Page 56 of Dearly Departed

“No. He’s really not okay. Are we far from the nearest hospital?”

“Nope. What about the other guy?”

I look over my shoulder, and there’s Raymond Harris, lying on the beach where Jacob left him. He has one arm over his chest. If there wasn’t so much blood, he could be taking a nap. I feel like an asshole for forgetting he was there so quickly. Is that normal? Even if it isn’t, I’m still more concerned about Jacob.

“Yeah.” I brush my hair out of my face and turn back to Cancer. “He was the pilot, but he’s dead now.”

“From the crash?”

“No. From a steak knife.”

Cancer glances between me and Jacob.

“Is that, like, a problem?”

He shrugs. “Is it?”

“The steak knife was only necessary because he was trying to strangle Jacob to death. And he took me hostage before that. He really wanted to murder us.”

“Why?”

“Because Jacob’s father and my father were in a business group that supported evil as long as they could make a ton of money, and⁠—”

Cancer holds up a hand. “Say no more.”

“Are you sure? I could probably explain⁠—”

“Nah. We all know that story. Rich fucks will fuck around until they find out.”

“Have you ever considered putting that on a throw pillow?”

He rolls his eyes again, less theatrically this time. Then Cancer and I work together to help Jacob to his feet. We make our way across the sand and into the boat, and then Cancer pushes it away from shore and vaults himself over the side. He retrieves two life jackets and a big blanket from a compartment toward the back. Jacob and I put the life jackets on, and then Jacob wraps both of us in the blanket.

“Where are we?” I shout to Cancer as he starts the engine and steers the boat into deeper water.

“You’re near the Bahamas,” he calls over his shoulder. “But you’ll be home soon.”

He takes us to another tiny island. Unlike the one we crash-landed on, this island has a house built into the side of it.

Well…some kind of building. All that’s visible from the speedboat is a row of big, square windows curving in a gentle outward arc, held in place with a thinner layer of gleaming white concrete.

When we pull up to the dock, people in scrubs come out to greet us. Two of them cluck concernedly over Jacob, and one of them is adamant about making sure I’m okay.

I am, for now. Maybe I’ll freak out later.

The house in the side of the mountain isn’t a house, as we soon discover. It’s a base that contains a bunch of different things, including a tiny hospital and a surgery suite. It reminds me of a more luxurious version of the canned foods in the cabin. Utilitarian signs decorate some of the walls—GYM and CAFETERIA and LIBRARY and so forth—but there are no plaques with the name of the organization and not a single brochure to orient us.

Inside fifteen minutes, Jacob is hooked up to a bunch of monitors and covered in blankets in a pristine hospital room with a view of the ocean and a softness to it that I didn’t expect but am instantly grateful for. I think it’s the colors. Three of the walls are a shade of marshmallow white. The fourth is an accent wall in the most comforting shade of sage I’ve ever seen.

I look at that sage green wall a lot over the next little while.

Because doctors keep coming in and going out, consulting the monitors and asking Jacob questions, and the calm, victorious, fine feeling I had when we got here changes into a strange pain in my chest. It’s not a heart attack. More people come in and make sure of that. It’s how worried I am about my husband, who has carefully, methodically, hurt himself and starved himself to the brink of death.

I don’t understand most of what the doctors tell me, or what the nurses re-explain again and again, only that it’s bad. It takes a long time for it to click that they’re all being so gentle because it’s bad and also because I just can’t, like, think. Everything seems simple—stay with Jacob, hold his hand, try to look comforting whenever he looks at me—but thinking is impossible.

Finally, a doctor with dark hair in a braid and blue eyes crouches down to my level and takes my hand in hers and explains that while I am apparently in non-medical shock as a result of, like, watching Jacob stab a guy to save me and everything else, Jacob is in the other kind of shock, where he doesn’t have enough blood in his body.

“Oh,” I say brightly, like I’ve learned an interesting fact at a dinner party.