Christian reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of water. He took Shy’s spot, uncapped the water and put it to her lips, saying: “Addie? Can you hear me? I need you to take a small sip of water if you can.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at Christian. She took a small sip and turned to Shy. “What happened?”
“You fainted,” Christian said. “We need to get food and water in both of you.”
Shy put his hand on her forehead. “You okay?”
“She needs rest,” Connor said. “Let’s get her into one of the bedrooms.”
Shy looked over his shoulder when he heard other people hurrying across the lobby toward them. “There are still plenty of open rooms on the first floor,” someone said.
In a few seconds, a small crowd of people had converged around Shy, Addie and Christian—everyone shouting advice and asking how they’d made it out of the ocean alive. Shy looked up at all of them, recognizing a few of the faces from the cruise ship.
And then, near the back of the group, he saw the face he’d been imagining since the moment the ship went down and he’d found himself alone in the dark ocean.
Carmen.
43
Under the Gazebo
Shy, Christian and a few others, including both researchers, helped get Addie into the closest unclaimed room, 117, and laid her on the perfectly made up king-sized bed.
“She needs air,” someone said.
“And something to eat,” another person said. “Look at her.”
Shy watched them all swarming around Addie’s bed, but he kept checking the door, too. His heart pounding. Carmen hadn’t come into the room yet. She had to be waiting for him in the lobby.
“She’ll be able to rest all the way back to California,” one of the researchers said.
An older woman told someone to go get Addie a change of clothes.
“Is my dad here?” Addie mumbled.
“Who’s your dad?” the older woman asked.
“Jim Miller. He’s tall with gray hair. He worked on the island.”
“You rest for now, honey,” the woman said. “I’ll go ask around, see what I can find out.”
The two researchers backed away from the bed and left the room after the woman.
Shy and Christian remained with one other woman as everyone else began filing out. Christian looked into Addie’s eyes and ears with a tiny doctor flashlight, then he listened to her heart with a stethoscope. Shy watched, torn between making sure Addie was okay and going in search of Carmen.
“Shy?” Addie said, looking up from the bed.
“I’m here,” he answered.
She let her head fall back onto the pillow. “God, I don’t even know what happened to me.”
“You’ve been on the ocean for five days,” Christian said. “Both of you.” He turned to the woman next to him. “Mary, would you go to the restaurant and get some bottles of water and fruit.”
“Right away,” she said, and she hurried out of the room.
“You need to rest, too,” Christian said to Shy. “Go to one eighteen, across the hall. I’ll come see you next.”
“Okay,” Shy told him, but there was no way he was doing anything until he saw Carmen. “You feeling a little better?” he asked Addie, squeezing her foot.
“I think so,” she said.
Shy nodded as Christian began asking her questions.
When two women came in carrying a change of clothes for Addie, Shy slipped out of the room.
The second he walked into the lobby he spotted Carmen, who motioned for him to follow her.
As he moved across the marble floor, though, toward the doors, a few other survivors from the cruise ship approached him. Word had gotten out that he and Addie had been rescued, and they marveled at how long Shy had survived at sea.
Shy smiled and nodded at them all, but he hardly heard a word they were saying. He was too anxious to talk to Carmen, who was now standing in front of the hotel doors, waiting for him.
“Make sure you’re in the restaurant at one-thirty,” a man said. “They’re going to tell us when we can expect to be home.”
“I’ll be there,” Shy said, waving as he moved past the group.
His legs were wobbly as he followed Carmen outside the hotel and along the cobblestone path. For some reason she continued walking a few paces in front of him, like she didn’t want to start talking until they were completely alone.
They moved around the entire exterior of the hotel. Puddles everywhere, especially out back. Seaweed strung through some of the manicured bushes like tinsel. A woman wearing an oversized Raiders jersey called to him from across the lawn: “We heard about you! Thank God you were able to survive!”
“Thank you!” Shy shouted back.
They walked past others who greeted Shy the same way. Finally Carmen led him under a large gazebo where they were alone. She spun around and faced him, her head tilted a little to the side. “Shy,” she said, her face breaking into a big smile.
Just hearing her say his name sort of choked him up. “Carm,” he managed to say back.
She was wearing a plain white T-shirt he’d never seen her wear, baggy jeans and tennis shoes. She covered her mouth and her eyes got a little glassy, but there were no tears. Carmen was too tough for that. “Come here,” she said.
He moved toward her and she wrapped him in a tight hug, saying in a quiet voice: “I thought I lost you.”
Shy was so overcome with emotion he wanted to melt into her. He cupped the back of her head and held her against his chest, breathing in her hair. He was exhausted to the point that his knees were shaking, but he didn’t care. He was willing to stand like this forever.
She looked up at him. “I thought of you every single minute. I even tried praying.”
“I thought about you, too,” Shy told her.
Carmen reached up and grabbed Shy’s face in her hands, stared right into his eyes. “How’d you get rescued? It’s been five days. I almost lost hope.”
“Shoeshine,” Shy told her. “He found us out there in a sinking lifeboat.”
Carmen hugged him again.
Shy closed his eyes this time and concentrated on the feeling of her body against his. Being with Carmen again made it sink in that he’d made it to the other side. That he had a second chance.
When she pulled away from him this time, she said: “God, look how skinny you are, Shy. It’s like breaking my heart.”
“I only caught one fish the whole time,” he said.
She laughed a little and shook her head. “I never saw you as the life-skills type. Why do you think I was praying?”
“It was the sharks,” he told her. “For real. They scared away all my fish.”
“You smell, too,” Carmen said, grabbing him by the elbow. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Carmen led Shy back into the hotel and behind the reservation desk, where he picked out a change of clothes, and then she took him out back to the freshwater pool where she said everyone had been bathing.
“Go on,” Carmen said, turning away from him. “I’ll keep a look out so nobody tries to sneak a peek at your stuff.”
Shy slowly peeled off the damp clothes he’d been wearing for the past five days and grabbed one of the small hotel-style bars of soap lying beside the pool. Being rescued was a trip: one minute he’d be stressing about getting back home and finding his family, and the next minute he’d get a lump in his throat just looking at a bar of soap.
He dunked himself in the cool water and began lathering his hair and body, which felt incredible, as Carmen caught him up about her own lifeboat’s journey to the island and the island itself.