Chapter 3
The fishermen didn't ask questions until I was out of the water.
Two men, maybe sixties and forties, father and son, pulled me over the side by the harness straps. The younger one said "we got you, we got you" while the older one cut at the canopy lines with a bait knife. The parachute fabric spread on the water like spilled ink and then they let it go. My trench coat was soaked and twice as heavy and the cream shirt underneath was plastered to me, cold and transparent. I crossed my arms over my chest.
They wrapped me in a scratchy wool blanket that smelled like fish and diesel and eased me onto a bench seat while the boat pounded back toward the harbor. The older man kept one hand on my shoulder, not holding, just there. No one mentioned the harness. I didn't explain it.
At the county dock in San Pedro, the paramedics were waiting. Someone had called ahead. They lifted me onto a gurney with the blanket still around me and the younger fisherman shoved my wet trench coat into a plastic bag and handed it to me like it mattered. "Your things," he said. I held the bag against my chest. The recorder was still inside the pocket, still wrapped in its little waterproof pouch I'd sewn from a sandwich bag.
The ER at Harbor General was bright and loud after the ocean. They cut nothing — I told them not to cut the harness, I could unbuckle — and a nurse named Delgado helped me step out of the straps while a doctor held the blanket up for privacy. My skirt was ruined. My shoes were gone, lost in the water. Delgado brought me socks with grippy dots and a hospital gown and kept saying "you're doing great, mama" in a low voice that made my eyes sting.
They did the ultrasound first. Gel cold on my belly, screen turned toward me. I held my breath until the fast flicker showed and the tech said "there's heartbeat, nice and strong" and pointed to the small spine, the head, the hands. I let out a noise I hadn't planned and Delgado squeezed my ankle. The tech printed two pictures and handed them to me and I folded them into my palm so tight they dampened.
Richard arrived forty minutes later. I heard him before I saw him — asking at the desk, voice tight and worried, the perfect husband voice. "My wife — Amelia — she was brought in — the helicopter —" The nurse at the station said something calm and then his footsteps came fast down the hall.
He stopped in the doorway of the curtained bay. His dark blue jacket was gone, just the white shirt now, sleeves pushed up, hair windblown. He looked at me on the gurney, blanket to my shoulders, hair still damp, and his face did that same thing it had done in the helicopter — widened eyes, mouth slightly open — but now it was trying to be relief.
"Amelia," he said. "God. They said you deployed — that you had —"
I looked at him steadily. My hair was still tangled and my lips were chapped with salt. I didn't sit up.
A sheriff's deputy stepped into the bay behind him, not by accident. Deputy Marris, according to her vest, young, dark ponytail, clipboard. She glanced at me and then at Richard and said, "Sir, we need to take a preliminary statement from both of you while it's fresh. Separate rooms if possible."
Richard turned, ready to say we should stay together, that his wife needed him. I spoke before he could.
"I want to talk to her alone," I said to Marris, my voice quiet but clear. "Please. And I want this bag to stay with me."
I tightened my hand on the plastic bag with my wet trench coat inside, where the recorder's small hard shape pressed against my knuckles through the plastic. Richard's eyes dropped to the bag and stayed there a second too long.
Marris nodded and pulled the curtain. She said to Richard, "Follow me down the hall, sir," and her tone left no room. He looked back at me once as he went, and I kept my gaze steady and defiant the way I had in mid-air, and didn't blink.
When the curtain closed, Delgado stepped out and Marris pulled a chair close to my gurney. She clicked her pen.
May you like
"Tell me what happened up there," she said.
I took a small breath, rested my hand on my belly where the second printout still lay, and began.
