they’re not a grisly reminder of what likely awaits the rest of us.
Or, god fucking help me, yes, I thought this, we won’t be tempted toeatthem.
Heavy is the head that wears the fucking crown, I suppose.
As George and I roll her body over the side after removing her jewelry and saying a brief prayer, I start recalculating the remaining water supply in my purse and on the raft. I can’t help it. As George and I exchange a glance, I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.
Who’s next?
Chapter Twenty-One
Carter
The next few days pass in an exhaustion-blurred haze. Less than twenty-four hours after this shit-storm hits my life, we’ve landed in Manila. We’re put up in a decent hotel there, with the press strictly corralled and kept away from us.
Our main representative is a guy named Ocampo, a local official who does his best to strike a tone between cautiously hopeful and grimly realistic.
The seas are rough, and persistent cloud cover from typhoon systems training through the area are hampering aerial search efforts. But the using the plane’s last known location, triangulated with its rate of descent and direction of travel, they put boats in the area and map out a grid to search. Forty-eight hours after the plane disappears from radar, they discover and home in on the black box’s ping, and locate the wreckage in two hundred feet of water.
It’s still too rough to mount a recovery operation, though.
Meanwhile, nineteen bodies are recovered, including that of the pilot and co-pilot—none of them Susa, Connie, or Mike.
All of them drowned, half of them wearing life vests.
From that, and the lack of trauma on their bodies, it means they likely escaped the cabin after the plane ditched, but before it sank, and they drowned later.
I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.
