He looked at his phone, hoping that somehow reception would magically appear. No bars. Not that he expected any twenty seven miles east of San Salvador island. “Oh, well,” he said, knowing full well that Rose’s cell phone wouldn’t work at the beach house anyway. He just wanted to send her the picture, to tell her he was thinking of her and that he couldn’t wait to see her that evening.
The captain turned the fifty-four-foot Bertram over-under around and began following the sun back toward San Salvador as the first mate took John’s fish and put it on ice alongside the grouper he had also caught. Turning the wheel over to his assistant, the captain came back to speak to John. “Hey, that’s a heck of a Wahoo you got there,” the captain said to John, purposefully playing up his Bahamian accent for the tourist. “Especially this early in the season.”
John smiled. “Yeah. Lucky, I guess.” John knew the Wahoo really only started biting in October and that the winter months are when they were most active. Still, he had what he came for, and with a few hours of fishing left he was optimistic that he had yet to land the really big one. The captain had told him in the morning that he expected the best bite to be near sunset.
“So you may have noticed I turned the boat back toward the island,” the captain said. “We got word that the hurricane in the Caribbean is turning north and they think it will head for the islands. We have to cut the trip short a few hours and head back. Just to be safe, you know, and to get our boat secured.”
As he considered the captain’s comments for a moment, John’s initial thought was that the captain was pulling his leg since he definitely looked the part of the sunburned tourist who could be suckered. But the captain looked serious, so John glanced around at the waves and the sky. He had paid little attention to either during the excitement of fishing. The chop had picked up in the past couple of hours, but John thought that must be normal for being so far out at sea.
“Really? Are you—serious?”
“Yah man, we don’t joke about hurricanes, not on the outer islands.”
“What...when? What are they saying?” All of a sudden John needed data, information to help him make strategic choices, as if he was in a Monday morning meeting with his team around the conference table.
“They saying it’ll take the path Irene took a couple of years ago when it went right through the islands,” the captain said, “except they say it won’t turn northeast. It’s suppose to hit land somewhere between Florida and South Carolina, but that part ain’t what concerns me if you know what I’m sayin’.”
Suddenly the idea of fishing at all seemed ridiculous. John’s smile faded as he surveyed the overcast skies and felt a light, steady breeze across his cheeks. Moving at twelve knots, he couldn’t tell how much of what he felt was the wind blowing and how much was attributable to relative wind due to the boat’s motion. The sea was littered with whitecaps. They were small and didn’t alarm him so he turned his attention to the dark, small clouds on the southern horizon.
“When do you expect us to be back at port?” John asked. The captain sensed his concern.
“I’ll get us back by 7:30 or so. Where you staying?”
“We rented a beach house on the southern tip of the island. We chartered a plane down here that’s supposed to pick us up on Sunday, but I’ll need to call them if we need to leave early. If I call tonight they may be able to get here by late tomorrow afternoon.”
“Won’t be no time for that. If Isabel is a coming this way like they say, it’ll be here tomorrow night. Rain will be coming hard tomorrow morning and we’ll lose power pretty fast. Always do. They’ll seal the island off by morning. Irene knocked out power for a week.” The captain and John stood and looked over the port side of the boat at the southern horizon. The captain smiled and placed his hand on John’s shoulder. “Stay inside and batten down the hatches. Just some wind and rain, man, that’s all.”
As the captain turned to leave John stared at the sky in troubled thought. Something more than the weather bothered him. He spun around quickly before the captain left. “Captain,” John began and then hesitated. “Is there a hospital on the island, or a clinic?”
The captain surveyed John for a moment. “Getting sea sick, are you? We might be able to give you a pill for that but closest hospital is in Nassau, 200 miles away. You won’t be getting there anytime soon if Isabel’s coming this way.”
***
By the time the island taxi pulled up to the beach house at 8:30 p.m. the wind had picked up briskly. John estimated that it was steady at thirty miles per hour, probably gusting at forty even though the driver had said the hurricane wouldn’t arrive until the following night. But he had confirmed that it would arrive, at least according to the hurricane prediction models. Same path as Irene, just as the captain had said, taking it squarely over the length of the Bahamas. Even though he was furious at the weather forecasters who had predicted that the hurricane would most likely steer south of Florida and into the gulf, maybe hitting Florida’s panhandle, John was even more furious at himself. He knew that he should have known better than to go to a remote island without a contingency plan. Everything in his business life revolved around contingency plans. Back-ups, redundant servers and facilities, action plans if revenue didn’t materialize, expansion plans if they did. For the past three hours he had labored under dreadful thoughts. Thoughts he didn’t want to acknowledge, but had to. What if the hurricane hits us directly in this little house on the beach. Where do we go? The captain and the taxi driver assured him that they would be fine in their home, which was situated far enough back from the water to avoid any storm surge, but it did little now to assuage his fears.
“You won’t have any power or telephones,” the driver had said, “but you’ll get by. Everyone made it through all right with Irene and that split down the middle of the islands.”
But that wasn’t what was bothering John, aching at his insides. What if Rose was ill or took a turn for the worse? That thought gnawed at him so much he was becoming sick himself. Time was moving so slowly for him, minutes dragging and cursing him with dreadful thoughts that could only be relieved once he saw that she was all right and held her in his arms.
John paid the driver and stepped out of the taxi. Wind from the southeast stung his face with grains of sand as he walked up the front steps. As he reached for the doorknob in the darkness he saw a mass lying on the wicker sofa to his left. His heart sank as he went to Rose, partially covered with a blanket, but lying there in the open as the sand pelted her cheeks. “Rose!” John fell to his knees in front of the sofa and picked up her head. “Rose!”
With great strain she opened her eyes, barely, groggily, as if she had taken sleep medication, but John knew she wouldn’t have. He stood and slid his arms underneath her and picked her up, holding her close to him. Rose’s body draped over his arms and offered no resistance, no support. Her arms lay limp by her side in his own arms as he walked to the door, using his body to shield Rose from the wind and sand. Turning the doorknob, John twisted his body to allow Rose’s head to carefully enter the opening first. In a panic his eyes darted around the strange home as he walked straight to the bedroom. Again, he turned sideways as he walked down the narrow hall to protect Rose’s head from hitting the wall. After navigating the doorway into the bedroom, John laid Rose onto the bed. A loud banging came from the living room and John raced back to close the door. He flipped on the light switch and silently thanked an unknown benefactor for the magic of electricity as he rushed back to the bedroom and turned on the bedside lamp.