Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel

Chapter Fourteen

THEO STEADIED HIMSELF AS A monster wave crashed over the bow of the Val Jane. He’d grown up on sailboats and been out on more than a few lobster boats. He’d experienced summer squalls, but never anything like this. The big fiberglass hull pitched into another trough, and an exhilarating rush of adrenaline surged through him. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt totally alive.

The lobster boat reared up on the swell, hung there for a moment, then plunged again. Even in the boat’s heavy orange Grundens foul weather gear, he was bone-deep cold. Salt water trickled down his neck, and every exposed patch of his skin was wet and numb, but the shelter of the pilothouse didn’t tempt him. He wanted to live this. Gulp it in. Sop it up. He needed this pump of his pulses, this rip of his senses.

Another mass of water towered before them. The Coast Guard had radioed that the missing fishing trawler, the Shamrock, had lost power after its engine flooded, and that there were two men aboard. Neither would last long if they were in the water, not with these frigid ocean temperatures. Even survival suits wouldn’t protect them. Theo mentally reviewed everything he knew about treating hypothermia.

He’d backed into EMT training while he was researching The Sanitarium. The idea of being able to work in crisis situations stimulated his writer’s imagination and eased his growing sense of suffocation. He’d begun his training over Kenley’s objections.

“You need to spend your time with me!”

After he was certified, he’d volunteered to work in Philly’s Center City, where he’d dealt with everything from tourists’ broken bones and joggers’ heart attacks to inline skating injuries and dog bites. He’d driven to New York during the hurricane that had hit the city so hard to help evacuate Manhattan’s VA hospital and a Queens nursing home. One thing he’d never done, though, was treat men who’d been fished out of the North Atlantic in the dead of winter. He hoped that it wasn’t already too late.

The Val Jane came upon the Shamrock suddenly. The trawler was barely afloat, listing heavily toward starboard and pitching on the ocean like an empty plastic water bottle. One man clung to the gunwale. Theo couldn’t see the other.

He heard the grind of the diesel engine as Ed worked the Val Jane closer, even as the powerful waves tried to drive the boats apart. Darren and Jim Garcia, the other crew member Ed had chosen for tonight’s mission, struggled on the icy deck in their efforts to secure the sinking fishing trawler to the Val Jane. Like Theo, they both wore life jackets over their foul weather gear.

Theo caught sight of the panicked face of the man barely holding on to the gunwale, then glimpsed a second crewmember, who was motionless and tangled in the lines. Darren was beginning to tie a safety line around his own waist so he could board the sinking boat. Theo scrambled toward him and pulled the line away.

“What are you doing?” Darren shouted above the noise of the engine.

“I need the exercise!” Theo yelled back, and he began wrapping the rope around his own waist.

“Are you out of your—”

But Theo was already tying the knot, and instead of wasting time arguing, Darren lashed the free end around a deck cleat. Reluctantly, he handed over his knife to Theo. “Don’t make us rescue you, too,” he growled.

“Not a chance,” Theo said, cocky as hell, an emotion he was far from feeling. The truth was, who’d be hurt if he didn’t make it out of this? His old man. A few friends. They’d all get over it. And Annie?

Annie would celebrate with a bottle of champagne.

Except she wouldn’t. That was the problem with her. She wasn’t smart about people. He hoped like hell she’d gone to Harp House like he’d told her to. If she was carrying his baby—

He couldn’t afford this kind of distraction. The Shamrock was sinking. Any minute now, they’d have to cast off or they’d endanger the Val Jane. As he gazed across the gap between the two boats, he hoped like hell he was back on board before that happened.

He studied the waves, waited for his opportunity, and took a leap of faith. Somehow he managed to bridge the roiling gap between the two vessels and scramble onto the Shamrock’s slick, half-submerged hull. The fisherman clinging to the gunwale had just enough strength to reach out one arm. “My son . . .” he gasped.

Theo gazed down into the cockpit. The kid trapped there was maybe sixteen and unconscious. Theo focused on the older man first. Signaling to Darren, he helped lift the man high enough so Darren and Jim could grab him and pull him aboard the Val Jane. The fisherman’s lips were blue, and he needed tending right away, but Theo had to free the kid first.

He eased into the cockpit, his rubber boots sloshing in seawater. The boy’s eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving. With the boat sinking, Theo didn’t waste time trying to find a pulse. There was one basic rule in dealing with extreme hypothermia. Nobody is dead until they’re warm and dead.

Bracing himself, he cut through the tangled lines binding the kid’s legs while he gripped the boy’s survival jacket. He’d be damned if he freed him only to have his body wash overboard.

Jim and Darren wrestled with the boat hooks, doing their best to keep the two vessels close. Theo hoisted the boy’s deadweight up onto the hull. A wave crashed over his head, blinding him. He held on to the boy with all his strength and blinked his vision clear only to be hit again. Finally, Darren and Jim could reach out far enough to pull the boy aboard the Val Jane.

Moments later, Theo collapsed on the Val Jane’s deck himself, but every tick of the clock brought these men closer to death, and he immediately struggled back to his feet. While Jim and Ed dealt with the sinking trawler, Darren helped him get the men into the cabin.

Unlike the kid, who was barely old enough to shave, the older man had a full beard and the weathered skin of someone who had spent much of his life outdoors. He’d begun to shiver, a good sign. “My son . . .”

“I’ll take care of him,” Theo said, hoping like hell the Coast Guard got to them soon. He kept an EMT first responder kit in his car, but it didn’t have the revival equipment these men needed.

In other circumstances, he’d have performed CPR on the kid, but that could be disastrous for someone with extreme hypothermia. Without stopping to get out of his own gear, he cut the men from their survival suits and wrapped them in dry blankets. He put together some makeshift heat packs and pressed them into the kid’s armpits. Finally, he caught a faint pulse.

By the time the Coast Guard cutter arrived, Theo had both men covered and warming with more heat packs. To his relief, the boy had begun to stir, while his father was managing short sentences.

Theo filled in the Coast Guard paramedic as she began starting IVs and giving the men warm, humidified oxygen. The boy’s eyes were open, and the father was trying to sit up. “You saved . . . his life. You saved my boy’s life.”

“Steady there,” Theo said, gently pushing the man back down. “Glad we could help.”


IT WAS NEARLY TWO IN the morning by the time he reached Harp House. Even with the Range Rover’s heater running at full blast, his teeth were chattering. Only a few weeks ago, he’d craved this kind of discomfort, but something had happened to him tonight, and now he yearned to be dry and warm. Still, he made himself stop at Moonraker Cottage. To his relief, the place was empty. Hard to believe she’d done as he asked.

Harder to believe where he found her.

Instead of being curled up in one of Harp House’s bedrooms, she was asleep on the couch in the turret, the lights on, a copy of History of Peregrine Island lying open on the floor at her side. She must have stopped at the cottage first, though, because she’d changed into her customary jeans and sweater. As tired as he was, the sight of those rambunctious curls looping across the old damask couch cushion made him begin to unwind.

She rolled to her side and blinked. He couldn’t help himself. “Honey, I’m home.”

She’d used his gray parka to cover herself, and it slipped to the carpet as she sat up. She pushed the hair out of her face. “Did you find the boat? What happened?”

He peeled off his jacket. “We got the men. The boat sank.”

She came to her feet, taking in his disheveled hair, the wet, dark V at the neck of his sweater, his soggy jeans. “You’re soaked.”

“I was a lot wetter a few hours ago.”

“And you’re shivering.”

“Hypothermia. Stage One. Best treatment is bare skin to bare skin.”

She ignored his lame attempt at humor, seeing his fatigue instead, and regarding him with real concern. “How about a nice warm shower? Get upstairs.”

He didn’t have the energy to argue.

She went ahead of him, and by the time he reached the top of the steps, she had his robe. She pushed him into the bathroom and turned on the shower, as if he were incapable of doing it himself. He wanted to tell her to leave him alone, that he didn’t need a mother. She shouldn’t be here. Waiting up for him. Trusting him. Her gullibility drove him crazy. At the same time, he wanted to thank her. The last person he could remember trying to take care of him was Regan.

“I’ll make you something hot to drink,” she said as she turned to leave.

“Whiskey.” Exactly the wrong thing to drink when you were as cold as he was, but maybe she didn’t know that.

She did. As he came out of the bathroom freshly showered and wrapped in his robe, she was waiting at the door with a mug of hot chocolate. He gazed into it with disgust. “This had better be spiked.”

“Not even a marshmallow. Why didn’t you tell me you’re an EMT?”

“I was afraid you’d ask for a free pelvic exam. Happens all the time.”

“You’re depraved.”

“Thank you.” He wandered to his bedroom, taking a sip of the hot chocolate on the way. It tasted great.

He stopped in the doorway. She’d turned down the freaking covers and even fluffed his damn pillows. He took another swig of chocolate and gazed back at her as she stood in the hallway. Her green sweater was wrinkled, and the cuff of one jean leg had caught on top of a sweat sock. She was rumpled and flushed, and she’d never looked sexier. “I’m still cold,” he said, even as he told himself to back off. “Really cold.”

She cocked her head. “Good try. I’m not getting into bed with you.”