Two days later

“The doctor said to just take it very, very easy. Don’t mention it every second OK? Just leave it be. She’ll let us know when she’s ready to talk about it. I know how you can be.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, what do you mean how I can be? She’s not an idiot, she’s going to notice one way or another, don’t you think?”

“You see, that’s what I mean, don’t be so callous.”

“Fine, I already said I won’t, can you drop it? She needs us right now, let’s just try and keep our cool, OK?”

“Fine.”

The voices were familiar to me but it took me a long while to place them: my mother and sister, in one of their usual bickering sessions.

I peeled my eyes open and all at once a million facts burst into my mind, which up until that moment had been blank: I was in the hospital, they had given me something and told me how they would need to operate. My mother and sister had been there, drifting in and out of my awareness so that I wasn’t quite sure if they were really there or only my feverish memories.

I was back on shore. I was in a crisp hospital bed, the sheets dry and stiff against my skin. I was alive. I was also in immense pain. But I was now waking up, and quickly. I sat up in bed with such force it made my head spin. I saw them both turn to gawk at me.

“Ellie! Good lord, child, you’ll yank your drip out!”

My mother came rushing over to me and helped me sit upright. I swallowed down hard to rid myself of a weird ball of nausea at the back of my throat. Suddenly, I remembered my mission.

“The others,” I slurred. “Charlie and Carl and Livvy and …I have to...”

They both exchanged worried glances as I struggled to get my tongue to work properly.

“Yes, honey, they sent a rescue party back to Santa Majella the second they could,” my mother said carefully, her hands pausing over my pillows as she fluffed them. My sister was already on her way out the room, presumably to go and call the doctor.

“OK, sweetie, there you go. The most important thing to do now is just rest, and heal, OK?”

I felt confused and irritated. I didn’t like the way reality was only coming back to me in stingy patches. I didn’t like the way she looked down at me, barely concealing the pity in her face. She had seen us off at the port a few days ago, but at the same time it felt as though I hadn’t seen her in a lifetime.

“Where’s Anthony?” I managed to say.

She frowned and busied herself with tucking me in, even though the blankets were fine. I asked her again. My sister Angela returned and bought a man in a doctor’s coat and blue check shirt with her. Mom looked relieved.

“Ms. Elinor King, so happy to see you’re awake and with us,” said a large, imposing man, blustering over and immediately examining me. He wasted no time looking into my eyes, then he touched the soft underside of my jaw and examined my wrists for something. I was too weak to ask what he was doing, or resist, even though I was beginning to get tired of feeling like people were tiptoeing around me.

“Doctor, where is my… where is Anthony?” I asked. He gave me the same frown my mother did. I couldn’t summon energy to get hysterical, but it was starting to become obvious that there was bad news, and that it was being deliberately kept from me. The thought alone made something panicky grow at the base of my throat again.

“Please just tell me what’s going on,” I sobbed, and my head panged with my raising my voice. The doctor perched himself seriously on the edge of the bed, and clasped his hands together. My mother and sister hovered by the shut door, looking like they were attending a funeral.

Fuck, I hated this.

“Elinor, you’ve been through quite a lot these last few days. Now, you were shipwrecked on a tiny and uninhabited island in the Pacific called Santa Majella. Your cruise ship sank but rescue missions managed to save most of the passengers. Though they did a scan of the area for days, for some reason they never discovered anyone on your island, and you were presumed dead along with dozens of others.” He spoke clearly and dispassionately, like he was reading from a textbook.

“The gentleman who saved you told us about the other four remaining on the island, and the emergency services were dispatched to retrieve them.” Here he paused and looked like he was choosing his next words carefully. “You were very ill, Ellie. The injury to your foot was serious, and caused a loss of blood supply to the area which deprived that tissue of oxygen. We’ve given you antibiotics but you needed emergency surgery to remove the affected tissue…”

There it was again. The panicky lurch at the back of my throat. I hurriedly threw off the blanket covering me to look at my foot, and cried out in horror at what I saw. Or didn’t see.

“Now, Ellie, try not to panic, we needed to act fast as the infection was spreading very rapidly and could have traveled to your heart…”

His words disappeared as I tried to understand what I was looking at.

My foot.

It was gone.

A thick padding of bandages was bound tightly around it, but it was as clear as it was shocking: the place where my foot used to be was now empty. Just fresh air in the place that should have been my foot. A whole lot of nothing. Completely gone. Missing.

I couldn’t even sob. I’m not sure what happened in those brief moments afterwards, but the doctor must have rushed to give me a tranquilizer and as I collapsed back down onto my pillows, I could see the appalled faces of my mother and sister, their hands to their mouths.

It couldn’t be happening. I had just hurt myself. It was all just a mistake. They had stolen part of my body and this was all just a big, sick, morbid mistake, a joke…

Some traumas are so extreme that they can only be taken in pieces. Some tragedies are so big they need to be broken into smaller tragedies and swallowed one chunk at a time, because at full size the human body and mind simply cannot digest it all.

Over the next few hours, I descended far into a strange pit. I was asleep, drugged up heavily, and would wake up for a moment, confront that bizarre thought again, and then pass out again from the sheer improbability of it all. No foot? How could that possibly be?

The next time I woke and encountered the same nasty, immovable fact, it felt duller than the time before. It took me hours, the better part of a day to look at the nasty fact square on and realize it wasn’t going anywhere. This really was my life now. They had amputated my foot. And it couldn’t be put back on again.

Numb, I somehow found my way through those hours. My mother and sister flitted in and out like angels of death; the doctor came, with medicines and platitudes. The light in the room changed from bright and fresh to dimmer, until the fluorescent lights were turned on and the sickening smells of food wafted in and out of consciousness.

I don’t know how long it was before I could sit up, clear headed, and take a look down at my mutilated body again. Shaking hands pulled off the thin, scratchy bedding. The stump was as I left it. Hideously asymmetrical with my other foot, which now seemed like some kind of mercy. I touched the bandages and found them cold and strange. My brain told me that the sore flesh was still there, even though my eyes gave proof that I no longer had a foot to feel, pain or otherwise.

The sensation was too strange. Lump in my throat, I quickly covered myself back up again and tried to think. This was OK. I could do this. My mind raced with potential futures for myself. All my thoughts seemed lopsided and leaning. What the hell was I going to do with one foot? My numbness started to feel like a protective blanket, and when the pain got too much, I happily retreated inside it. I couldn’t think about this. Not now. I turned on the TV.

I nearly laughed out loud when I saw what was on the screen.

Me.

I turned up the volume and tried to piece together the news segment that I was watching. Footage of unassuming sea water was cut with photos of the front of a hospital and back again to a groomed woman in a studio.

“Onto news about Hurricane Maude now, and confusion around the number of actual dead and injured remains. Authorities have now claimed that last week’s four separate rescue missions sent to Santa Majella revealed no signs of survivors, raising fears that still others may have been missed and stranded at sea. The unnamed pair rescued by leisure yacht Esprit are in critical condition and receiving medical care at Long beach Memorial Hospital. First responders have yet to make a statement about other survivors remaining on the island, but ABC7’s correspondent will stay with the story.”

The little icon in the lower right of the screen was a cartoon coconut palm on an island. The word ‘Stranded’ blazed across the bottom of the screen as the woman shifted in her chair and switched to her next story.

I flicked the off button.

It was a lost at sea story, but it was real, and it was happening to me. They knew about the other four on the island. Were they here in this hospital with me? A million thoughts knocked through my mind.

Where was Anthony? Was Todd OK? What did they even do with my foot, once they took it off!? What day was it? Do you get a refund if the ship sinks? Had I even bought insurance? When last did I eat? If I fell asleep again would I wake up with some other part of me removed?

Another day may have passed, each time with me trying to stomach a little more of the bizarre set of circumstances that had suddenly become my life. It was like walking into very cold water an inch at a time, your whole body trying to pull up and away from it with every step in. I lost track of day or night. But at some point the doctor returned and sat on the edge of my bed again.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” he said eventually, and the words were empty and completely meaningless, like something said in another language.

“A hurricane of that magnitude is rare for this neck of the woods. But they say the vessel had already drifted far enough off course that it caught the brunt of it before the storm broke land. It really is remarkable, how unlucky you were in all this.”

It seemed like an overly personal conversation to be having. I said nothing and hoped he’d just talk about my catheter or send a nurse in to change my dressings.

“Now, Elinor, it’s time we had a frankly unpleasant conversation about a few things. I know you’ve asked after your fiancé. I know you must be sick with worry. The fact is, though, that when the emergency squad arrived at the island, he was already in a very serious condition…”

Anthony’s face popped into my mind’s eye.

I thought of how carefully he’d ironed and folded his shirts before we left. How he double and triple checked our itinerary, and how he had planned everything in his life, and mine, with exactly the same obsession. I thought of his pale legs getting burnt in the sun, and the way he looked at me when he keeled over after Charlie stabbed him. I couldn’t stop a half dozen stinging tears from rolling their way down my cheeks.

“He was suffering from acute alcohol poisoning, Elinor. His liver was failing. It’s not easy for me to be the one to tell you this, but he didn’t make it back to the hospital in time. He passed away on the trip back to land.”

The air around my ears whined and crackled. I couldn’t swallow. I suddenly felt woozy. The doctor placed one firm hand on my arm and tried to steady me, and I instinctively clasped back.

“He …he’s dead?”

The doctor’s crestfallen face was his only answer. He closed a large hand over mine and gave a consolatory tap.

“He …you say his liver?” I sputtered. I was trying desperately to stop myself from crying, and this was all I could think of: asking for details.

“He had a blood alcohol level of 0.5. It was astronomical. At certain high levels the gag reflex is compromised and the body is unable to throw up anymore. And his wound…”

“Charlie!” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“He had a stab wound,” I said and tried to blink through my tears and focus on his face. The doctor frowned deeply.

“Yes, well, the police are looking into that matter, and it’s not for me to pass comment on that. His autopsy showed acute liver failure. The other matter is being dealt with. Now I realize this is a terribly emotional time so please don’t hesitate to--”

“So it was the alcohol? The reason he’s dead is because of the alcohol?” I said. I could hear my voice getting louder. He looked at me a little alarmed.

“Well, yes. He must not have realized the damage he was doing. He was severely dehydrated. In any case, Ms. King, I must be going and--”

“It wasn’t Charlie’s fault then,” I said. And not mine, I thought silently.

“Well, I won’t say that having a stab wound helped, but it was largely superficial. I realize this can be hard to hear but whatever happened on that island, Ms. Charlie Beaufort is not to blame for your fiance’s death…”

I stared at him. I knew what he was thinking. A sordid lover’s quarrel. A lethal fight. And now, the jealous fiancé, seeking revenge for her murdered partner. I said nothing. It was easier to let him believe that than the real reason I was crying right now.

He rose and made for the door, giving me one last final pat on the arm.

“Your mother and sister are on their way,” he said, and left.

The room was quiet, waiting for me to fill it up again with something. Would I cry? Would I flop down onto the bed and sob into the pillows? Or I would I sit here for a moment longer, staring numbly at the wall, waiting for my emotions to catch up with me?