Or someone struck her, I think. She’s deathly pale, her mottled skin nearly the same color of the white fiberglass beneath her, only her pallor has more of a blueish-gray hue.
“Dear God.” Beth shakes her leg. “Gigi, can you hear me?”
“She doesn’t have a pulse,” I announce, withdrawing my hand from her neck and placing my palms, one on top of the other, on the middle of Gigi’s breastbone. “Someone check the time.”
I inch my knees closer to her torso, cursing the tight space as I press my weight into her chest, feeling the cartilage of her sternum crack beneath my palms. I count aloud as I compress, finding it nearlyimpossible to be effective while we roll over a swell. My knees slide to Gigi’s legs, and her limp body slips toward the helm.
“Hold her steady,” I order the others, a calm authoritative assertiveness in my tone from my years of working at a hospital. “Beth, move around and get ready to give her two breaths when I get to fifteen.”
A moment later, I pause to allow Beth to blow into Gigi’s mouth after pinching her nose. After the second breath, I immediately resume compressions. The early morning sun spills over the horizon as Gigi remains unbreathing and unmoving beneath my hands.
“How long has it been?” I ask when I notice I’m out of breath and the depth of my compressions has decreased.
“Eight minutes,” Emma says.
“I’ll take over.”
Out of breath, I allow Adam to take my place at Gigi’s side after I check again for a pulse.
“No pulse,” I tell him. “Continue compressions.”
Beth continues to give Gigi breaths in between Adam’s rounds of compressions. I sit back on my knees, thinking of the survival statistics for going into cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. It’s less than 6 percent. And even if we do get Gigi’s pulse back, we have nothing to stabilize her with: no ventilator, IV fluids, or medications. Nothing aside from a first aid kit. There’s no way to assess the extent of her head injury without diagnostic imaging.
The bow lifts over a swell. I grip Gigi’s ankles, struggling to keep her from sliding atop the angled boat. Emma moves to the helm.
“I need to make sure we don’t get hit sideways by one of these,” she hollers.
Adam counts as he continues compressions, but I can see that he’s tiring.
“Emma,” I call over my shoulder. “How long have we been doing CPR?”
From behind the steering wheel, she glances at her watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
I turn back to Gigi, her lifeless form jerking beneath Adam’s compressions.
“Stop,” I say, crawling past him to feel Gigi’s neck for a pulse. Still nothing. I withdraw my hand, assessing the woman I’ve known since I was a girl. Normally, it’s recommended to do at least twenty minutes of CPR before calling a time of death. But there’s nothing we can do to save her. I run my gaze up and down her limp, pale form. She’s already gone.
Beth rocks back on her heels beside Gigi’s head, looking defeated as a whimper escapes her throat. “Gigi,” she mutters, wiping a tear from her cheek.
Adam leans forward, returning his interlaced hands to Gigi’s chest.
I lay my palm on his forearm. “She’s beyond our help.”
A violent clamoring overhead makes me tear my gaze from Gigi’s body. A metallic groan emits from the boom as it swings over the side, its end lifting away from the boat. Above the boom, the exposed mainsail that Gigi and Adam didn’t manage to furl flaps violently in the wind.
Emma steps into the cockpit, hovering over Gigi’s feet. “Is she breathing? Did you get a pulse?”
I shake my head. “There’s nothing we can do to save her.”
We all go silent as I stare in disbelief at Gigi’s lifeless body while the mainsail continues to flap from the raging wind. When my gaze travels to Gigi’s wet hair splayed across the deck, my mind flashes to Courtney’s long red waves the last time I saw her, soaking wet from the river.
“Shit.” Emma slams her fist onto the table beside us, making Beth jump.
“We need to conserve our energy,” I add, lifting my gaze to the source of the metallic clamoring. The weather vane’s gone, and the Starlink satellite dish hangs by a cord above the middle of the mast, smacking against the metal pole.
So we can try to save ourselves.
Chapter Twenty-Five
