THIRTY-EIGHT
By the time Xan returned to Romance Island Resort, almost a week later, she already knew what the museum had said about the jellyfish that had nearly killed her: it was an irukandji species usually found in northern Queensland, which they'd never seen west of Darwin before. They'd sent an excited staff member up to drag a net through the lagoon, looking for more of them, but after two days of finding no jellyfish at all, the poor woman went back to Perth, complaining that the turtles had probably eaten them all.
Armed with all the advice she could stomach about stinger suits and proper first aid for box jellyfish stings, Xan flew home, wishing she'd never heard about the b****y irukandji, let alone been groped by one.
Shou helped her out of the helicopter like he thought
