“How can you stay on that thing?” Michael asked, as the ship rolled again.
“No better time!” Kazinski said, clutching the handrails and keeping up a brutal pace. “It’s like ridin’ a bronco!”
A small TV monitor overhead carried a live feed from the bow. Between the drops of water and foam that spattered the outside lens, Michael could see a grainy, black-and-white picture of the heaving sea, bobbing with slabs of ice.
“It’s getting rough out there,” Michael said.
Kazinski glanced up at the monitor without breaking stride. “Gonna get a lot worse before this one blows over—that’s for sure.”
Michael was glad Darryl wasn’t there to hear that. But personally, he was pleased. To have passed through the deadliest stretch of sea on the planet without encountering a storm would have been like going to Paris and missing the Eiffel Tower.
With his hands outstretched toward the walls of the corridor, he stumbled back toward his own cabin and opened the door. Darryl wasn’t in his bunk, but the door to the head was closed and Michael could hear him in there, throwing up everything he’d eaten.
Michael slumped onto his own bunk and lay back. Fasten your seat belts, he thought, it’s going to be a bumpy night. Kristin had often used that old Bette Davis line when they’d found themselves stranded somewhere precarious as the sun went down. What he would have given to have her there with him now, and to hear her say it just one more time.
The plywood door unstuck itself and Darryl, bent over double, staggered out and sprawled on his bunk. When he noticed Michael, he mumbled, “You don’t want to go in there. I missed.”
Michael would have been surprised if he hadn’t. “Did you really have to have seconds tonight?” he said, and Darryl, wearing only his long johns, gave him a wan smile.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You gonna be okay?”
The ship suddenly lurched again, so violently that Michael had to grab the bed frame bolted to the floor.
Darryl turned a deeper shade of green and closed his eyes.
Michael leaned back against the interior wall, still gripping the frame. Yes, it undoubtedly was going to be a rough night, but he wondered how long a storm like this could blow. Would it last for days? And how much worse would it get? How much worse, for that matter, could it get?
He picked up one of his Audubon books, but the boat was pitching and rolling far too much to read; just trying to focus made him nauseous. He stowed the book under the mattress. And the roar of the engine and propellers, there in the aft quarters of the ship, was louder than it had ever been. Darryl was lying as still as a mummy, but huffing and puffing.
“What’d you take?” Michael asked him. “Scopolamine?”
Darryl grunted yes.
“Anything else?”
He held up one limp wrist. It had an elastic strap, thicker than a rubber band, wrapped around it.
“What’s that?”
“Acupressure band. Supposed to help.”
Michael had never heard of that one, but it didn’t look like Darryl would swear by it, either.
“Want me to see if Charlotte’s got something stronger?” Michael asked.
“Don’t go out there,” Darryl whispered. “You’ll die.”
“I’m just going up the corridor. I’ll be right back.”
Michael waited for a momentary lull, then got to his feet and out the door. The long corridor, tilting to one side and then the other, looked like something out of a carnival fun house. The fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed. Charlotte’s cabin was about at midships, maybe a hundred feet away, but it was slow going, and Michael had to keep his feet broadly spaced.
He could see a telltale ribbon of light under her door, so he knew she was awake when he knocked.
“It’s Michael,” he called out. “I think Darryl could use some help.”
Charlotte opened the door in a quilted robe with a Chinese motif—green and gold dragons, breathing fire—and woolly slippers on her feet. Her braided hair was knotted in a ball atop her head. “Don’t tell me,” she said, already reaching for her black bag, “he’s seasick.”
By the time they got back to the cabin, Darryl had curled himself into a ball. He was so small—maybe five-foot-four, and skinny as a rail—that he looked like a kid with a tummy ache, waiting for his mom.
Charlotte sat down on the edge of the bed and asked him what he’d already taken. When he also showed her the acupressure band, she said, “No telling what some people will believe.”
She bustled in her bag and pulled out a syringe and bottle. “You ever heard of Phenytoin?”
“Same as Dilantin.”
“Ooh, you do know your drugs. Ever taken it?”
“Once, before a dive.”
“I hope not too soon before a dive.” She readied the syringe. “Any bad reaction?”
Darryl started to shake his head no, then thought better of shaking anything unnecessarily. “No,” he mumbled.