Water and Fire - A Short Story

Part 9

I agreed to let him drive to the port. I’d been laughing too hard at him in his ski clothes to see or drive. I’d never seen so much red tartan in my life. He’d switched the ski pants for jeans, but the tartan hat and coat remained.

“I like tartan,” he told me with a wounded look. I wasn’t sure if he was serious or joking, but my levity had faded.

We paid our fares and headed down the jetty to the whale watching boat. I judged it to be a reasonable-sized vessel, about the same size as a male humpback whale. I wondered if we would encounter anything larger.

There were only a handful of people on the boat, presumably owing to the cold, damp and windy weather. The whales and I didn’t mind; Aidan was snug in his bright coat. The boat headed out of the inlet, toward the decommissioned whaling station. The vessel crew gave a commentary as we cut through the little waves, but I didn’t listen to it. I suspected I knew more of whales than any of them.

I stood in the bow of the boat, face to the wind, looking for the first sign of a blow. It had been many months since I’d seen a whale…and I saw it. A blow of hot condensed air, a back curving above the surface, the dorsal fin. "A humpback! There!” I shouted, pointing.

Aidan and the rest of the passengers crowded around me, scanning the water. I watched the patch of calm water between the waves disappear, before pointing again. “There.” The whale surfaced on cue. This time, its tail rose up behind it as it dived deep.

“Wow.” Aidan’s voice behind me was breathy and awed. I turned and smiled, before surveying the water again for another whale.

The whales surfaced and blew around the boat, to the murmured awe of the other passengers. I looked closely, but all I saw were males and juveniles, none of them as large as the boat. Under my breath, I started to sing, so quiet it was barely audible to my own acute hearing. The other passengers moved back inside as the boat started to move to another spot, but I stayed in the bow, repeating my song.

I heard her approach, but I wasn’t prepared for how close she surfaced. She spied above the surface, her face close beside the boat, her eye focused on me. I sang once more and she dipped below the water again.

I held tight to the rail at the bow as she breached beside the vessel, soaking me with spray as she twisted in the air and splashed down again. The boat rocked violently, but stayed afloat. A gust of wind chilled me to the bone. My hands were losing colour, but I was smiling. The other passengers moved out to the bow again and we all watched as the whale cow breached a little further away. I nodded my thanks to her and shivered in the wind, wishing I had thought to bring warmer clothing. I wondered if it was warmer in the water with the whale than in the wind on the boat. If only I could slip into the water unseen to find out.

Aidan was close behind me, but I didn’t mind his nearness. He blocked the wind from one direction, if nothing else. I heard him unzip his coat and wondered why he would do such a thing in this wind. The answer came as he enclosed me in tartan, his arms lightly around me.

I pulled away automatically, but stopped at the sound of his voice. Now he sounded in control. “You’re turning blue. You can share my coat or you can go inside and wrap up in the foil blanket in the boat’s first aid kit. If you stand out here much longer in your wet clothes, you’ll get hypothermia and I promise I’ll get you admitted to hospital as soon as the boat docks. Whatever you choose, I’m not going to let you freeze. I’m not a very good one, but I am a doctor.”

I could not be admitted to hospital as a patient. I refused to sit inside when the whales were out here. That left me one option that was less repugnant than I’d thought. I struggled out of my own dripping coat and dropped it on the deck. My sweater and shirt beneath it were only slightly damp. I sank deeper into Aidan’s coat, until my back touched his chest.

His breath tickled my ear as he laughed. “I expected you to take the first aid option inside.”

“The whales are out here,” I said.

The whale cow lifted her back high, followed by a tail wider than the boat, as she dived deep and headed out of the bay. I farewelled her with my eyes.

Aidan zipped up his coat again, this time with me inside. He was so warm. I was surprisingly comfortable in this strange man’s arms, though a contributing factor might have been how numb I felt from the freezing wind.

I didn’t sing again and all we saw for the remainder of the trip were smaller humpbacks, surfacing and blowing, as they had before. I didn’t mind. This was enough. Now I wanted to go back to shore and find some dry clothes. As if it had heard me, it seemed like no time at all before the boat was tying up at the jetty again. Aidan slid out of his coat and put it on me. He carried my wet coat as he extended a hand to help me out of the boat. I stumbled, clumsier than I could ever remember being before, as I found my feet and legs were numb. Somehow, with his help, I made it to the car. I sat in the passenger seat, almost too cold to shiver.

Aidan had to buckle up my seat belt, before asking me again, in concern, "Home or the hospital?”

“Home,” I replied as loudly as I could. “There’s nothing they can do for hypothermia at the hospital that you can’t do at home.”

“Right. Right,” Aidan told himself, as he drove off.