“No kidding. It turns out I went to school with his nephew, so we talked story for a while, and then he went in and spoke to her. She said you could stop by. Not me, just you.”
“Was Zach around?”
“No sign of him.”
Twenty minutes later, Nalu wheeled Minnow through the freezinghospital halls to Angela’s room. Minnow felt ridiculous riding in the wheelchair, but the way her foot felt, limping there would have taken her half the day. As the guard let her in, she asked Nalu to give her a moment so she could have a word alone with the woman. A wave of nervous energy pulsed through her as she stepped out of the wheelchair. She was about to meettheAngela Crawford. There was no one else in the room at the moment and Angela lay slightly propped up, staring out the window.
Minnow spoke softly. “Hello.”
Angela slowly turned her head and their eyes met. “Hey. You’re the shark lady?” Her words came slowly, undoubtedly due to heavy medication.
“I am.”
She was almost unrecognizable with her hair smashed up against one side of her face, no makeup, skin as pale as milk and the stitched gash that ran from her upper lip almost to her ear. But then she smiled, and there was no hiding who she was, even with her hugely swollen lip. “You’re pretty. For a scientist,” Angela said.
The words caught Minnow off guard, and she smiled as she walked closer. “Thanks, I guess?”
“Did they tell you the story?” Angela asked.
“I heard a secondhand report. But when we investigate incidents like this, it’s really helpful to speak directly to the person involved.”
Angela shifted under the sheet and then groaned. “I’m on some kind of horse tranquilizers or something, but I remember everything from that morning. It plays like a movie in my mind, except at times I’m sitting on the bottom of the ocean looking up watching the whole thing unfold. And then I’m there in the shark’s mouth, and it keeps shifting perspectives. Weird, huh?”
“That kind of thing is common. It’s your mind’s way of trying to process the trauma. And we humans are masters at protecting ourselves in any way we can. We mask, distort, dissociate, block out, relive... you name it.”
“So you don’t think it’s the drugs they’ve pumped me with?” Angela asked.
“Probably a little bit of both.”
The butterflies about meeting Angela had completely disappeared. They were just two women in a room talking about the blurred lines between life and death.
“The weirdest thing is that my arm is gone. Just—poof—gone. And from what I gather, unlike with some species, human arms do not grow back,” she said, cobalt eyes dropping down to Minnow’s foot, which was wrapped tightly in gauze and aching badly. “What happened to you?”
“Centipede. Bit me while I was sleeping.”
“Ouch.”
“Yes, but... well... not asouchas yours. How are you feeling now?”
“I hurt all over, even with the meds. Two hundred fourteen stitches, though I have to take their word for it. It didn’t hurt while it was happening, though.”
Angela’s eyes teared up and she glanced back out the window. A sideways rain pelted the glass and hummed above them on the metal roof. Weeping pepper trees flailed in the wind, and mist hung low on the hilltops. Minnow remained quiet, giving Angela whatever time she needed.
“The shark left me a souvenir,” Angela finally said.
“Oh?”
“Zach took it back to the room with him. He moved up here to some inn. A tooth.”
This was news. “No one mentioned a tooth.”
“He pulled it from my shin bone on the way in to shore. Zach seemed to think someone might take the tooth and try and sell it or do something weird, so he put it in his pocket. He tends to be paranoid, but in our world you never know.”
Her words reminded Minnow of who she was dealing with. “I’d like to see the tooth. It can tell us a lot about the shark.”
“I’ll ask him to bring it.”
“In the meantime, are you up for telling me your story?” Minnow asked gently.
