After they amputated Cooper's right leg, just above the knee, they offered to send him home. They were very nice about it--it didn't sound like he'd have to pay anything for the rescue or the surgery and certainly not the airfare--but no one talked about rehabilitation or follow-up. Despite the heavy dose of drugs, which neatly tamped down his panic, he was aware enough to realize that, if he did request a return to the States, he would be on his own. Without medical insurance. And without a job.

He was quietly amazed that they thought him this stupid. As it is, he is still under their employ, even though he hasn't worked a single hour for them. "I can do my job," he told the Benefits Specialist from his hospital bed.

So they kept him. They had no choice.

He supposes that everybody on the island knows his story, how he was going to sail out here with Lillian, his finacée, and Bailey, her fourteen-year-old daughter, then get married at the Kwajalein chapel, Bailey serving as both their best man and flower girl.  No doubt rumors are flying now: where is Lillian? Where is her daughter?  If anybody would ask—but no one’s said much to him—Cooper would admit that Lillian refused to go at the last minute.  The details, how everything fell apart, were as stupid and initially inconsequential as the accident that brought him to this hospital bed. And now the ruin of his romance seems bound somehow to the ruin of his leg.

 Because Cooper’s leg was so far gone, the Army rescue squad flew him straight to Kwajalein, where he’s been contracted to join the re-entry programming team at The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site.  And so--ironically--he arrived at his destination ten days earlier than he had planned. Had he not already received top-security clearance for his assignment on Kwajalein, they would have put an armed guard at his bedside, maybe even detained him at the airport until they got preliminary clearance. As it was, they raced him to the island's modest hospital, where the island's young GP examined the wound, found it gangrenous, and called for an immediate amputation. An IV'd sedative was already leaking into Cooper's left arm when the GP told him, "I'm sorry, buddy, but this is a simple thing. It's your leg or your life."

At that moment, Cooper felt he was still rocking in the copter’s rescue harness. It was all happening so fast, he could hardly focus now on the surgeon's demand when the man pressed: "I need your decision, my friend."

Cooper nodded his understanding. Leg or life. Wasn’t there another choice?

As soon as he signed the waiver, the GP suited up, the orderly radio'd Honolulu Army Hospital for some virtual consultation, two nurses prepped Cooper, and that was that. While the GP talked to the Hono doctor, sometimes cracking a bad joke--"This time I'm a leg up on you, Chuck...."--Cooper swung in his dreamy drugged state and saw again everything from the nodding deck of his vintage Alberg 30.
           
* * *

When he wakes, he thinks he’s been in bed for only a day. In fact, it’s been three. The image of his damaged leg is still fresh in his mind, and for a moment, he bravely believes that all has been a dream. The acrid medicinal smell--alcohol and something stronger--and the sour taste of potent drugs at the back of his tongue warn him that he is not home, not dreaming, not the man he once was. He half expects to see Lillian at his bedside, holding vigil as he always thought she would when the worst happened. But he finds himself alone in a semi-private room, the drawn blinds pinstriped with tropical sunlight.

A strap as wide as a seatbelt holds him to the bed. Two IV bags are dripping into him, one on each arm. He calls for a nurse. His voice seems to rise from behind him, slurred and syrupy. When she arrives, he can’t read her name tag but can make out her face: she is a blondish thirty-something with a bunny-small nose, full cheeks, and pink-framed eye glasses that looked too big for her face. If she were in the States she’d live in a tract house by the interstate, he thinks. Maybe divorced with a kid or two and dreams of a Carnival Cruise vacation. She says her name iss Inez, though friends call her Peggy. He asks her what drugs he is on. Morphine, she tells him. Soon it will be Demerol, then maybe Tylox.

When she tells him he’s been in bed for three days, he says, "If I weren't so high, that bit of news would scare me." Then he asks her what he really wants to know: "How much did they take?"

Without a blink, she says, "Just above your knee, honey."

He wants to love her for that. He reaches for her hand. The moment hers touches his, he weeps, feeling childish, stupid, and hopeless all at once.

At last, as he surfaces for breath, he says, "It's going to take me a while--" But he can’t finish because there is too much to say. She nods her sympathy then tells him to rest.

"Soon you'll be allowed visitors," she says. “I think the cultural liaison wants to talk to you.”

Though he knows it’s foolish to hope for, Cooper imagines the room crowded with loved-ones--Lillian, his brother Teddy, his father, his mother, even the hateful Bailey.

The next day, the world seems steadier. Only one IV bag hangs at his bedside. And the strap is gone. He calls for Peggy, but another woman has taken her place:  she is shorter and broader, with a sad freckled face that seemed frozen at age 15.

"It's Peg's day off," she says. "I'm Nan. You're not going to fall in love with Peg, are you?"

"It's like imprinting," he says. "I'm attached to the first helpful face I see."

Nan smiles politely. “I hear you’ve been on a boat for months. And maybe you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You could say I’ve been out of touch.”

“Should I tell you all the news?”

She seems lonely, so he decides to humor her. “Is it good news?” he asks, attempting a smile.

“Nothing good happening these days,” she says brightly. “More than 500 of our boys dead in Iraq so far. Still nobody’s found any weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqis think we’re dominators, not liberators. I bet you didn’t hear about the guy they beheaded earlier this month.”

“Beheaded?”  Cooper pushes himself up a bit.  Did he hear right?  

“I’ve got the video at home,” she says eagerly. “It’s awful.”

“You’ve got a video of a beheading?”

“I didn’t take it!” she protests, holding up one latex-gloved hand as if to swear an oath. “It was all over the news.”

“Who beheaded who? And why?”

“It’s war, Mr. Davies. That kind of thing happens in war.”

“I know we’re at war,” he stammers, “but how in the hell—“

“It’s craziness,” she blurts. “The Arabs caught an American reporter and cut his head off because they’re angry. Everybody’s angry. Especially about that prison scandal. President Bush gave a speech yesterday and he mispronounced it three times. Even that made people angry.”

“Mispronounced what?”

“Abu Ghraib. Is that so hard to say? Go ahead, say it after me. Ah-boo Gray-b.”

“Abu Ghraib.”

“That’s right. You’re going to be a good patient.”  Then she winks at him. “I’ve got pictures of the Abu Ghraib atrocities—all of them--which I downloaded from the internet. If you want I’ll bring them in.”

Has the world slipped off its axis while he was sailing across the Pacific?

“No, thank you! Maybe I should nap,” he says, desperate to get away from her gleeful gloom.

“Okay, Mr. Davies.” She snaps off one glove, then the other. “You want me to read your cards to you?”

“I got cards?” Suddenly he is very hungry. "Someone I know?"

"Who do you know on Kwaj?" She says this in good humor, but it is a reality check. He can’t quite grasp that he is on an island 4250 miles west of California. He's been alone on his boat for so long, he has simply assumed that now, landed at last, he is within reach of anybody, everybody. 

Nan reads him the notes, the first from his co-workers, a card whose photo showed a group of orangutans piled onto a hospital bed: "What some people won't do to get out of work!" the caption reads. "We're thinking of you, Cooper. Keeping your seat warm in the quad. See you soon. Your A-team." Then a crowd of signatures. Nan reads every name. Eight in all. The other note--from the Colonel, the island's "governor"--is handwritten on impressive letterhead, The United States seal in one corner, the Kwajalein Missile Range seal in the other.  

"Dear Cooper, we are thankful that you are safe and sound,” the Colonel writes. “The doctor tells me you are going to be fine. We look forward to welcoming you into our little community. I will drop around soon to visit. Until then, I am yours sincerely, Colonel 'Sandy' Sanderson."

When Nan helps him with the bedpan, it is all he could do to keep from retching as he feels the stump of his right leg pressing into the mattress, followed by the hot-wire of pain that seemed to relay up his spine until it burned out somewhere behind his left eye.   Then an orderly hikes him off the mattress and into a wheel chair. “I want you to see the view from the lounge,” Nan says cheerily, walking ahead.

“It’s one the tallest places on the island. You can see the lagoon!”

Lagoon: what a romantic word! How heroically brave, heroically sad, heroically misunderstood he felt when he left Lillian after their final argument.  Like a teenager slamming out of the house.  No better than Bailey herself.  Against all good advice, he set sail alone, then regretted it every day. His hurt and anger gave way to longing and loneliness.  He was adrift in a yawning blue emptiness.  Clouds the size of K-2 rolled across the horizon and miles of life swarmed below him.  What was he?  When he abandoned his boat, he heard Lillian in his head saying glibly: “There goes the Lickety Split!” over and over like a nursery rhyme.  Now, taking measure of his regret—like a deckhand calling fathoms—he longs for the return of his boat.  If he can’t have anything else, he can at least have his boat back.

“You know where you are?” Nan asks. The orderly parks Cooper in front of the three windows, each the size of a beach towel. 

Cooper surveys the island for the first time: he sees whitewashed cinderblock duplexes and triplexes amid a clutter of palm trees and too-green greenery. The place looks like a frowzy 1950’s beach town forgotten by time.  There, beyond all that furzy green, lies the turquoise expanse of too-blue water.  An old gray-metal transport is plying away from the island.

“Where they going?” he asks.

“That?” Nan leans toward the window. “It’s the noon ferry to Ebeye.”

“Ebeye?”

“Where the natives live.”

When Cooper doesn’t answer, she says, “You know, the Marshallese?”