“I’m so sorry, sir, but with the airspace ban because of the eruption, the earliest flight I can find back to San Francisco is in two weeks.”
“How about New York? I guess I can stay at the NYC house. I don’t want to be at the summit for more than two days. Twenty-four hours is long enough.”
“Sorry, sir, there are no flights across the Atlantic at all for two weeks.”
“Hrmmmh,” came the grumbled reply, and I couldn’t help but wince. I knew how that disapproval, when you were trying your best, felt, and I knew how it grated on you, slowlywore you down, and damaged your self-esteem. It was especially unfair because there was nothing that the assistant could do. The volcano in Iceland had exploded just a few minutes before my plane landed in Ålesund. I had probably been on the last non-grounded or diverted flight in all of Europe. The ash and smoke had grounded all of the planes and were no doubt wreaking havoc on the bottom lines of my clients, but that was no longer my circus, and I no longer had to wrangle those monkeys.
The ferry lurched to the side, and I had to grip the tempered wood of the bench to keep myself from sliding. As I had been occupied with eavesdropping, the waves had become choppy and tall, the deck listing from side to side, water splashing over the railing, and joining the rapidly growing amount of water flowing from one side of the deck to the other. The small lake was already at the top of my shoes.
Despite the strong howling wind, I could hear the worried rumblings of the other passengers. I gripped my purse tighter and did my best not to look out of the boat as the waves only got higher and higher.
***
“Alle sammen, finn frem en redningsvest!”
Everyone, grab a life vest!
Came that same melodious voice breaking whatever trance that I had been in. I was always space-y right after I had taken my meds, but it seemed that I had missed more than I usually did. The water on the deck was now up to my calves, the waves outside of the ferry were higher than the boat, and all other passengers were huddled close to the captain's cabin. Not-Oskar was handing out bright orange life jackets. I stood up, hurried over, and grabbed the life vest that he offered. I was a strong swimmer, had been on the swim team, and lifeguarded at the local pool in Waltham, but I was not foolish enough to think that any of that would be worth a damn in the furious sea.
Pulling the vest over my head, smelling its stench of mildew and plastic, I eyed the water; at this point, it was pitch black and roiling. I could see a couple of smudges far off on the horizon, but trying to discern whether they were land or just low-lying storm clouds would be pointless.
I only realized that my hands were shaking when I kept missing the buckle to secure that life vest around my waist. I was about to give up and just tie the damn strap into a knot when a warm hand took the buckle from me and closed it properly.
“Thank you!” I half yelled to Not-Oskar, expecting him to drift back to helping the captain or wrangling the other passengers. Instead, he stayed behind me, a tight grip on the strap he had just affixed. From craning over my shoulder, I could see water dripping off the soft waves of his hair and onto his tanned skin, the determined twist of his mouth, complemented by the stormy furrow of his eyebrows.
Once again, I had a reminder that there was something wrong with me, deep down, because despite facing potential drowning, all I could think about was how I wished I could feel more of his delicious body heat through both of our life vests.
He pulled me by my vest over to the right side of the boat and tucked me beside him, between himself and the wall of the captain’s cabin. He didn’t look at me, but he kept a firm grip on my life vest the whole time.
“Stay close to me,” he said in Norwegian, “If the boat starts to go, don’t fight it, work to get back to the surface and grab onto something floating as soon as possible. Stick to the ferry, and try to climb up if you can.”
“Yes,” I breathed. My heart beat a hundred miles a minute. He was speaking as if a capsize would happen and happen soon. I could die, I wouldprobablydie. It was something terrifying, the black abyss of the unknown and blankness and the end. The creeping terror threatened to overwhelm me.
But more than anything, I was angry. Full of the fear of my own wasted potential. Why was this happening now? Why, now that I was finally free, finally making a serious change? I was going to die, and the only thing that I accomplished during my life was making old, rich men even richer. That realization was devastating.
I wedged my smaller fingers between his larger ones and my vest, clutching his hand as if it were my last anchor to life. I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t. It was hard to tell, with my rapidly numbing extremities, but I would almost swear that he squeezed my hand.
The ferry lurched to the left as it had been lurching for quite a while, but this time it didn’t correct its position; there was no lurching to the right. It began to tip, and tip. Not-Oskar’s body kept me in place for thirty long seconds, seconds where my breath caught in my throat and I couldn’t tell if I was screaming or not.
Then a wave hit, and everything was the water, and I was thrown overboard.
Chapter Two
Apparently, I was pretty hard to kill. I ached from the top of my head to the very tips of my toes, but my lungs still worked, and my heart still beat. I think I’d been slammed into the hull of the boat, but had bounced back to consciousness fast enough that I didn’t drown when I hit the sea. Now, as I treaded water, the shock of being thrown overboard wearing off and the shivering beginning to set in, I was suddenly aware of two stark realities:
I needed to get out of the water soon, or I would die of hypothermia.
I needed to get out of the water soon, or I would grow too tired to swim and drown.
As I bobbed up and down in the rough water, I could occasionally hear yelling before the sound was snatched up by the wind. The shouts had come from somewhere behind me, but because of my lifeguard training, I knew that drowning, dying people are the most dangerous type. Unconsciously, they will hold you under the water, as you squirm and writhe for air, just to get one more breath.
