Chapter 2: Blood in the Surf
913 Words
The man screamed.
Idris flinched, but he did not let go.
Blood was hotter than he expected. That was the first stupid thought that came to him. Hot against his palms. Slippery. Alive one moment and leaving the body the next.
"Harder," the woman said.
"I am pushing hard."
"Then push harder."
He did.
The man's scream broke into a hoarse groan. His lips had turned a faint blue-grey and his eyes kept rolling back. A long tear ran through his trousers. Beneath it, his thigh was open in a way Idris did not let himself look at for long.
Metal had done that.
Jagged metal, sharp and fast.
The woman shifted beside him, shrugging out of the soaked overshirt clinging to her shoulders. She was younger than he had first thought, late twenties perhaps. Wet red hair clung in dark ropes to her cheeks and neck. A cut above her eyebrow bled down her temple and sand stuck to one side of her face.
Even like that, she was striking.
Idris noticed and immediately felt guilty for noticing.
Not delicate. Not helpless. Her soaked clothes showed a strong, healthy figure, but it was her hands that held his attention. They were bloodied, steady and already twisting the overshirt into a thick strip.
"You know first aid?" he asked.
"Enough."
That was not comforting.
It was still better than nothing.
"What's his name?"
"I don't know. He was caught on something. I dragged him as far as I could."
There was something sharp under the words. Not pride. Frustration. She had done everything she could and the wound was still trying to take him.
Idris leaned closer to the man's face.
"Mate. Can you hear me?"
The man groaned.
"Look at me. What's your name?"
No answer.
The woman slapped his cheek lightly. "Stay awake. Tell us your name."
His lips moved.
"Peter," he whispered.
"Good," Idris said. "Peter, listen to me. You are on the beach. You are alive. Keep looking at me."
Peter tried, but his eyes drifted.
The woman wrapped the twisted shirt above the wound and pulled hard. Fresh blood soaked through almost immediately.
"It's not enough," she said.
Idris looked around.
The beach had begun to wake in pieces. A young man stumbled along the sand with one arm hanging strangely. An older woman sat beside a broken suitcase, rocking with both hands pressed to her ears. Two men dragged someone out of the foam. A blonde woman held a crying child against her chest.
And there were bodies.
Idris saw three before he forced himself to stop counting.
Not now.
The living first.
"Use my belt," he said.
The woman looked at him. "A belt will not work properly as a tourniquet."
"I know. But we need pressure above the wound and we have nothing else."
She hesitated for less than a second, then reached for him.
It should have been awkward, a stranger's hands at his waist, but nothing about the moment had room for embarrassment. Idris kept both palms pressed into the torn thigh while she pulled the belt free, looped it above the wound and shoved the folded shirt beneath it.
"It needs to be wider," she said. "And tighter than this."
"Use that." Idris nodded towards a short piece of driftwood near his knee. "Twist if you can."
She jammed the driftwood through the loop and began turning it.
Peter screamed.
Then he passed out.
The woman froze.
For the first time, her hands trembled.
"Keep going," Idris said.
"This could damage his leg."
"If he keeps bleeding like this, he won't have a leg to damage."
Her jaw tightened. She twisted again.
The belt bit down over the folded cloth. It was ugly, uneven and nowhere near proper equipment, but the bleeding slowed.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
Enough for Idris to breathe.
The woman sat back on her heels, staring at her blood-covered hands as if they had betrayed her by not being enough.
Idris flexed his fingers. They were cramped from pressure. Red filled the lines of his palms.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She blinked as if the question had travelled from very far away.
"Maya."
"Idris."
Her eyes flicked to him properly for the first time. Brown eyes. Sharp, frightened and angry at the same time. With the red hair, the blood and the hard set of her mouth, she looked less like someone waiting to be rescued and more like someone furious that the world had dared to fall apart while she was still using both hands to hold it together.
"We need clean cloth," she said. "Water. Shade. Something to keep him still."
"We'll get it."
"Will we?"
Idris looked along the beach.
No crew. No lifeboat. No rescue horn. No one in a uniform telling them where to stand, what to do or how long to wait.
Just strangers on an island.
He had no right to promise anything.
There was no point lying to a woman with blood on her hands.
"We'll try," he said.
Maya held his gaze for half a second longer than comfort allowed.
Not trust.
Not yet.
But she heard the honesty in it. He saw that much.
Behind them, the surf hissed over the sand and touched Peter's boot.
Maya looked down.
"The tide," she said.
Idris followed her gaze.
The next wave reached farther.
Peter was still too close to the water.
So were the living.
So were the dead.
- Writer
