The Deep by Alma Katsu

Author:Alma Katsu
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

It is late. Annie stands over the surgical tray. Beyond the portholes, it’s still night but going as silvery as the row of neat metal instruments winking up at her.

She is supposed to be taking inventory before surgery but is so distracted that she cannot concentrate. To force her mind from wandering, she touches each instrument in turn—clamps, retractors, forceps, scalpels, lancets, trocars—as she goes down the checklist.

It is no use, however; her mind keeps skipping ahead to what will happen next. Mark will come around. This is just a phase, a disorientation. In any case, he will see that he needs her. He will need her to go with him to America to look for his daughter. He will need Annie’s calming influence, her good cheer. Too, he will need someone to vouch for him with the authorities, someone who knew him as Caroline Fletcher’s husband. And he will need a woman to help raise his daughter.

Too late, she realizes she has cut her hand. She wasn’t paying attention when she reached for one of the scalpels. The blade is so sharp that she didn’t feel it slice into her flesh, but she looks down and all she sees is shiny wet red. Blood streams down her hand, drips onto her skirt.

Her head floods with panic. It must be a bad cut for there to be so much blood. She will need stitches. She should go for a doctor, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She’d have to explain how it happened, admit she’d been daydreaming.

Holding up her hand to slow the flow, Annie runs to the bandage cabinet. She pulls one from a stack and knocks several others to the ground. They bounce and roll and unravel all over the place like balls of yarn. She curses under her breath, leans down to pick them up, realizes that, no, she should take care of her wound first, and starts to wrap up her hand—only to realize there is no cut.

No blood. Her hand is fine. Fine.

She squints and looks closer. Could it have healed? All by itself?

But there is no blood: not on her hand, not her sleeve or her skirt. Annie doesn’t understand. What could’ve happened? Was it a miracle—another miracle?

The floor of the operating room lurches up at her. She feels like she is falling. The lights are bright, too bright. What is happening to her?

Annie . . .

Someone is calling her. A voice that cannot be heard.

Fear floods Annie’s mouth, sour.

You didn’t think you could hide from me forever, did you?

It is the sea. The sea has spoken to her since she was a girl child standing on the beaches of Ballintoy, the gray foamy water clawing at her bare feet.

She goes cold, so cold.

I’ve come for what’s mine. For what you owe me. You remember, don’t you?

There is no fighting the ocean. Only a fool would try.

In her panic, she recalls the night Madeleine Astor tried to hold her down beneath the surface of the great ship’s pool.

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