28 hours later...
XXXXXX
"Did I miss the funeral?"
Selena had been looking to the left. Jim was there, asleep. He was very pale; his forehead was bandaged. He was lying in dry clothes, blue trousers too big, a gray sweatshirt, flat on his belly on a metal-frame cot. He was hugging his pillow half beneath him.
"Only yours." Dr. Huelsmann spoke from elsewhere. Not toward Jim.
"That's good." To no one in particular, Selena added: "My mouth is dry."
"Here." A hand touched her jaw, gently; Selena turned her head. Dr. Huelsmann came into view, her expression devoid of severity. A spoon touched Selena's lips. Ice chips. More bloody ice. She smiled, just a little; she closed her eyes again and swallowed as the ice became water in her mouth.
XXXXXX
Her next waking came with realizations. Her eyes told her she was in the Helvig's sickbay. An IV line ran off the back of her left hand. Clear liquid in the tubing. She was wearing blue cotton pajamas several sizes too large. The blanket across her midriff felt too heavy against her, and her right shoulder and side felt as though they'd been broken apart and riveted back together in a south Asian automobile plant. But she was otherwise warm and muzzy and not utterly uncomfortable. Morphine, or the like. A slight sense of cramping across her gut, minor halos of steel wool around her peripherals.
Jim was sitting in a high-backed chair on her right, reading a hardback book. The cot he'd been asleep on was still set up to the left of her bed, rumpled, empty. He looked rumpled, too. She looked at him for a moment without speaking, watched his clean profile. He was hunched a little in the chair, as though his shoulder were bothering him; he was dressed in the same or another gray sweatshirt, and he was a day unshaven. She tried to see what he was reading, but her eyes on seeing the words on the page immediately threatened her with sleep. She looked from the page back to his face and said: "Jim."
He turned his eyes to her, and it was like looking into heaven through a gap in the clouds. He smiled. "Hello, darlin'."
"Hi."
He set aside the book and said, gently, "Really can't swim worth a damn, can yeh?"
"Had a bullet weighing me down, didn't I?"
"No, you didn't," said Dr. Huelsmann, from the left. She maneuvered in past Jim's cot, checked Selena's IV. "It was a through-and-through. Still makes a damn good excuse, though." She looked down at Selena critically but kindly. "Are you awake enough to hear the gory details?"
"Sure."
Dr. Huelsmann seated herself on the rumpled cot. "Twenty-two caliber. Entered right below the scapula on your right side, cracked a couple ribs, and went right on out. Not much of a trip, actually: you're the skinniest damn thing I've ever worked on. Except for him--" She nodded sharply at Jim. "Good news: the slug didn't shatter. Tom West was a gentleman in that, if nothing else. Steel jacket on the bullet. Isaacs, though-- Leo told me that bastard was packing dum-dums. If he'd've been the one to shoot you, you'd've had chunks of lead every damn place. Lungs, spine, heart. Everywhere."
"Still hurts--"
"It ought to." Huelsmann laid her hand gently on Selena's left shoulder. "But you've been very lucky. I'm not the one to tell you if there'll be lasting damage to your arm or shoulder-- Dr Hoyser isn't, either-- but, roughly, things look good."
More confidence than concealment in her dark eyes: even from the realm of meds, Selena could see that. She smiled slightly, a little drowsily. "How long was I out?"
"Day and a bit, on and off," Jim said.
"The both of you." Huelsmann got up, split a basalt glance between the two of them. "Don't know which of you was stupider: you for falling in, or him for jumping in after you."
Selena looked at Jim as sharply as the morphine would permit. "You didn't--"
"What choice did I have--?"
"Forty-degree water with a bleeding head wound." Dr. Huelsmann raised her eyebrows at him. "Good thing you're too dimwitted to understand the concept of hypothermic shock."
"I think I resent--" Jim paused, looked appropriately blank. "I-- uh: yeah. Yes, I am."
"As I said, good thing." Huelsmann smiled at him. She looked toward the door. "Looks like your EMTs are here. I'll shift--"
She made room for Robbie and Laurel, approaching with smiles. Robbie leaned in and kissed Selena's forehead. "Hello, deadweight."
Selena smiled back, puzzled. "Pardon--?"
Laurel dropped without ceremony onto the cot. "Mr. Mouth-t'-Mouth here brought yeh back, Sleepin' Beauty."
"More like Bleeding Beauty, last we saw of you," Robbie said to Selena. He sat himself next to Laurel. "I must admit, though, Miss Urquhart's assistance in the resuscitation process was invaluable."
"Naw, it was you, Robert. Kept at it 'til he was blue in th' face." Laurel smiled the smile of a girl who didn't often give herself over to unfiltered, unbiased happiness. It lasted only a moment. The smile, that is. The happiness stayed in her dark eyes. She nudged Robbie wryly. "It's a good color on yeh, actually."
"Thank you, Robbie." Selena reached for him with her good hand; he rose and leaned closer, and she drew him in and kissed him gently on the mouth.
"You know, that's even nicer when you're not coughing up sea water." He licked his lips thoughtfully, looked across at Jim. "Any chance you'd--?"
"Sorry, mate. I'm th' shy one, I am." But he caught Robbie's hand. "Thank you."
"My pleasure." He squeezed Jim's fingers, let go. Then he smiled mischievously and looked at Laurel. "Y'know-- that's not half bad--"
"What?"
"Snogging a girl."
"An' yer lookin' at me why?" She caught herself. "Ah, Robert, no--"
"Could expand my worldview--"
"An' me just comfortable bein' yer verbally abusive an' dotin' fag-hag--" A pause. "Well, I'll give it a moment's thought. But don't yeh lose sleep waitin' on it." She got up, smacked his arm. "Let's get goin'. People need t' rest, y' know."
"Right, my darling." Robbie winked at Jim and Selena and linked arms with Laurel, heading out. "We're off, then."
"Aw, yeh fatuous bouquet, yeh." From the door, Laurel looked back at the wounded two. "Hannah'd be here-- just thought yeh should know-- only her an' sweetie-boy have a whole new whirlybird t' play with."
When they'd gone, Selena lay watching the empty door. For a moment or moments: a passing of time she marked but didn't measure with the lowering of her eyelids. The drugs were drawing her away; her body wasn't arguing.
"Yeh want t' sleep some more," Jim said softly.
"Yeah. Sorry: I'm--" She blinked at him, bits of focus falling away from her. She found his hand and held on. "There's room here. Stay with me, sweetheart."
"Can't, darlin'." He smiled, shook his head. "Can't be jostlin' yeh. Doctor's orders."
"It's alright, Jim." Dr. Huelsmann spoke in passing. " It's alright. Stay with her."
XXXXXX
Two days later--
Prayers on the helicopter pad. Virgil Cooper's white-shrouded body dropped into the sea, fell into the cold calm darkness, vanished.
Edie Irving had commandeered the galley. She had food waiting for them in the mess. Selena was up for the service, barely but stubbornly, holding on to Jim's arm. She'd noted again the stiffness in his back and right shoulder; she'd seen the bandages under his shirt. When they left the helicopter pad, wind pushing and chilling the air from the west, Hannah and Piotr carried their plates for them, back to sickbay.
XXXXXX
Leaving with the Western Star investigation ship might have been, for Brian Chaplin, a reasonable alternative to visiting the American embassy in Copenhagen. Only Mr. Chaplin had gone missing. Mr. Gregersen, standing the previous evening's watch in the brig, had seen nothing. Nor had the remainder of the Puffin's men aboard the Helvig.
XXXXXX
Leo Chaney and Tamara Huelsmann looked at the white star against the blue background of the investigation ship's hull and decided to catch a plane back to the States from Denmark.
"After we see th' sights," Chaney said.
