Nai‘a: dolphin, porpoise
Minnow woke in the middle of the night, hit by a wave of panic. She had been dreaming of spiny sea urchins surrounding the house, leaving no path for her to escape. Her eyes flew open and her heart pounded against the inside of her chest. The odd fluttering sensations made her wonder if maybe this time she really was having a heart attack. Alone in the boonies in Hawai?i. She sat up, feeling the need to flee but having nowhere to flee to.Just breathe. Four seconds in, hold for four, four seconds out, hold for four.
But as she was holding her breath, Minnow felt her palms go clammy. Suddenly her head began to feel lighter, as though floating away from her body. Yep, for sure she was dying, so she started to cry—big, heaving sobs. She sat there for a few minutes, her body tensed into a ball on the bed, clutching the thin blanket in her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.
After a time, as her therapist had promised, her lungs loosened and the tension began to slowly drain away.Remember, the attacks will subside on their own. You just need to ride them out. Your body knows what to do if you let your mind stay out of it.
So, why did her left foot burn like someone had shoved a fire poker into it?
She sat up, felt around on the card table, found the lantern and turned it on. There, on the top of her foot, between the tendons of her big toe and second toe, was a red mark. Upon closer inspection, she saw two tiny holes in the middle of it. She knew enough to know what it was.
Instinctively, she flew off the bed—again, yanked her top sheet off and shook it out. Something long and red and leggy flew off the sheet and disappeared in the darkness. The idea of such a heinous bug crawling on her while she slept was almost too much to bear. This was worse than Mexico with its giant scorpions or Australia with its spiders. She had no idea how poisonous centipedes in Hawai?i were, but she remembered seeing a first aid kit on a shelf in the bathroom. By the time she came back to the bed with the blue plastic box, her whole foot felt tight and hot.
Please, let there be antihistamine in here.But when she opened the lid, her heart fell. The box was full of fishing lures. This wasn’t the first strange thing she’d found in the house. Last night she opened a drawer in an old dresser against the wall, looking for another towel, only to discover it was filled to the brim with small pieces of coral—all of them heart-shaped.
The pain began to run up her leg and she felt a wave of wooziness, so she lay back on the bed. What were you supposed to do with a centipede bite? Elevate the foot? Apply heat? Cold? She realized she had no idea. But the sky behind the house had lightened, thank God, so at least morning was here. The only person she could think to call was Nalu, at his hotel.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Minnow. I need help.”
He yawned into the phone. “With what?”
“Can you come get me as soon as you can? I got bit by a centipede and I’m starting to feel kind of prickly.”
A brief pause. “Can you breathe?”
“Yes, I can breathe, but my foot is ballooning up and I’m dizzy.”
She could hear rustling around in the background. “On my way, Doc.”
As Minnow lay in the emergency room bed waiting for the doctor, she could hear everything going on around her. Only curtains separated the beds, and nurses and technicians rolled equipment around, talked on the phone to someone who wanted to know what kind of cough medicine to give their baby, and gave coffee orders to an intern. There was a man in the bed next to her, groaning, and with only a paper-thin sheet separating them, she couldn’t help but overhear he probably had a horrific case of food poisoning from bad sushi.
Right away, the nurse had given her an antihistamine, but the fire still seared all the way up to her knee. As she stared at the stark white ceiling, hoping for something to numb the pain, she wondered if this was the same bed Angela Crawford had been in. Maybe Minnow would even get the same doctor, the same nurse. Thinking of Angela made her feel almost silly for coming in with just two tiny pricks in the top of her foot, rather than large pieces of her body ripped and torn.
The curtain swung aside and a youngish woman walked in. “Minnow Gray? I’m Dr. Bush. I hear you had a run-in with a centipede?”
“I was sleeping, so I never really got a good look at it. But yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
Minnow pointed at her foot, which was still ballooned up.
The doc leaned down and examined the bite. “Nasty buggers but generally not dangerous here in the islands. No trouble breathing, right?”
“Right. I felt pretty woozy, though. Tingly head, prickly hands and feet.”
“Sometimes our own adrenaline does that to us, not the poison.”
Minnow defended her reason for coming. “And the pain—it’s off the charts.”
Dr. Bush pulled out a stethoscope and listened. “Heart sounds good. The antihistamine should kick in soon. We’ll give you something for the pain and you’ll be good to go. If you want, I could call in an antibiotic to have on hand in case it seems like it’s getting infected.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Pretty low.”
She just hoped she could walk and put her fins on. “I’m in the middle of an important job and I really need my foot to be in working order.”
“What kind of job?”
