Title: Journey of the Lonely Whale: All at Sea (Part 3: Sara and the Siphonophore)
Author: Lisa (ff: ljkwriting4life / twitter: lisa_james_85)
Rating: M. This story contains strong and frequent coarse language and adult themes.
Summary: Accidents happen, but it's what happens afterward that matters most.
Notes: All at Sea is a four-part series of complementary stand-alone stories set between Immortality and CSI: Vegas. It is fourth in the JOTLW series and broadly follows Day One, Day Five, and Evolution (Month 12).
PART THREE: SARA AND THE SIPHONOPHORE
As with most accidents, it happened stupidly and in the blink of an eye. All Sara did was drop the sunglasses she had been twirling around in her fingers, and without thinking, without even really looking at what she was doing, she reached down to grab them.
From the water.
She felt the jolt of electricity shoot up her left arm before she felt the pressure on her hand.
"Fuck!" she exclaimed.
She had been sitting cross-legged on the short floating pontoon they could extend from the Ishmael, reading a research paper on her tablet, but the tablet was forgotten as she wrenched her arm back up and curled into a foetal position. She wasn't sure if she called for Gil, but she heard herself scream in pain as she held her left arm out in front of her. She risked a glance ahead of her.
It wasn't a shark, but that didn't mean it couldn't kill her.
Gil had heard his wife say 'fuck' before, either when she was pissed off at work or the boat, or when they were making love and she was more than okay, but this time when her curse broke the peaceful silence of their afternoon his heart thudded in his chest and his stomach twisted into knots, and a cold wave of dread swept over him. The deep, low scream she then emitted was one of debilitating pain, and he was out the gate of the cockpit and down the ladder and onto the deck before he even got a good look at what had happened. She was in trouble, but the last time he had turned to look over his shoulder at her, which felt like it had only been a minute ago, Sara had been sitting on the pontoon with her head down, reading on her tablet, looking all cute and serious in her reading glasses, with her sunglasses perched on top of her head.
She was still on the pontoon and the tablet was beside her, that was good, but she was curled up on the platform in what she called child's pose, and her left arm was stretched out in front of her. Gil saw the problem immediately as Sara gathered herself for long enough to call his name.
"Gil! Help!"
The stinger had wrapped its long, thick blue tentacle around her left hand and her wrist, and it was all still there, stuck to her skin and holding on for dear life. Obviously Sara had put her hand into the water and had inadvertently put herself in its path, but she should have seen the pneumatophore floating on the surface. Why hadn't she seen it?
That didn't matter now, he told himself.
Gil got to her quickly and crouched over her from behind. He put both of his hands around her back and her ribs and when she felt him she whimpered. She was shaking, the fingers of her right hand were flexed as she fought the pain and her own survival instincts to grab the tentacles.
"I'm here, just don't move," he said. He grabbed the tablet and sent it back onto the deck with a low frisbee throw. He didn't care if he broke it, but his aim was just to skid it to safety. He put his left hand around Sara's elbow and gently lifted both her arm and the bluebottle off the pontoon.
"Fuck! My arm," she groaned. "It's my left arm, Gil."
"It's okay, I've got you," he said. He slid his right arm around her waist from behind and pulled her up onto her knees. "We're going to stand up and get back onto the boat before I take it off, okay? It's only one step. Here we go." He was swift, and Sara was just stubborn enough to want to help even if at that point she couldn't remember her own name.
When they got onto the deck she collapsed onto her knees again with another loud, "Fuck!"
Gil left her for a minute, but he knew Sara wouldn't blame him. She knew what he was doing. The first aid kit for stingers was stored on the deck but he hurried into the cabin to start water boiling with the electric kettle and he grabbed the defibrillator off its mount on the wall by the stairs just in case. They worked with jellyfish, but most recently Catostylus mosaicus. It wasn't the first time either of them had been stung, but this was not a little zap from one of their relatively harmless blubbers. The Indo-Pacific version of the Physalia physalis, Physalia utriculus might be smaller and less venomous than its Atlantic cousin on paper, but that meant nothing when its long tentacle was plastered onto his wife's wrist and wrapped around her arm. Sara was still crying on the deck. It hurt; this was potentially very bad. He put the de-fib on the deck by the lock box because at least Sara clearly did not need it, yet, and retrieved the kit. Sara started dry retching when he got back to her but thankfully she hadn't moved. Her hair completely covered her face as she leant down towards the deck. Gil didn't think he had ever snapped gloves on so quickly in his life.
"Please tell me that's what I think it is and not a box jellyfish," Sara sobbed. "Please, Gil."
"It is not a box jellyfish, it's a Man o'War," he assured her. He held her forearm gently with his left hand and began peeling the lengthy tentacle intact from her skin with his right hand, with the help of a soft cloth. "It's just a bluebottle," he told her.
Just, he thought. How the hell it had wrapped itself around her like this, he didn't know.
"My heart, Gil, I don't want to die," Sara rushed in a helpless voice that broke Gil's own heart. "I'm sorry, I love you, I'm so sorry."
Tears filled his eyes as he shook his head, and his voice cracked.
"You're not going to die," he promised.
"You wouldn't tell me if I was," she huffed stubbornly.
Gil was just glad she was talking. He forced himself to chuckle, hoping to alleviate her worry.
"I would so tell you," he insisted. "And you'd be able to tell. Just breathe, keep breathing."
"It really hurts. Fuck, it hurts. Are you sure?"
"I promise. It's just a big one, and you're still holding it because your hand is, well, hang on."
Sara groaned in pain as he continued to work. Gil had no idea how she had managed to grab hold of the siphonophore's slippery float but her fingers had contracted around it in shock and pain and it was the perfect size to have been scooped up in her palm. Fear flickered in his eyes and turned his stomach. Thank God it wasn't a box jellyfish. The vinegar could sit unused in their kit.
"I'm nearly done," he promised quickly. It wasn't something that took long, it was just something he wanted to do properly. Sara was whimpering but he could tell she was fighting and trying to focus on her breathing, and he briefly stopped what he was doing to touch her back. It was more to reassure himself than to comfort her. He had never heard her sound injured like this.
Gil freed Sara's arm a lot faster than it felt to him, certainly much faster than it must have felt to Sara. He left the bluebottle on the deck to die but kept hold of Sara's arm to stop her moving.
"Honey, I'm going to take off your ring," he said. Her palm was red, her wrist and the inside of her forearm were streaked with evidence of the stinger that would only worsen. If her fingers became swollen and the ring was too tight that was a whole new kind of problem they didn't need.
"I'm sorry, my heart," Sara wept. "I'm so sorry."
Gil didn't wait for her permission before he eased her plain gold wedding ring off her finger. He wriggled it over her knuckle. Sara cried out when he accidentally pressed his thumb into a part of her wrist that had been stung. His hands started shaking as he put her wedding ring into the pocket of his pants. He hated doing that. He had never again wanted to be the reason she took that ring off.
Keep it together, he told himself. He would give it back to her. She had two dozen necklaces, he could put it on any one of them and she could wear it around her neck, which was what she always did when she felt the need to take the ring off to work on the boat. It didn't mean anything.
"Sara, what's the pain out of ten?" he asked once he was sure that ring was secure in his pocket. Sara would kill him if he lost it.
He truly admired her grit when she answered firmly, "Nine".
Sure, he thought. That meant it was a ten. He kept her where she was for half a minute longer as he contemplated how they were going to do this. The water would have boiled, they had a deep enough bowl, it was going to use far less water than running the shower, and thankfully the tentacle hadn't wrapped too high up Sara's long arm. All right, he confirmed. They could do this.
"I'm going to keep asking you, okay?" he asked.
"I feel sick, Gil, the pain is shooting up my arm," she mumbled. She weakened in his arms, perhaps because now she knew she could relax with the stinger off her. At least, Gil hoped that was the reason she had just flopped even further forward in her resting position. He threaded his fingers around her neck and pressed them against the pulse he knew almost as well as his own, the number of times he had held his hands and lips there and felt it. It was fast but steady. He sighed with relief.
"I need you to walk downstairs," he said, as he simultaneously wrapped his right arm around her waist while his left kept hold of her injured arm. He was strong enough to carry her dead weight if he had to, but not down the narrow passageway from the deck to the cabin. Sara knew that. There was strength in her legs when they stood and yet she allowed Gil to push her quickly ahead of him.
"I'm gonna pass out," Sara said halfway down the stairs.
"I've got you, keep going," Gil ordered in a firm voice because he knew she would respond to it. "Keep talking, Sara, tell me what happened."
"I dropped my sunglasses," she said in a breathy voice just as they made it into the cabin. "Am I still wearing-"
"Yes," Gil said, as he got a good look at her face for the first time, half a second before she collapsed. He got her the few steps to the bed and lay her down, but her head had to go where their feet usually lay because he needed her left arm hanging off the bed. "Hang on, Sara," he said when she regained consciousness and groaned, almost as soon as she was horizontal and her body had the chance to re-set. He then hurried to the kitchen area, found the deepest bowl they had, which often doubled as the sick bowl if they needed to hug something in rough seas, and he filled it partly with the boiled water and partly with bottled fresh water. He re-filled the jug and set it to boil again.
"Don't waste water for me," Sara mumbled.
At least there was nothing wrong with her hearing, Gil thought as the glug-glug of the water pouring from the bottle into the bowl battled with the boiling jug for resonance in the small cabin.
"It's not wasting it if it's for you," he said in a softer voice than he had used to order her down the stairs. That had just been his own panic, his need to keep her from fainting. Besides, it was easy. Once the water in the bowl got too cool he would empty some out and add hot water back in.
Sara had flung her reading glasses onto the bed beside her. Her right hand was covering her face as she cried, and Gil winced at the sight of it as he knelt on the floor of the cabin and submerged Sara's hand and forearm in the bowl. She had to bend her wrist to get the worst of the sting deep into the hot water, and Gil balanced the bowl in his left arm and used his right hand to splash some of the water to the top edges of injured forearm that didn't quite reach the water level. He would put more water in, next time, now he knew how much volume her hand and arm would displace. Sara stopped crying in a matter of minutes, and Gil blinked back fresh tears of relief.
"What's the pain out of ten?" he asked five minutes later.
"Eight," she whispered. "The water's helping but it hurts so much."
He knew. He had so much empathy for her pain, and he suspected this was a true eight, unlike her optimistic nine. Sara's eyes had closed and she was focusing on her breathing again, and Gil stayed quiet as he sat alongside her and continued wetting her forearm. He let her rest and breathe. This was how she managed panic attacks as well, though they were always a lot quieter.
When Gil felt the water was getting too cool and realised her pain was building again, he lifted her hand out with light fingertips and encouraged her to lay her forearm across her stomach.
"Rest, I'll be quick."
"Hurry," she said.
He returned with a more appropriate amount of hot water within the minute, and Sara sighed with relief as Gil helped her to submerge her wrist again. He had figured out a better way to hold the bowl with the help of his torso as he knelt by the bed, and he didn't need to keep splashing up her arm this time, so his right hand was free to comb Sara's long hair off her sweaty forehead. She was pale, but she smiled at his touch and turned her head toward him as she opened her eyes.
"Is this Heaven?" she asked. She was clearly joking. Her brown eyes were alert and sparkling with good humour, and even though she looked physically ill and she was in bad shape, Gil laughed.
"Not quite, darlin'," he assured her. He softened as they watched each other seriously. "You're doing so well. How does that heart feel now?"
"Okay," she promised him. "It didn't feel great for a while there. I think I panicked."
"Understandable," he said gently as he continued to comb her hair. "I left the de-fib on the deck, I'm just going to grab it and lock it back up on the wall and check where we're at, okay? Your hand's going to come out of the bowl again, but I'll re-fill it on the way back. It's a nasty sting, Sara."
"I always did have terrible timing," she mumbled.
"Not true. You rest a few minutes. We'll keep this up for as long as you need, sweetheart."
Sara shut her eyes and nodded. She lifted her hand voluntarily from the bowl and rested it across her torso, holding it gingerly with her uninjured hand. There was a brief, anguished look on her face that Gil knew was more to do with her sudden understanding that he had felt he might need the defibrillator than with the pain she was still in. Worth every penny, he realised suddenly.
"Out of ten?" he asked before he left her. They were nearing fifteen minutes of hot water.
"Six," she whispered.
Sara had no memory of falling asleep, but when she woke up it was dark. She remembered Gil sitting her up to eat some crackers, swallow some pain meds and drink some water, and she thought she remembered telling him she'd had enough of the hot water. She had some image of him pouring it down the sink and bracing himself there with his back to her and his head lowered before she had curled up on her side to rest. Now, she was the right up way in bed, on her side of the bed and with her head on her pillow, and she could feel the rise and fall of Gil's chest against her back. Her left arm was stinging again. It felt tender and swollen and burnt. It was raised up around her pillow instead of where it might ordinarily have been tucked up under her chin. Gil's upper arm was covering her right arm around her waist, and his hand was holding her hand against her stomach. She knew he was awake because his fingers were stroking her own in a steady, thoughtful caress.
"Gil?" she asked softly into the dark.
He lifted his head from his pillow and looked down at her.
"I'm here," he said. "How are you feeling?"
Sara remembered feeling sick. She thought she might have thrown up. Or fainted. Or both. She took a moment to assess how she truly was feeling so that she could give her husband an honest answer. He had pulled that entire bluebottle off her without flinching while she lost her mind from the pain; he deserved at least a little honesty.
"Tired," she said. "Shaky. I think…okay, though. It still hurts."
"I know, I'm sorry," he whispered. He sounded genuinely sorry even though it wasn't his fault. He wasn't the one who told her to reach into the ocean for her sunglasses without looking.
"How does it look?" she asked, not sure if she could lift her head without feeling the need to pass out again. Besides, Gil had turned out the cabin lights, and she didn't want him to move either.
"When I turned the lights off it was still very red, lots of raised welts and swelling. I don't know if the cream helped."
Sara vaguely recalled the antibiotic cream for stings, and the thick, cool feel of it on her skin.
"It soothed it," she whispered to reassure him. She didn't know how to thank him. She offered a measly, "Thanks."
"Don't worry about it," he said. "We're each other's first priority out here, right?"
"Mm, always," she hummed. A spark of contentment and safety warmed her as Gil held her hand against her belly and ducked his head to kiss her cheek.
"I love you," he whispered against her skin.
Sara nodded. She couldn't bring herself to say it back even though she knew she should. It felt like an admission of something a bit too real after the afternoon's events. She remembered telling him that she didn't want to die and saying sorry to him because she thought that she might. She might have even told him she loved him then too, thinking she wouldn't get another chance.
That was probably enough brutal honesty for the day.
"Did you find my sunglasses?" she asked instead.
Gil chuckled against her. His beard scratched her face in a familiar way that made her want to turn her head and kiss him, but again she resisted, not sure of herself, and her arm was hurting.
"No, darlin', I didn't even look for them."
"I'll just borrow yours."
"You can do that, and we can get another pair. I'm taking us back to the coast-"
"No, Gil-"
"Yes, Sara," he said. "You might feel much better tomorrow or you might feel worse."
"If we're going back, why hasn't your alarm gone off yet?"
"It did," he said. "I just got back into bed when you woke up."
Oh, Sara thought. That was okay then. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and pressed his arm more tightly into her, and Gil chuckled again and kissed her cheek.
"What's the pain out of ten?" he asked.
Sara sighed as she tried to quantify the pain and the degree to which it was distracting her. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had been, but she felt that if they did nothing it would worsen.
"Three to four," she admitted. "Can I take something?"
"Yes, and I thought maybe the hot water bottle-"
"Yes," she answered quickly. She missed the hot water, but she wasn't doing that again.
Gil nodded and kissed her head as Sara let his arm go and he got out of bed. The boat was rocking gently in the waves as it ticked slowly onwards. Sara had no idea where they were or how much ground they had covered in the hours she had been asleep, but if Gil had only just been up to the cockpit to run his checks then he had some time, anywhere between twenty minutes and a few hours. She tentatively sat up in the dark as he announced he was going to turn a light on. He had to look for this hot water bottle that they owned but had hardly used. When the light was turned on, Sara let out a steady breath and looked down at the arm she had instinctively cradled in her lap.
Yeah, it was bad, she realised. Red and blistered, her wrist was the worst, and the tentacle's grip on her arm was easily visible. The skin around the affected tissue looked pale and shocked, and her palm was bright red and swollen even though she thought that had mostly been holding the float. Obviously the underside of the float had burned her as well. Some Man o'War siphonophores were worse than others. This little fucker had only been a moderate size, but the damage was done.
"Where's my wedding ring?" Sara asked in a panic when she realised what was missing.
"In my pocket," Gil said. "You don't remember me taking it off you on the deck?"
He looked over his shoulder as Sara vaguely shook her head. He tried to hide the concern that flickered across his face, and Sara tried to reassure him by smiling and cracking a joke.
"I was somewhat distracted," she said.
"Luckily I got it off before your hand blew up," he added, also trying to be light-hearted.
His back was turned when Sara tentatively stood, found her footing, and unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts with her right hand. Her underwear followed her shorts onto the floor, and by the time Gil realised she was up, she was half-naked by the bed.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"What does it look like?" she asked as she rifled through storage for clean underwear. "I'm getting changed so I don't have to sleep in those clothes."
"All right, just a minute-"
"No, I can do it," Sara insisted. She had spent two months with a broken left arm in a cast from her bicep to the ends of her fingertips once, and okay, Gil had in fact been required to assist her then too, but she remembered how she had learned to mostly undress and dress herself with one hand. This time, the hardest part was getting into her underwear while the boat was moving.
"For God's sake," Gil said under his breath as he hurried to her and grabbed her just before she tripped. "Sara, one more minute was all I needed." He threw the hot water bottle on the bed and simply let her lean on him for balance while she followed her underwear with her pyjama pants.
"Just help me get the shirt off without it touching my arm, will you?" Sara said in a huff. That had never mattered much with the cast, but now she did not want anything to touch that left arm until she had soothed the burning prickle of her raw skin. The stinging was reaching a little deeper and nearer to those long-ago-healed bones with each passing minute. "Ow, God," she whispered, unable to hide the teary wince that marred her expression when she finally focused on the pain.
Gil was quick and silent as he stretched the sleeve of her shirt and helped her extract her arm. Sara was thankful for their sea legs because the boat bobbed along but the task was a success.
"Augh, I love you, thank you," Sara gushed once she had her pyjama shirt on and Gil was doing up the buttons for her. He met her eyes and smiled softly as their frustrations ebbed away.
Sara sat on the edge of the bed, and Gil fetched a cotton tea towel for her to lay over her arm before she applied the hot water bottle. She could mostly balance it there, with her arm cradled in her lap as she hunched forward. It at least allowed her one free hand, which she used to accept ibuprofen and water from Gil, followed by a muesli bar. It wasn't exactly dinner but it was better than nothing. Gil sat quietly beside her on the edge of the bed and ate one too.
"Didn't feel like cooking," he explained finally.
"I don't blame you," she said on a sigh. "I barely feel like eating."
"Mm," he agreed. "Your body is still dealing with the venom. I moved as quickly as I could."
"I know," Sara whispered. She bit her bottom lip as she listened to the raw emotion in her husband's voice. "You were so calm, you were perfect, thank you." She watched his jaw clench as he kept a tight hold on whatever he was feeling as he nodded. Sara had returned to holding the hot water bottle against her left arm, but she leant into Gil when he simply put his arm around her. His hand clasped the top of her left arm, and he was so gentle. "Honey," she whispered to him as she leant against his shoulder and closed her eyes. She could go back to sleep very easily, she decided.
"Is it helping?" Gil asked after a moment, as he stared at the hot water bottle.
Sara nodded and sniffled a bit as she stared at it too. Gil kissed her cheek again.
"Good," he whispered. His warm hand stroking her upper left arm was having an impact as well, and Sara turned her face to his and shut her eyes as their lips met in a slow kiss. She slid her good arm around his back and squeezed his waist as he maintained a gentle grip on her arm. Gil moaned against her lips when her tongue dipped into his mouth, and Sara hoped this kiss helped to ease any guilt he might have felt for how bad her injury was. It wasn't so bad now. The hot water bottle was helping, the heat of the kiss was helping. Gil sighed when the kiss ended. They pressed their foreheads together briefly and he whispered, "Please don't do that to me again, sweetheart".
Sara shook her head. Not if she could help it.
"God dammit, shit," Sara whispered as she climbed the ladder to the cockpit the next day.
Gil chuckled when he heard her. He had helped her dress for the day earlier in the morning, but she had gone back to bed while he returned to the cockpit. He was pleased to see her up and about. He stepped back from the instruments and opened the gate and reached for her to help. He took her left elbow in his hand when he could and she made it the rest of the way without cursing.
"Thanks, and I was only using my fingertips, fucking jellyfish."
"Technically it's not-" Gil stopped talking when she glared pointedly at him. Yeah, she knew, technically it was not a jellyfish. The Man o'War varieties, or bluebottles, were siphonophores. Duh.
His wife just happened to be one of the most intelligent and perceptive people Gil had met, a scientist in her own right, and he was about to explain their own research to her. What an idiot he was sometimes. He shut his mouth, closed the gate, and watched her collapse onto the seat that folded down with a heavy sigh.
"Out of ten?" he asked.
"One to four, depending on a range of factors like if I knock it," she said. "Actually, if I knock it, it's a six, but it's not just that, it's the rest of me. I feel like shit. I thought fresh air might help."
"I'm sure it will." He took off his sunglasses and handed them to her.
Gil enjoyed the sight of her smile as she accepted them and slid them onto her face. She pursed her lips in a brief air-kiss to thank him and took a deep breath as the boat continued its trip back to the coast. Gil was now confident that Sara wouldn't need a doctor. The swelling had gone down around her injuries, and though her lymph nodes in her left armpit were now swollen and sore and she was fatigued and felt off, there was no sign of infection or a life-threatening reaction.
However, they would take the opportunity to stock up on supplies, and Sara needed to rest. Gil had booked a nice hotel room with a large tub and king-size bed for a few nights. Even if they didn't need help, there was a great sense of relief that came with knowing they would be on land.
Gil hardly ever felt that anymore.
"Looking forward to being back?" he asked Sara. She scoffed and shook her head, still unimpressed he had turned the boat back to the coast, but it was always part of the contingency plan for this life they led. In the event medical assistance may be required, get back to – or at least nearer to – land and increase the chance of rescue and recovery. If Gil had been the one keeled over on the deck talking about his heart, Sara would be doing the same, which was why she was utterly unable to argue with him despite her discomfort at being the reason. He was just glad there wasn't anything wrong with Sara now, besides the lingering evidence of a nasty sting. "I got a room with a tub," he mentioned as casually as possible. "Twelve hours from now you'll be in a nice warm bath-"
"We're that close?" she asked. She looked around. "We're not exactly going fast here."
"No, I've slowed us down in the last hour," he said. He looked at her as he thought. He knew she had been asleep and out of it, she probably didn't understand that he hadn't slept. "I turned the boat around yesterday afternoon, it's been a clear, fast run through the night and into this morning."
Sara looked at him from behind his own sunglasses, which were too big for her face but made her look adorable irrespective of her seriousness, or maybe partly because of it. She knew that to run the boat fast he needed to be in the cockpit more than he normally was overnight. Much more. At least he knew this meant she had slept through the night even without him beside her.
Gil looked at her for a moment but found it too emotionally intense and so he turned back to the boat's instruments and scanned the horizon.
"You haven't slept," Sara said after a long pause.
It was a conclusion, not a question, but Gil glanced over his shoulder at her and arched his eyebrow. He confirmed the truth with another long look. His heart was thumping. Sara was wearing his sunglasses, so he couldn't hide his eyes and she had an unobstructed view of his own stubborn and serious expression.
"Okay," she said, accepting the facts, accepting him. There were nights she also didn't sleep.
She smiled gently at him, which Gil was thankful for. He was just so fucking thankful for her.
"I am looking forward to a bath," she said.
As accidents went, given the spectrum of possibilities, Sara thought this had been a pretty good one. No broken skin, no broken bones, and no broken hearts. On top of that, as promised, she was in a large bathtub that fit both her and her husband's taller frames, in a very nice hotel room.
Winning, right?
They often stayed in nice hotels. Gil spoilt her when they were off the boat, as though he had never quite gotten over this idea that she had sacrificed something of herself to be with him.
The reality could not have been further from the truth from her own perspective. She hadn't sacrificed part of herself, she had found a part of herself. It had been over four years since she made that choice, and she could no longer imagine being the Director of the Las Vegas Crime Lab, not even a little bit. She wasn't sure her soul would have coped with it, or the knowledge that had she taken the job, Gil would have remained on the boat, her ex-husband who she had always loved, all alone.
Instead, he was holding her left hand and arm underwater while his right hand stroked her belly and hips and her thigh. The bathroom had a dimmer switch so the mood was sleepy, and her left arm was still soothed by the warm water. The water level was high enough that her left armpit was also submerged, relieving the ache of her swollen lymph nodes too. Sara tried not to focus on how her body was feeling. She forced her tired eyes open and admired the sight of Gil's shapely legs around hers and the feeling of his chest rising and falling against her back. None of it was a sacrifice.
But she also wasn't going to say no to being spoilt occasionally, and Gil might like to pretend that it was all about her needs, but he was a sixty-five-year-old man who liked the finer things in life. Plus, he was also bone tired and deserved to share a bath with his wife, especially after racing her back to the US just in case. Thankfully they hadn't been all that far away, otherwise it could have taken days or weeks or months. Sara hoped she never had to be the one to do that trip. She would always rather be the injured party than the one left to care. Gil had been injured so rarely, and never seriously, and Sara had no idea how she would cope. She wanted to one day cope the way he had.
He'd even had the presence of mind to take off her ring. Her wedding ring was around her neck on a chain, and she fiddled with it against her sternum. Hopefully by morning her hand would be less swollen and tender again and she could put her ring back where it belonged. The hand had continued to feel gradually better over the course of the day and into the evening, but her wrist and the softer skin on the inside of her forearm were in worse shape, still red, raw, and badly blistered. It would heal, it probably wouldn't even scar for long, but for the time being it stung, and tears stung her eyes as she let herself feel a little sorry for herself. Gil kissed her shoulder when he heard her rake in an emotional breath and she began to weep. He always just let her cry; it was amazing.
"I blame the bath," she said when she could.
"Do you?" he asked curiously. "I thought you'd blame the ocean."
"What, all of it?" she asked. Her right hand reached for his and she moved it from her thigh to her waist, where she pressed it tightly. He got the idea and wrapped both of his arms around her in an underwater hug. Her left arm was suddenly on its own, but Sara could look after her own injured arm just fine now. The rest of her needed him more, and she knew Gil needed her too.
It occurred to her that he might be genuinely worried about her emotional reaction to this, even though they had both been stung before, and by now he should have understood that she was more level-headed than that. Hell, if it wasn't jellyfish it was bees. The first time he proposed to her she was stung by a bee. That hadn't changed how she felt about him or how she felt about marrying him, just like this sting wasn't going to chase her away from their research and their life on the boat.
"I would never blame the ocean," she said. Or him. "If anything, I blame my sunglasses."
Gil chuckled and nuzzled his face in against hers, a gesture Sara returned as she sighed happily and shut her eyes. The prickle of his beard against her face was a sensual distraction from the faint prickling of her arm beneath the water, and she almost felt it was putting her to sleep...until Gil took her earlobe between his lips in a kiss and a bolt of arousal shot straight down her tired body.
"Fuck, Gil," she whispered. She never wanted to shout that precious word again. Gil's hands were on her belly and hips, and his mouth was around her ear, and she forgot about her arm. "Are you trying to convince me to drop my next pair of sunnies in the ocean too? Because it's working."
He chuckled again and Sara was just pleased to hear him laughing. She could feel him smiling against her as he released her ear and kissed her cheek. He loved her. After so many years denying himself that truth and without their work in the crime lab to obsess over, at sea it seemed easy for him to show her and to tell her. He had relaxed, thanks to the ocean. So, she would never blame the ocean. She regularly thanked the ocean. Not that Gil knew it, he might not even understand it, but that was why she sometimes liked going right up to the ocean's edge to sit. It was why she had been sitting on the pontoon with her tablet and her sunglasses in the first place. She liked being close to it because it reminded her of everything she did have, and not of the things she had left in the past.
"Okay, let's go to bed," she said when she felt him tiring around her. "But only to sleep. I appreciate your dedication to the plan and to my pain relief in this case, but you need to sleep."
"I do," he confirmed in a drowsy voice.
They got out of the tub and Sara dried herself and applied more cream to her arm as Gil got dressed, and then she let him help her into her own pyjamas. It was just easier to accept the help. Gil was just as stubborn as she was and it was part of why she loved him. She watched him as he held her left arm to observe it close-up, with the serious, observant eyes of a former criminalist. The warm water might have made her skin appear redder and more tender than it was, and his tired features were etched with concern, but she cared more about the way the dim light was picking up the white of his beard and his hair, still mixed with darker grey but less so with every passing year. He was a beautiful man, she reminded herself.
Sara wrapped her right hand around the back of his neck and rubbed the warm skin and short hairs there, until he looked up into her eyes. She smiled at him. Her eyes flickered down to his lips and back up, and Sara saw his blue eyes widen in understanding. She kissed him before he could move. She held his neck and took a step forward and pressed her lips to his in a chaste kiss that nonetheless lingered lovingly. Gil's lips applied gentle pressure against hers and they stepped back at the same time. Sara cast her eyes across his face as she caressed his cheek and brushed her fingers around his temple and along his jaw. Gil closed his eyes, and a wave of affection surged through Sara because she knew he trusted her as much as she had always trusted him. Completely.