12
Jack
Well, this is embarrassing. Here I’m supposed to be the experienced guide, and now I’m lying on my back staring straight up at a ceiling of dark gray clouds while the rain tries to drown me, and I can’t seem to bring together the wherewithal to get out of the way.
“Jack?” David appears, and he at least blocks some of the rain. “Are you okay?”
“Slipped.” My voice is hoarse. We hit a wave and the damn thing knocked me off my feet.
David manages better and gets the locker door secured.
“Can you sit up?” he asks, looking concerned.
“Yeah. Just banged my elbow on the way down.”
Except I still can’t seem to move.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?” I blink and turn my head so I can see David more clearly.
“Oh God.” He reaches down, and when he touches my temple, it burns.
I hiss. “What’s that?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I am?” I touch the throbbing place, and my fingers come away slick and red. “Shit. Must have hit my head too.”
“Can you move?” David asks.
“Yeah.” Finally, my limbs remember they have a job to do. “I’m just stunned.”
The embarrassment gets worse as David helps me sit up. We’re both soaked again. I only did up a couple of snaps on my jacket, thinking I wouldn’t be out here long, and he doesn’t have a coat on at all.
“New boat like this shouldn’t be so slippery,” I say. All that fresh decking. Lots of surfaces for me to catch onto, and yet here we are.
“We’ll bring it up when we get back to the lodge.” David loops one of my arms over his shoulder and hoists me up with a grunt.
“I’m fine,” I say, but it’s actually hard to make my feet go in a straight line, and I can’t tell if it’s the bobbing boat or the head injury.
Inside the cabin, David helps me sit down on one of the benches.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any more dry clothes?”
“In the cabinet over there,” I say, wincing when I try to motion with my chin and my whole head pounds instead. “No more socks though.”
He gives me a dark smile, but he goes digging until he finds a couple more sweatshirts. And to think I rolled my eyes when Luis said there were clothes stocked in the dry locker as well as a first aid kit beneath the sink in the boat’s small bathroom.
David doesn’t even look at me as he sits down so our knees are touching. He grabs the hem of my wet shirt. “Lift up your arms.”
“I can undress myself.”
“I don’t want you to knock that cut more than we have to.”
He’s got a point, because it still stings like a son of a bitch as the collar rides over my skin. There’s a red smear down the side of the shirt, and David glances from it to me before he balls the shirt up and presses it to the side of my head.
“Ow.” My eyes water.
