John Moss - Grave doubts

Morgan wasn’t. He released his grip from their convoluted embrace and, handing off his mouthpiece to Miranda, he sank down to examine the handcuffs around the women’s ankles. He made a futile attempt to break them free and felt in the darkness where blood from torn flesh seeped through Miranda’s wetsuit, warming his hand as he touched her, making him suddenly realize how achingly numb his fingers were, how close to being useless.

He drifted up, took back his reg, and handing Miranda his flashlight he squirmed around to release her gear. She and Rachel were jammed so closely together, and his icy fingers were so clumsy, he could only manage to remove her tank from the back of her BCD, which, when he released it, tumbled with an echoing clang against the steel walls and floor. He struggled to keep her from drifting upward and grasped one of her hands — the other was clutching his flashlight — and pushed it violently against his own chest straps. His fingers flashed white.

She understood, and while Rachel took her turn breathing, Miranda thrust her own fingers between her teeth and, pulling to and fro, peeled off her glove, then reached down and released Morgan’s straps. She grasped at his closest hand to warm it. He pulled away, but briefly pumped it against her breast in affirmation. When he dropped his mouthpiece and pulled the octopus mouthpiece away from her, leaving them all without air while he squirmed out of his gear, she was startled, confused, but trusting. Once freed, he handed her the primary mouthpiece and, taking a deep breath from the octopus, he gave it to her for Rachel, then holding on to Miranda with one hand and clasping his gear awkwardly between his knees, he detached his tank and regulator, took another breath from the mouthpiece she held to his lips, then swung around and secured his tank against the back of her BCD. He adjusted her gear and swung around to face her. She seemed overweighted from his heavier tank but when she moved to release her weight belt, he signalled negative and gave her BCD inflator a couple of bursts to increase her buoyancy. He took another long, deep breath from the proffered reg, while clasping her bared hand for a moment in his icy grasp. The gnawing pain reassured him; the pressure of his touch made her feel like a woman blessed.

Morgan let go, intending on searching for the discarded masks in the murk swirling beneath them, and plummeted into the bulkhead below, careening against planes of steel coated with algae, thickly studded with zebra mussels, until he tumbled into Alexander Pope’s hovering corpse.

They needed masks and light. If somehow he could free them, it would be difficult to get out if they could see clearly, impossible if they couldn’t. He pulled the mask off the corpse and, reaching around blindly, he discovered one of the other masks tangled in the dead man’s floating limbs. Sliding sideways he grabbed at Miranda’s errant flashlight and looped the lanyard around his wrist. He pushed away with oxygen deprivation tearing at his lungs, and kicked upwards but was pinioned against the steel. His weights! His fingers refused to close around his weight-belt release. Grasping at Miranda and Rachel, he hauled himself upward hand over hand until he reached the air that Miranda held out for him. He drew in a deep breath and could taste her blood, or his own, in the mouthpiece. With a single tug she released his weights. The reverberations as they crashed against steel sent shivers of loneliness through both of them.

Once the masks were secure, Miranda blew hers clear of water. Rachel left hers flooded but continued regular breathing, holding the octopus mouthpiece between clenched teeth. Morgan secured Miranda’s flashlight around her wrist, took two deep breaths from the principal reg, then pressed the mouthpiece firmly between her lips, and with a quick parting squeeze on her arm he swam down and over to the door, swimming fiercely but without thrashing. If he could get outside through the hole in the hull, he was certain that he would be able to reach the surface without air.

Miranda succumbed briefly to panic when she realized what Morgan was doing. She stiffened, then slowly relaxed, and breathed deeply, calmly, for his sake as much as her own. Her one hand was still gloveless and it ached; she tried to tuck it between her legs. She tried to pee into the wetsuit and succeeded a little, but not enough to warm her hand. Morgan, one way or another, he would be back. Breathing as shallowly as she could, she struggled to comprehend what was happening. Being captive in a watery grave seemed the inevitable consequence of preceding events, yet it made no sense. Morgan finding her seemed inevitable, as well. She felt a surge of warmth.

Morgan’s lungs knotted with pain as he emerged through the breach in the hull into the pellucid water surrounding the ship. He began to exhale a steady stream of bubbles as he kicked slowly to the light, struggling desperately to control his rate of ascent, knowing instinctively that expanding air in his lungs had to be released. He was no use to Miranda if he lost consciousness or succumbed to an embolism or the bends.

As he struggled through the long ascent toward the boats overhead, his mind swarmed with imagery: fragments of banal conversation with Miranda over a thousand coffees, the headless embrace, the radiant serenity of the face when they opened the tomb, the pilgrims like wraiths in the night, the revealed frescoes on the walls of the church. The surface shimmered far overhead. Images turned into walls of black. He kicked with a great surge and in an explosion he breached, heaving for air, and thrashed in the water until Peter Singh’s arm appeared within reach, then he collapsed into himself, too exhausted to negotiate the ladder. There was no OPP boat, no Coast Guard rescue vessel, only tourist boats in the far, distant offing.

Peter Singh was distraught as he struggled to haul Morgan up onto the dive deck of the trawler. “Where is your tank? Where is Miranda? What is happening down there?”

“Where’s our backup? We need air!” Morgan doubled over to force his diaphragm against his lungs, then straightened abruptly, gasping, twisting his guts into raw knots of pain. “We need air,” he repeated. “How long was I down?”

“There are no air cylinders on the other boat. They did not bring extra. Thirty-five or forty minutes, perhaps.”

“Which?”

“I don’t know. Forty.”

“Can you see anyone coming?”

“Maybe over there. They made the same mistake we did and went the wrong way. Who is down there? Is Miranda okay?”

“No, she’s bloody not. Find the tool kit — there must be a tool box.” As he tried to suppress nausea, Morgan began to straighten and hunch over with slow deliberation, forcing his wracked body into a crude sort of bellows, pumping air into his system. Peter clambered awkwardly about the trawler, tearing open hatches and lockers, and came up with nothing. He climbed into the commandeered fishing boat and found a red tool box.

“Open it. Are there snips, shears, something to cut steel?”

Morgan windmilled his arms, trying to force blood back into his fingers. The excruciating pain was a good sign.

Peter sorted frantically through the box and came up with a rusted pair of cable cutters.

“Good man!” Morgan yelled. “Bring them here.”

As he rushed back, Peter stumbled. The cutters skittered across the deck. Morgan lunged for them from the dive platform, tried to wrap his unbending fingers around the blades as they clattered against the gunnel, spontaneously releasing his grasp as they cut open his palm, and watched them slip through the scuppers into the water.

He scrambled to his feet, heaving to take in as much air as he could, and dove after them, sliding his mask into place in mid-air. He kicked savagely to keep the cutters in sight and watched them clank against the hull directly below and slide down past the hole in the wreck’s side to the rocky bottom. He could feel his ears throb like bolts of hot steel hammering into his head, he continued his descent, his eyes fixed on the small twist of shadow where the cutters had come to rest. His ears popped explosively, and his vision blurred from the pain, then his eyes came back into focus. He was past the dark opening in the hull. He reached down and managed to clutch the cutters between his frozen hands.