Fixing a Broken Wing - Chapter 6
To DK Lover, in my story, I don't think Dutchy & Kate would ever just 'hook up'... I like my story to be as realistic as possible, hence the build up. Thank you for reading & commenting.
To 'Guest' reviewers, thank you!
This part is set after 4.14 Live Catch episode.
"Alright everyone, you know the drill. Stay alert, we don't know what or who we're going to find in that vessel."
The chorus of 'Yes, Sir' could be heard from all the crews in the RHIB.
Newcastle's radar had picked up a contact in the early hours of the morning. Due to the suspicious nature of the vessel and the threat of pre-dawn piracy activity, they had decided to do a boarding.
Dylan sat on his customary seat at the front, ready to board the vessel first. As the RHIB cut its way through the dark ocean, he looked up to the sky. It started to turn purple, preparing for the arrival of the glorious sunrise. He inwardly sighed. Being one of the sailors in guts watch, he hadn't slept all night. He couldn't help but wishing that this boarding would turn out to be uneventful and this fishing vessel would only contain fishermen on board.
Once the team boarded the vessel and no resistance encountered, even after announcing their presence repeatedly, LEUT Matthew Ryan wasted no time in dividing the team to check different parts of the vessel.
"Dutchy and Fitzy, check the wheel house."
Both sailors moved quickly to the wheel house, expecting the master of the vessel to be there. Instead, the vessel appeared to be on autopilot. Dylan looked at Fitzy alarmingly. He was just about to go back to the boat deck and report the anomaly to his boarding officer, when he heard the sound of a gun fire.
Instinctively, Dylan raised his rifle and ran to the boat deck. The sight that he encountered was not good. Half of the boarding party were desperately trying to find a place to hide behind anything solid. Bullets were coming from below deck and upper deck, literally tearing apart wooden crates and any pieces of equipments scattered on the deck. He managed to catch a glimpse of the people behind this surprised attack and felt his heart sank as their earlier suspicion came true. Damn pirates!
He started to return fire. Bullet after bullet came out of his rifle. Besides him, Fitzy was doing the same thing. He counted more than six pirates targeting them and decided to change his tactic. He zeroed his rifle on one of them; intending to eliminate the pirates one by one. He was about to pull the trigger for the killing shot when he heard a loud cry from the direction of his shipmates. He lifted his eyes from his rifle's binocular to find his boarding officer clutched his bleeding upper leg.
"Fitzy, cover me!" Not waiting for a reply, Dylan then made a quick move to reach his boarding officer, grabbed him by his vest and tried to drag him to find cover behind few wooden drums on the deck.
Realising that the wounded officer was a perfect target, the pirates zeroed their weapons on him, making it harder for Dylan to drag him to safety. By the time they both were relatively safe behind the wooden drum, LEUT Ryan had sustained more bullet wounds on his legs and on the side of his neck; taking a huge chunk of his flesh.
Dylan was desperately looking for Swain who carried first aid kit, but the man was under heavy fire on the other side of the deck. He raked his brain for any possible materials to stem the blood flows. He then took off both of his gloves and pressed it to the open wounds; hoping and praying that the man in front of him would hang on.
"Dutchy, you need to get them out of here." LEUT Ryan grabbed Dylan's upper arm tightly; urging his buffer to assume the responsibility of command.
"Sir, we are going to get all of us out of here. But first, we need to stop your bleeding." Dylan could see that the man had started to slowly lose his consciousness as he was experiencing extreme blood loss. Dylan guessed that the bullet must have hit the femoral artery.
A pale face and a pair of dilated eyes then stared at Dylan sadly. "Dutchy, if I don't make it..."
"No, you will." Dylan shook his head strongly, refusing to entertain such possibility.
"Dylan..." The use of his first name made Dylan realised the gravity of the situation. "Tell Susan that I love her..."
"Matthew, NO! You can tell her yourself, you son of the bitch!" Dylan had the urge to shake his best friend from his resigning attitude.
"Tell her that I'm sorry... " ignoring Dylan's disapproving words, Matthew kept going, "I wished that I made her an honest woman a lot sooner ... I wished that I didn't waste so much time..."
"Mattie... just stop talking... you need to save your strength..." Dylan replied. His gloves were now soaked, staining his hands with dark red colour.
"Dylan, you have to promise me!" Matthew's grip on Dylan's upper arm tightened. A pair of green eyes stared hard at Dylan, begging him to say yes.
Dylan could feel a lump in his throat. Unable to utter another word, he could only nod his agreement. He then broke their eye contact, trying to concentrate in tearing his uniform's sleeves to a bandage. As he was pressing the torn uniform tightly around the wound, he looked up again to check whether Matthew's features have improved, but he could only find a pair of lifeless green eyes staring back at him.
Rage built inside Dylan's being. He couldn't believe that it would ever come to this. He should have stuck to Matthew like glue. This is all my fault! He then lifted his hands from the other man's body, reached for his rifle and held it tightly. He was about to get up from his hiding place and taught all those pirates a lesson when bullets tore the wall besides him, few inches from his face. He threw his body to his left side to avoid the bullet while closing his eyes briefly.
When he opened his eyes again, the sun was shining brightly now. Is it sunrise already? He looked to his surroundings. Where's Matthew's body? He then realised that he was not hiding behind a wooden drum anymore. He actually leaned against the side railing of a vessel. What the hell is going on? He could still hear the sound of the gun fight, which means that he was still in a boarding situation of some kind.
"Dutchy!" Suddenly his radio came alive. He was about to answer his radio when he saw a movement on his right side. His blood ran cold at the sight.
"X, get down on the ground!" He aimed his browning to the man behind Kate with his right hand while he gestured wildly with his other hand for her to duck for cover. "X, get down, get down, get down on the ground now!" She was not listening to him. Her eyes were glazed, as if she was in some kind of trance.
Then, the other man pulled the trigger. At the same time Bomber appeared behind the shooter and strangled him with a baton, preventing him from firing his gun again. But, it was too late. The force of the bullet impact threw Kate's body forward towards Dylan. He instantly moved to break her fall.
"X!" He held her body tight against his, slowly crouching down to lower her body to the deck and moved her so that she was lying on her side. He then urgently pressed his gloved hands to her wound at her back. Feeling the pressure, she groaned. "Sorry X."
"How is she?" He looked up to see Bomber crouched down beside him.
"Here, keep the pressure on her wound." He said while grabbing Bomber's hands to replace his. "I'm going to get Swain." Not waiting for her reply, he went back to the gun fight, searching for Swain.
"Swain!"
Hearing Dutchy's desperate voice, Swain looked up from his position behind a wooden crate. "Dutchy? What's wrong?"
"Quick, starboard side, it's the X!" The blood drained from Swain's face, thinking that the X was experiencing a side effect of Cyanide poisoning.
"Dutchy, she's not breathing!" Bomber's shout prompted both men to make their way towards Kate quickly.
Swain reached for her neck, trying to find a pulse, and found none. He then grabbed her body and laid her flat on her back. "Bomber, you do the breathing, I'll do the compression."
"1, 2, 3, 4..." Swain started counting for the CPR. After the first round of compression and breathing, Swain felt the pulse again, still none. "Come on X, breathe!"
Dylan looked in horror at the sight in front of him. Crouching on Kate's other side; he then slowly reached for her hand. It was still warm. X, please hang on!
But then, after few more attempts at CPR, he could hear Swain's voice in the background, announcing time of death. No...Not again! He then looked at her lifeless green eyes and he could feel his eyes sting. Please GOD, not again!
Dylan woke up suddenly from his restless slumber. He frantically reached around, trying to find the switch for his reading light. Before he had a chance to do that, someone had already switched on the cabin light, blinding him momentarily. When he opened his eyes again, he was looking at Swain's worried eyes.
"Dutchy, are you alright?"
He took a deep breath, trying to calm his heart beat. "I'm fine."
"Are you sure?" Swain still looked at him concerned.
"Yeah Swaino, if I'm not, then I will be."
"Alright then, but if you want to talk..."
"You're right under my bunk..." Both men chuckled at his attempt to lighten the situation.
Dylan then looked at his watch. It was 2 am. He sighed inwardly. It looked like he had to work with limited sleep in the morning because there was no way that he could go back to sleep after that nightmare. Maybe he should do few rounds of chin-ups.
"I'm going to get some air." He then climbed down from his bunk, grabbed his T-shirt, and went into the bathroom. Once inside, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It was so real. I could still see both of their lifeless eyes staring at me. He shook his head to get rid of the remnants of his nightmare. After splashing cold water to his face and put on his t-shirt, he opened the bathroom door again. Realising that Swain had already turned off the cabin light, he made his way as quietly as possible to the cabin door.
"Swaino?"
"Yeah?" Swain turned on his reading light.
"I'm sorry I woke you up." Dylan looked at him apologetically. "I haven't had that kind of nightmares for a while."
"Dutchy, I'm a father. I'm used to Chloe waking me up because of nightmares."
Dylan chuckled. "Monster under the bed?"
Swain smiled at the memory. "Yeah, under the bed, in the wardrobe..." He sighed. "Not that I'm home enough to experience them all. Most of the time Sally had to go through everything on her own."
Dylan recognised the other man's expression. Regret, sadness and love mixed together. He remembered that Matthew used to wear that expression when he talked about Susan.
"Mate... The fact that you are worried about whether you are a bad parent normally means that you are a good one. The bad one wouldn't care about that. They only care about themselves."
"You think so?"
"I know so."
Dylan opened the door to the boat deck. As expected, the wind blew quite strongly. He welcomed it though. The breeze definitely would help him getting rid of the stuffy feeling he got from his nightmare. What he didn't expect was the fact that someone else actually had the same idea as him.
His heart beat once, twice... She is alive. She wasn't lying lifelessly on that fishing vessel anymore. Instead, she was standing against the railing on the boat deck, wearing only a pair of tank top and short that showed her pale skin. He yearned to touch her, to assure him that his dream wasn't real, that he didn't just lose his XO like he lost Matthew. He wished that he could hold her tight against him, to feel her heartbeat against his, so that he could convince his clouded mind that she was very much alive and well.
Kate stared at the deep blue ocean in front of her. It was quite a calm night, with only slight waves rolling as Hammersley steamed through the night for home port. The calm of the ocean still couldn't calm her mind about what happened on the fishing vessel. During the afternoon she was fine. Although she was on light duties, the business of running the ship still kept her fairly busy. But as the sun disappeared behind the horizon and her subconscious took over, her mind came back to the finer details of her experience, including an image of a large guy looming over her and the feeling of his hand undressing her shirt. An involuntary shudder ran through her body. The chilling wind only made the shudder worse. Maybe I should go back to my cabin... But what about the nightmares? Before she could weigh up both options further, something warm was wrapped around her, followed by thermoses appearing in her line of sight. She looked back to find Dylan stood behind her, trying to balance two thermoses while keeping the blanket covering her body.
"Thanks." She smiled at him gratefully, grabbing both corners of the blanket to secure it around her chilled body. Once she was satisfied that the blanket was not going to fall off, she reached for the thermos and took a sip of the liquid inside.
"Can't sleep?" he looked at her curiously while leaning his body against the railing beside her.
She nodded. "You?"
"Same."
She huffed, "We are such a pair, aren't we?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, looked at us, holding a brew at 2.30 am in our pyjamas. Talking." He shook his head at the ridiculousness of the situation.
"At least we are in each other's company." Their eyes met again, longer this time. Kate then rested her head against his massive upper arm, grateful for the feeling of security from having him next to her.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He stared at the top of her head, realising that something was bothering her. Maybe she has nightmares too?
"Not really."
For the next few minutes, the only sound that they could hear was the sound of the boat engine rumbling beneath their feet and the sound of the ocean lapping at the base of the ship.
Kate knew that telling him the content of her nightmare would only make him feel guilty about what could have been. So she kept quiet. Sensing that his mind was as turbulent as hers, she quietly reached for his hand and linked their fingers together again. She kept surprising herself at how quickly she became at ease while physically touching him. Ever since their late night conversation on the beach, they had gradually become good friends; few movies here and there, few meals together, she even went along with him to help Charge with his house renovation. The truth was that spending time with him was easy. He made her laugh. He sometimes made her eyes rolled with his cheekiness too. But most importantly, they knew where they stood with each other. Unlike her and Mike...
"What about you? Why are you not sleeping?" asked Kate, deciding to steer her mind away from her troubled love life.
He squeezed her hand tighter and took a deep breath. The image of her and Matthew lying lifelessly on the stinky deck of fishing vessel rushed through his mind again. Should I tell her?
"Was it the Gulf?" she guessed. Almost straight away, she felt his muscles tightened at the mention of that particular event.
"Yeah... The last moment of Matthew's life." He finally relented after a few seconds of tense silence.
"Matthew?" She lifted her head from his upper arm to look at his features.
"LEUT Matthew Ryan. My boarding officer."
"What was he like?" asked Kate curiously.
"A good bloke," he smiled at the memory, "loved to read. He drove us nuts with his tendency to blurt out random little facts in his spare time."
"He sounded a bit like RO."
He chuckled. "A little bit. But he was a lot more outgoing than RO."
"He meant a lot to you, didn't he?"
He looked at her sadly. "It was our last rotation in the gulf. The incident happened only 2 weeks before we were scheduled to arrive home and 3 weeks before I was supposed to be standing beside him as his best man. Instead of all that, 3 weeks later both myself and his fiancé, Susan, stood as we watched his casket being lowered to the ground."
"I'm sorry Dutchy." She tightened her hold of his hand as her way of comforting him.
"I was expecting Susan to blame me for failing to protect him. But she didn't. She said thank you instead. A thank you for being there for Matthew when she couldn't." He shook his head. "It was bizarre. I was so guilt-ridden that I couldn't sleep for weeks. Hearing her gratitude, I really wanted to shake her and beg her to slap me or something."
"She knew that it really wasn't your fault. You really need to stop doing this to yourself." She gave him a long stare, wiling him to really listen to her this time.
"You know the first time we met on the bridge of Hammersley, you looked so fragile, like a porcelain doll..."
"Excuse me?" she looked at him incredulously.
He ignored her indignation and continued. "Then I looked at your eyes. They are the exact same shade as Matthew's," he chuckled softly, "it felt like the Man above had answered my prayer and gave Matthew back to me but in a more delicate version. In a way, it was a chance for me to redeem myself. I could imagine Him saying to me, 'Here you go, Son. Try to do a better job this time around hey?' But it felt a lot more like a punishment to me."
"No wonder you were such a dickhead back then." She said bluntly.
He laughed. "More like a sexist pig I would say."
"That too." She smiled softly at him.
"I wish that I don't care so much about you." He stroked her thumb with his larger one. "I wish I could resist your poking and prodding. But you're just so damn stubborn."
"It's a moot point, isn't it? Besides, I don't believe that your guilt would be any less if something had happened to me back when you were still trying to ignore me. I think there would probably be more guilt. Because you wouldn't only regret your inability to keep me safe, you would also regret the fact that you were less than civil towards me." She looked at him pointedly.
He smirked at her. "Since when do you become philosophical, X?"
"I think I'm getting old," she sighed, "I'm getting softer. When I was younger, I wouldn't bother with being patient during that 2 months period and just deck you instead."
"Hold it right there," he looked at her amused. "Firstly, you're not old. Secondly, what makes you think that you could deck me easily?"
She scowled at him. "I might not be able to knock you over, but I'm sure I could make your nose bleed."
"Yeah, that's if your arm is long enough to reach my nose," he said smugly, a large smile adoring his face.
She jabbed her elbow to his ribs as hard as she could. Her scowl got even deeper when he didn't seem to feel any effect of her jab. She then glared at his smug face. "You're lucky that I like you Dutchy."
His smile was only getting bigger. Getting her flustered and riled up was fast becoming his favourite pastime activity. "Don't be so cut up about that, X. I'm sure you could hurt me some other way," he added cheekily.
She could feel her cheeks burning, due to prolonged exposure to his blinding smile. When she couldn't find a comeback, she just gave him her best dirty look, which sadly, didn't do much to wipe that smile out of his face. "When you finish mocking me, Petty Officer, you might want to escort me back to my cabin," she said while grasping her blanket tighter around her.
His smile quickly turned into a concern when he realised that she started to get goose bumps. In the midst of their long chat, he didn't really pay attention to the decrease in temperature around them.
"Come on, X. If we are lucky, we might get few more hours of sleep," he said while looking at his watch. They made their way quickly through the locker room to the corridor, hoping that they would not encounter anyone else in their journey to her cabin. On the way, they made a quick stop to the wardroom to rinse their thermoses and store the blanket. However, as they arrived in front of her cabin, they heard a very disturbing noise. It was Charge's voice from the bridge, singing a very bad rendition of Danny Boy.
Kate sighed. This was why she sometimes complained about the location of her cabin. It was too close to the bridge. It looked like there would be no more sleep tonight; maybe she should just do her paperwork.
"Do you want me to talk to him?" Dylan offered, wondering why anybody would sing if they had a really bad voice.
"That's alright. I'm not really fancying sleeping anyway. I'll sleep when we arrive at port this morning." She smiled softly at him. "Thanks for the offer though."
"You're welcome." He stood there feeling like he was a teenager escorting his girlfriend to the front of her house after a date, trying to prolong the conversation so the night wouldn't end. They stood staring at each other for a while, neither wanted to say goodbye. This is ridiculous, Dylan. Let the Lady have some rest. He finally broke their eye contact and whispered softly. "I'll see you in the morning." He then turned away to start his journey to his cabin in the lower deck.
"Dutchy?" Kate called tentatively.
"Yeah?" He turned back and settled himself leaning against the wall opposite her cabin door.
"Do you have any plans for the shore leave?" she looked at him with expectant eyes.
His lips curved up at the question. "Nothing really specific, why?"
"I saw a billboard about a very interesting place up north from Cairns. I thought you might like going there."
"What kind of place?"
She smiled. "It's a secret."
He raised his eyebrows at her. "Okay..."
"I just thought that you always plan our outings. Most of the time, you are the one who drag me from my home or the ship to go somewhere. So, it's my turn this time."
Hearing her explanation, he couldn't contain his grin. The fact that she wanted to spend time with him and made an effort to organise their outing just made this solemn night so much brighter. "When?"
"Sometime in the afternoon," she grinned back at him, "I'll call you."
"Make sure you do." He then stepped closer to her and raised his hand to touch her cheek softly. "Try to get some sleep then. I know you have to go straight to the hospital in the morning. If we want to do something in the afternoon, then you need to be well rested before that."
She smiled softly at his concern. "You need to get some sleep too."
He nodded. "Sleep tight X."
"Good night, Dutchy."
To be continued...