As the morning wore on, the wind grew stronger, and it rained heavily. At lunchtime Stephanie announced that there would be a game of Trivial Pursuit in the lounge, men versus women, and—just in case—guests could request seasick pills at the activities desk, but she doubted anyone would need them.
“Oh, she goofed there,” whispered Lauren. “You never want to use the word ‘seasick’ on a ship. The power of suggestion, you know.”
“This is June, after all,” Stephanie continued, “and most of our summer cruises are calm and placid. But we’re going to heat things up here with a battle between the sexes, so we invite everyone up to the lounge at two o’clock and let’s see how you do.”
It sounded like an interesting diversion, but the passengers were more interested in “storm at sea.” They talked excitedly among themselves as to whether it was better to be high or low on a rocking ship and how high the waves might get on the Chesapeake.
When I went up to the observation deck to help Mitch and Barry secure the deck chairs—a long line over the row, tied down tightly at the other end—passengers were roaming about, head scarves and jackets flapping in the wind, taking pictures. Waves sloshed against the side of the ship, and the dark clouds moved even faster overhead.
I’ll admit, I liked it too—liked listening to the thud as each wave slapped against the hull, sending spray several feet into the air.
The sky itself was like a sea, dark masses of roiling clouds racing above, the wind gusts so strong that passengers staggered backward, grasping the rail for support. Occasionally a wave was so high that the spray reached the floor of the lounge deck, and Ken McCoy made the rounds, ushering passengers inside.
When I checked the lounge at two-thirty, the Trivial Pursuit game didn’t have many takers. A few men stood at the bar, drinks in hand, debating a history question, but the small group of women on the opposite side of the lounge were discussing something else entirely, and I saw Stephanie discreetly slip the cue cards back in the box. She checked the library shelves, instead, for books about weather and storms and placed them strategically around the room. But most of the passengers, by now, were in their staterooms.
As I helped straighten up the lounge—plastic cups that had slid off coffee tables, magazines on the floor—I saw the horizon out the windows disappear as the bow of the ship rose in the air, and then suddenly there it was again, disappearing once more as the bow dipped. It was then I began to feel queasy.
I went out in the hall and heard someone vomiting in the men’s restroom, and I felt my own jaws tighten. How were we supposed to put on a Captain’s Dinner that night with all this? I braced one hand against the wall to steady myself as the ship dipped again.
“Hey,” said Josh, coming up the stairs from the main deck. “You don’t look so good.”
“Why doesn’t the captain just dock somewhere?” I asked. “Most of the other boats went in an hour ago. We’re the only ship out here.”
“You can’t dock a big ship like this in a storm,” Josh said. “You try that with waves this high, we’d probably bring down half the pier and knock a hole in the hull too. If we’re going to get tossed around, you want it to be out here, where we’re not going to hit anything. Even if we got the ship docked, it would be too dangerous to try to get anyone off.”
I closed my eyes and felt the tightness in my throat again as the ship rocked, the pull at the corners of my mouth.
Josh took my arm. “If you want the sailor’s cure, come with me,” he said.
“I’m not putting anything in my stomach, Josh.”
“Don’t have to.” He gently pulled me toward the big panoramic window at the bow and positioned me right in front of the glass. “Now,” he said, “focus on the horizon. Nothing else. Just focus.”
I studied the faint demarcation line between gray sky and gray water.
“Now, no matter what the ship does, keep your eyes on the horizon,” Josh said.
Standing at the bow of the ship with the huge picture windows, I could follow the horizon whether it rose or fell. I don’t know if I was especially suggestive or whether it really worked. But like a ballerina focusing on one particular spot as she twirled, I guess, keeping an eye on the horizontal line ahead seemed to settle my stomach.
It was even better when Emily invited me to share her mackinaw, and we opened the lounge door to the deck, almost getting blown over by the wind. We went around to stand in front of the windows, the rain lashing our faces, and watched the horizon together from there. She was about six inches taller than me, and only my eyes peeked out from the collar of the rain gear.
“Let’s don’t tell anyone we’re out here,” she said, as though they couldn’t see us through the window.
“Yes! We’ll just stand here like the figurehead of a ship,” I said.
“Two Maidens in Mackinaw,” said Emily.
The worst of the storm was over by four thirty. The rain grew softer, the waves less forceful against the side of the ship, and though the sun never came out, the tumbling black clouds had floated away, leaving a dull gray sky in their wake.
The dining crew set up the reception in the lounge, and Emily and I went down to change into our dress shirts and black bow ties. When I came back up with Gwen and Pamela, guests were tentatively emerging from their rooms in cocktail attire, with their own story to tell of just how queasy they had been or how expertly they had survived the rock and rolling.
We didn’t have a full house, though. A dozen or so passengers didn’t show up all evening, and Shannon spent the whole time in the crew bathroom, we found out later. I also learned that none of our summer cruises had sold out completely, a worry for the company, which depended on every stateroom being occupied in order to break even.
But I’d made it through without barfing and had a good story to tell Patrick if I had time to text him later.
There was an e-mail waiting from him that night when I checked my laptop—a long one. In the few days he’d been in Barcelona, he told me, he’d walked along the Rambla, had made paella with his professor out of mussels and squid. He kept rolling off the couch where he slept at night, but he was easily falling into everyday Spanish, trying to strike up conversations with strangers, just to practice.
In turn, I e-mailed him about the bike ride around St. Michaels and the storm on our way to Norfolk.
We didn’t have a full day in Norfolk because the storm had put us a few hours behind schedule. So Liz and I walked into town on our break to pick up a few things we needed from a drugstore and do a little window shopping.
A small boutique was advertising a new fragrance called Passion Petal, and Liz was overcome.
“It’s the most glorious scent I’ve ever smelled,” she said, and the woman in the purple smock behind the counter offered to spray her neck and shoulders.
“You’ll just have to wash it off when you get back to the ship,” I reminded her. I prefer a musky scent myself, but one of the rules was no perfume at all.
Liz felt obligated then to buy something, so she purchased a belt, but when we were starting back to the ship, she saw some flip-flops she wanted in a sandal shop. She had turndown duty that evening, but I was busing dinner, so I said I’d see her back on board and set off by myself.
I felt like a flight attendant, walking up the gangplank—one of the crew, not having to show a boarding pass—getting a nod from Ken or Josh or whoever was on duty. I went down to crew quarters and put on my uniform, checked my makeup, combed my hair… .
The ship sailed in twenty-five minutes, and people had gathered on the dock to watch us pull away. Deckhands were moving things around to make room for the gangplank when it swung back, but mostly it was showtime—all of us just waiting around, smiling at the children who waved up at us, willing the ship to move, ready for the blast of the horn.
I had just sauntered the length of the walkway when Dianne came hurrying toward me.
“Alice?” she said, and had the harried look she
often gets just before we sail. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
9
PASSION PETAL
I stared at her blankly. “She’s not back?”
“No. And Pamela said she’d gone off with you.”
“She did. We were shopping. But she has the late shift, so I came back early. She should be along any minute. Liz is always on time.”
“Well, today she’s not. And crew was supposed to be on board ten minutes ago. We sail in fifteen.”
And when Curtis came up the gangplank, asking if it was time to bring it in, Dianne said, “Curtis, get the motor scooter and take Alice to wherever it was she saw Liz last. But be back before we sail. I can’t afford to lose all three of you.”
I had wondered about the motor scooter. I’d seen it locked to a chain on the Seascape’s stern. As Curtis wheeled it down onto the dock, I tried to remember what streets I’d been on with Liz. I hadn’t been paying attention to street names.
Curtis handed me a helmet that was too big, but I buckled it under my chin, and when he asked, “Which way?” I could only tell him it was a small shop next to a CVS and I thought it had a blue sign with sort of yellow bubbles on it. I felt like an idiot.
“Hold on,” said Curtis after I’d climbed on behind him, and I circled his body with my arms as we sped across the dock and waited for a light at the corner.
“Can you remember the name of the shop?” he yelled over his shoulder.
“No. I think it had the word ‘song’ in it, but … I can’t remember.”
The motor scooter sprang forward as the light turned green, and I pressed my cheek against his back to keep the wind out of my face. Now I knew why motorcyclists wore goggles.
“Tell me if you see anything familiar,” Curtis shouted at the next intersection. “I think the shops begin about here.”
He turned down another street, and I frantically surveyed the storefronts on one side, then the other. A nail store, a hair salon …
What would Liz do if the ship left without her? It was so unlike her not to be back on time. It was usually Liz who looked at her watch and said, “Let’s hurry.”
I saw a paint store on a corner and remembered that it had a color wheel in the window. We’d stopped to find teal, because Liz said the color had more blue than green, and I said more green than blue.
“It’s down that street, I think,” I said. “We’re getting close.”
But even before we reached the corner, we saw the flashing lights of a rescue squad double-parked outside a CVS and a policeman keeping people from entering the store.
“The drugstore!” I cried, tugging at Curtis’s shirt. “And there’s the boutique. Let me off.”
“We’ve got about seven minutes,” Curtis said.
I jumped off the scooter and ran across the street, looking both ways for the sandal shop. When I spotted it, a woman was standing outside, arms hugging herself.
“My friend Elizabeth was just here,” I said. “She was interested in those blue flip-flops with the silver streaks? Do you have any idea where she went next?”
The woman nodded toward the CVS and said, “She bought flip-flops and then went across the street to shop. But about fifteen minutes ago she came back here and said she was feeling sick. She wanted a place to sit down. I told her there were chairs at the pharmacy in the back of the CVS and walked her as far as the entrance to make sure she got in okay… . I’m here alone so I can’t leave my shop. And five minutes ago the rescue team pulled up.”
A little crowd had gathered, but the policeman still wouldn’t let anyone enter the store. Inside I could see two men moving about, coming toward the entrance. And then the glass doors of the CVS swung open, and a man backed out, pulling a stretcher, while a second man guided it out the door.
“Liz!” I cried, recognizing the dark hair splayed against the pillow.
She barely moved her head.
“It’s Liz!” I called to Curtis.
“You know this girl?” one of the rescue workers asked.
“Yes! We’re part of the crew on the Seascape. We’ve been looking all over for her. What happened?”
“You’d better ride along,” said the other worker.
The next few minutes were surreal. I walked alongside Liz, holding her hand as they wheeled her toward the truck. One cheek looked puffy and her lips too full—like they’d been enlarged—and I wondered if some shop was offering free samples of collagen.
“Liz?” I kept saying. “I’m here. You okay?” which was stupid, because she obviously wasn’t. All I could figure was that she’d fallen on her face or something.
Then they were lifting the stretcher up and sliding it into an ambulance while Curtis was talking to one of the guys. When I tried to climb in after Liz, the other man told me to sit up front.
“You can’t ride back here,” he said, motioning around to the other door. I ran to the passenger side and had to climb to crawl in. Then the truck was moving forward, and the siren was going, and cars were moving out of our way.
It was a hard, bumpy ride that must have felt even worse to Liz, whatever had happened. And it was so noisy—the engine itself was so loud—that it was hard to hear much of anything. I squirmed around enough under my seat belt to see Liz. She had an oxygen mask over her nose, but I was shocked to see that the man bending over her had turned her on her side and was pulling her shorts down.
“Hey!” I cried. I mean, you read about things like this in the paper, rescue workers and unconscious patients and …
But the molester paid no attention; he had pulled on surgical gloves, and then I saw him jab some kind of needle device into her left buttock.
Liz yelped.
“Hey!” I said again, but the worker rolled her onto her other side, picked up another syringe, and injected the right buttock. She yelped again and tried to swat at him, and this time he must have been talking into a radio phone because I heard him say, “Okay, Doc, I’ve given her one cc of epinephrine and one of Benadryl IM.”
The driver glanced at me. “Bee sting. She’s having a bad reaction, and we had to get medication into her fast.”
I turned forward again and closed my eyes momentarily. Okay, so I overreacted.
If I didn’t stop hyperventilating, I’d be the next patient.
I expected Liz to be unconscious, but by the time they had wheeled her into a cubicle at a local hospital and I could stand beside her, she’d turned her face in my direction. She was staring strangely at my head. I realized I was still wearing the helmet and lifted it off.
But I didn’t even get a chance to say anything, because a doctor and a woman with a clipboard crowded into the cubicle behind me, and I squeezed out of their way. They rolled her onto another stretcher and attached an IV to her arm. More monitors. More oxygen. I was terrified.
“Elizabeth, do you know where you are?” asked the young doctor in a white coat with the name badge DR. GRINLEY, on it. I couldn’t tell if she nodded or not.
“Would you tell me your full name?”
I started to answer for her, but Dr. Grinley shook his head.
It was obviously taking Liz some effort. She rolled her tongue around in her mouth, and finally said, “E-li-a-beh An Pr-i …”
“Good enough,” Dr. Grinley said, checking the clipboard. “Elizabeth Ann Price, right?”
She nodded.
“You’ve had an allergic reaction to a bee sting,” the doctor told her. “We’re going to keep a close watch on you, but I think the medications we’ve given you are starting to take effect, and you should be fine.” He turned toward me. “And you are?”
“Alice McKinley, her friend. We’re part of the crew on the Seascape, but I think they must have already sailed… .”
I don’t know if you can call a doctor cute, but Dr. Grinley wore glasses with designer frames that looked really good on him. Maybe he was more than an intern if he could afford those. He had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. Usually green-eyed people hav
e hazel flecks, but his irises looked more like shamrocks.
“You, uh, work in the engine room or something?” he asked with a trace of a smile, and I realized he was looking at the helmet in my hand.
“We were out looking for Liz on the ship’s motor scooter,” I said.
Dr. Grinley was watching the monitors hooked up to Liz and began reading off numbers, which the woman with the clipboard wrote down. “Blood pressure, one twenty-six over seventy-seven,” he said. “Pulse, eighty-five.” Then he said to Liz, “Excuse me,” and slipped his stethoscope up under her T-shirt and checked her heart, then asked her to roll over on her side so he could hold it to her back, and checked her lungs.
“Breathing’s good, vital signs good,” he said, and relaxed a little. “Where’s the ship heading?” he asked me.
“Yorktown next,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad it’s not heading for the Bahamas or the Caribbean, because we’ve got to keep Elizabeth here for at least another hour to make sure the allergen is out of her system.”
At that moment Dr. Grinley got a call over the PA system, and he pulled off his gloves. “The nurse will keep an eye on you, and I’ll check you again before you leave,” he told Liz. “Would you allow your friend here to find your wallet and give us some information about your insurance?”
She nodded, and whoosh—the doctor was gone. We were left with the woman with the clipboard, who handed me Elizabeth’s bag. I fished around for her wallet, found the insurance card, and gave the clerk the information she needed. As soon as she was gone, a nurse came in bringing Liz a glass of Gatorade or something with a bent straw.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Press this buzzer if you need anything at all,” she said.
For the first time Liz and I were alone.
I stared down at her and made a face. She smiled a little but still looked strange.
“Man, when you make a scene, you make a scene!” I told her. “Dianne sent Curtis and me out on the motor scooter to see if we could find you. What happened?”
Haltingly, stopping occasionally to roll her tongue around like she was trying to get it back in place, Liz told me how she had bought the flip-flops, done some more window shopping, and then, about the time she decided to head back, she’d felt a sting on her cheek and swatted a bee away.