Plato's Cave During the Slicer Wars and other short stories by Terri Kouba

“OK. Everyone turn your kayak so it faces east. Lock your paddle under the lip and grab onto your neighbor’s tow tether on each side of you,” the kayak trip leader instructed them. He pointed in front of him. “The moon will be coming up over that ridge in about ten minutes. We’ll just get situated here and wait for it.”

  They had left the Golden Hinde on time, but there were nine beginners in the group of twenty kayakers, including one eight year old girl, and they had only paddled to Pelican Point so far. Tina sat in her kayak with Ken and Matt on either side. Matt was too large for a kayak and he sat in a small canoe. Jiri was on the other side of Ken. Marjeta, then Viktor were on the other side of Matt.

  “How are you doing?” Tina asked.

  “Doing OK,” Matt responded.

  Ken rubbed his fingers together. “My fingers are a little cold, but other than that I’m doing OK.” He flexed his shoulders. “I’m surprised how well this drysuit fits. When you handed it to me I didn’t think there was any way I was going to get into it.”

  “It’s getting out that’s difficult,” Jiri said.

  “Put on your gloves,” Tina suggested.

  Ken shrugged. “Uh, I don’t think I brought them.”

  Tina started to reach over into Ken’s kayak pouch then pulled her hand back.

  “You’ll probably find them in the small bag on the outer edge of your left leg. In with the wool cap and scarf in case it gets colder.” She thought for a moment. “There are probably three bags there; the gloves are in the middle bag.”

  Ken pulled up his spray skirt from the cockpit rim and reached inside with his left hand. It was as she said; three bags were snuggled against his left leg. He pulled on the middle one. As he pulled it out, it caught on his hip pad and moved it. He set the bag on his lap and readjusted his hip pad. He opened the bag and found a pair of Rapid Gloves. He returned the bag to its snug position and resealed his spray skirt tightly to his cockpit rim. He had just put the left glove on and was starting his right when Tina whispered.

  “Here it comes.”

  He looked up in time to see a tiny sliver of light break over the top of the ridge. It was as if someone had taken a knife, cut through a dark piece of cloth and shined a golden torch through the slit. He watched it as the slit grew, his glove clutched in his hand, forgotten. The moon had risen half way before the first person spoke.

  “It’s so much bigger here, Papa,” the eight year old girl said with wonder in her voice.

  The adults chuckled in agreement.

  Tina had been right; it was so large and so close that he felt he could reach out and touch it. “I thought they could do that only in Hollywood,” he whispered.

  They watched for another ten minutes as the moon cleared the top of the hill. The color changed from a golden yellow to the more silver and white he was accustomed to. It shrunk in size as it rose and soon it was the moon he had known all his life.

  “Well, let’s everyone turn to their left and we’ll continue out to the mouth of the bay,” the kayak trip leader instructed.

  “I’m going to stay here for ten minutes or so,” Tina said. “I’ll catch up to you.”

  “Do you want some company this year, love?” Marjeta asked.

  Tina shook her head. “There are some things that need to be done alone, Marjeta, and this is one of them.”

  She back-paddled slowly. “You go on, now. I’ll join you in no time at all.”

  “I’m going to wait for her,” Jiri said under his breath to his mother.

  “No you aren’t,” Tina said, overhearing. “I don’t need an audience for this. I need solitude.”

  “Come on,” Viktor said, ushering everyone away. “What she needs is a good knock up alongside her head, but, baring that, we’ll leave her be.”

  “I heard that, Viktor.”

  “You were supposed to,” Viktor replied.

  Ken watched as Tina paddled in one direction and the rest of the group paddled in the other. Their paddles made much more noise than hers.

  “We love it when she visits,” Marjeta told him. “But we hate to see her in June around the full moon because we know what it means.”

  “Drinking, lamenting and saying goodbye to Jake. Again.” Viktor slapped his paddle against the water. “She said last year that it would be the last time.”

  “Viktor, you know her better than that,” Marjeta scolded. “She never makes promises she can’t keep. Last year she said she thought it might be the last year she would need to say goodbye to Jake.” Marjeta sighed. “That leaves a lot of wiggle room for her to come back and do it again this year. And next year. And the year after that.”

  “What is she doing?” Ken asked.

  “She brought a thimbleful of her dead husband’s ashes and is releasing them into the waters. Again,” Viktor said.

  “Maybe she’ll run out of ashes soon,” he said wistfully.

  Marjeta slapped her husband’s arm. “That’s a wicked thing to wish for.”

  “Something has to jar her back into the land of the living,” Viktor objected. “She talks to the man as if he’s still here. You should have seen her last night. When I took her to her room, I opened the door. She took one look inside the empty room and said ‘Jake, honey, you weren’t sleeping were you?’ I had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t there, her voice held such conviction. It was like she saw him, lying on the bed or something.”

  Marjeta looked uncomfortably at Ken. “That’s enough, old man,” she scolded her husband. Her voice carried the warning that the conversation better be over. “When I die, you’ll still talk to me out of habit too.”

  “Ha!” Viktor’s voice carried over the water.

  “I already have my eye on that little blonde at the spice store in Vallejo.”

  Marjeta slapped his arm again. “Lucky for me that young thing doesn’t like old men and she detests fools. That’s two strikes against you already, love. And it’s not like you have a ton of money hiding in your mattress.”

  Jiri laughed at his parents and paddled ahead to lead the group.

  Ken looked away. He wondered if his friends held conversations like this behind his back. He talked to both his dead wife and the daughter he had never known, but he was sure that he never did in front of others. Pretty sure, anyway. He tried to be careful, but his family was such a large part of his life, with him wherever he went, that maybe he, too, slipped sometimes and talked to them even when he wasn’t alone.

  He grimaced. He could see that Marjeta and Viktor loved Tina like a daughter. He heard the concern in their voices. He tried to remember; did his friends say the same things? He was offended the first time Johnson told him to ‘get over it already’. So offended, in fact, that he hit him, knocked out his tooth and hasn’t spoken to him since.

  Then Carly. She said she was just trying to help him put his grief behind him, but he knew that all she wanted to do was sleep with him so she could brag to her friends.

  And Michael. He’s kept setting up appointment after appointment with that funny-looking shrink. Appointments Ken always managed to miss.

  He fired Peter after his agent said that he better get his head on straight or, how did Peter phrase it? ‘Ken’s reputation would precede him’ and it wasn’t in a good way. The articles in the tabloids; he just assumed it was the same old garbage about how Ken Richards lived with the ghosts of his dead wife and child, how Ken Richards spoke to the ‘other side’, how Ken Richards had lost his mind and saw dead people. He had stopped reading them years ago.

  “Should we wait for her?” he asked quietly.

  “No, she’ll come when she’s ready,” Marjeta said. She reached out and patted Ken on the forearm.

  “It’s not as bad as Viktor makes it out to be. She’s not insane, she’s just…” Marjeta trailed off.

  “Grieving,” Ken supplied, recognizing it.

  “It’s a powerful thing, grief,” Viktor acknowledged quietly.

  “All consuming, if you
let it,” Ken agreed, not realizing he had spoken out loud.

  Is that what he had done? Had he let his grief consume his life? Why would he do that? He had a good life. Why would he let grief take it over?

  Because it was easier than figuring out how to live without them, he answered himself. He was lost when they died, first his child, then his wife. And it was easier to live in the past, to continue to live with their memory, than it was to figure out how to create a new life without them. He didn’t want to create a new life. He didn’t want to figure out how to live without them.

  He wanted to live with them. And this was his way of doing that.

  Why did everyone think that was so wrong? Tina did it. She excelled at her work and then went home at night and spent the evening wrapped in memories of the man she loved. Was it so destructive? Sure, it wasn’t what most people did, but that didn’t make it wrong.

  Ken bought his dead daughter a tricycle on her third birthday. She would never ride it. No one would ever ride it. But so what? What did it hurt? Why were his friends aghast when he showed it to them?

  Ken stopped paddling and rubbed his right temple. Why couldn’t they understand that he just wasn’t ready to let them go?

  ‘When will you be ready to let them go’ Diana had asked him. Her voice was so plaintive at the time that he thought she was whining because he wouldn’t kiss her. Maybe she had meant it as a serious question.

  What was he waiting for? Was he waiting for some sign? Some signal that enough time had passed? Or that he had felt their loss deeply enough, long enough, hard enough that now it was time for him to let them go? Was he waiting for some signal to prove that he had loved them well enough?

  He shook his head.

  No. He didn’t need to let them go. Just because everyone else had moved on, that didn’t mean that he had to. He could stay with them for as long as he wanted to stay with them.

  He looked at the worry in Marjeta’s eyes as she scanned the water for a sign of Tina’s arrival. Why couldn’t they understand that it wasn’t so bad living with the memories, real or made up, of his loved ones. It wasn’t a bad life at all.

  “Here she comes,” Matt informed them.

  “How are you, sweetie,” Marjeta asked with love in her voice.

  Tina’s eyes were red rimmed and she sniffled. She took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine.”

  She paddled ahead of them. “But you laggards are letting the line get too loose. Put your backs into it. We’re almost at Sard Point.” She sailed past them and Ken started paddling faster to catch up with her.

  “Are you going out to the ocean?” he asked.

  She smiled brightly in the moonlight. “Oh yeah. Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  “How long are you going to be?”

  “Oh, half hour or so, maybe,” she said.

  She pointed at the beach.

  “Jiri already has the bonfire set up. It’s just waiting for a match. I’ll be back before it burns low.”

  She smiled.

  “Besides, Marjeta’s making smores over an open fire. I don’t want to miss those.”

  “Are you going alone?”

  “Oh no. Six or seven of us will go. Maybe five; it depends on how Viktor feels tonight. The damp tends to settle in his joints now. Herbert, Joe, Donna, Darrell. Maybe Jiri will join us. Though he likes the bon fire more than the ocean, at his age.”

  “Come on shore with us,” Marjeta said to Ken.

  “No, don’t turn it like that!”

  Ken turned to see the father of the eight year old reach out and pull on the nose of his daughter’s kayak. She was trying with all her strength to turn the kayak toward shore. The nose bobbed below the water line as she turned. It flipped onto its side. The little girl fell with it, hit her head against her father’s kayak, slid out of the kayak and into the water. She lay in the water for a moment, face down, her life vest keeping her afloat, before her thin body slid out of the life vest and she sank out of sight.

  Before Ken even realized what was going on, Tina dove into the water, her legs sliding out of the kayak while it was on its side.

  “Flashlights!” Viktor shouted. “Shine your flashlights in the water.”

  “Karen!” the father shouted. “Where’s Karen? Karen, where are you?” He looked in every direction but couldn’t find his daughter. He water frothed and churned under his chaotic paddle.

  Darrell, the kayak trip guide unbuckled himself and slid in to dive for the girl. Matt was already in the water.

  Tina came up for air. “Stop him. He’s making it too hard see,” she said, pointing to the father who was stirring up the water. She slapped her hand on the closest kayak. “Flashlight,” she demanded.

  Donna handed her the flashlight and Tina dove underwater. Matt took the paddle away from the girl’s father and squeezed his forearm tightly to calm him.

  “Everyone, back away and form a circle,” Matt told them.

  Ken watched as the torchlight became dimmer as Tina went deeper and deeper. Darrell came up for air and went down again.

  “Does anybody see her?” Viktor asked. “Shine your lights across the surface. Does anyone see her?”

  Ken couldn’t see Tina’s light anymore. He looked to where he thought she last was, but he couldn’t see anything. The full moon reflected wildly off the churning water, refracting into a thousand moons, a thousand circles of light.

  They all turned when they heard a splash to their right. It was Tina, coming up for air. She gasped for air and took a mouthful of water instead. But she had the girl. The current must have pulled her, pulled them both, out toward the mouth of the bay.

  Tina flipped on her back and pulled the little girl up onto her body, clutching her around her shoulders. Tina coughed water, sank below the water line and pushed with her feet to rise to the top again.

  Matt swam over, pulled Tina into a lifesaver hold and pulled them both shore. At the edge of the beach Jiri took the little girl from Tina.

  Jiri laid Karen on the sand and checked for a pulse.

  “She has a pulse but she’s not breathing,” he shouted.

  He cleared her mouth and pushed a large breath of air into it. He kneeled back, took a deep breath and did it again. The little girl started to cough and then coughed up water. Jiri turned her on her side so she wouldn’t swallow the water again.

  Matt helped Tina crawl out of the water and over to the side of the sand bar where she vomited buckets of water. The retching stopped and she rolled over onto her back, sucking the cool night air into her lungs. She started to cough again and rolled onto her side as she coughed up more water.

  It all happened so quickly. Ken and Viktor and Marjeta were still in their kayaks, in almost the same positions they were in when Karen first fell in. Karen’s father was paddling furiously with his hand to get to shore but wasn’t making any headway.

  “Breath slowly,” Matt cautioned Tina. “Shallow breaths. You have water in your lungs.”

  Darrell swam ashore. He knelt next to the fire and ripped open the bag that had been strapped to the back of his kayak. He pulled out an emergency space blanket and ran over to Karen.

  “Wrap her in this and get her close to the fire,” he told Jiri.

  He tossed another blanket to Matt. “Her too.”

  Darrell took the lighter and starter torch that Jiri had prepared to light the bon fire. It flared in the night and then settled down to a hefty burn.

  Matt struggled to open the space blanket packaging with his gloves on. He swore and then struggled to get the gloves off. He finally succeeded in both and wrapped the blanket around Tina’s shoulders. “Come on,” he said, helping her to her feet.

  Tina leaned heavily against Matt as she stumbled toward the fire.

  Karen’s father scrambled up onto the beach and knelt at her side. “Karen, honey,” he murmured repeatedly.

  Darrell held his cell phone and shined the flashlight on it. “Damn. I have n
o reception.”

  He looked around.

  “Does anyone else have a cell phone?” Darrell asked. “Do you have reception?”

  Jiri fished his cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it to Darrell.

  “Great.” Darrell called 911, told them where they were and what had happened.

  “Does she have a head wound?” Darrell asked Jiri.

  Jiri looked at Karen’s head with a flashlight. “A bump, but no bleeding.”

  “Tina’s leg has been cut. She’s bleeding,” Matt informed them.

  Matt took his pocket knife out and cut through Tina’s dry suit to expose her leg. “The wound is six inches long, looks like an inch at the deepest. Throw me some water,” he commanded.

  Ken ran it over to him.

  “Pour it over her wound.”

  Ken opened the fresh bottle and poured it over Tina’s leg.

  Tina sucked in her breath and started to cough.

  The water diluted the blood. When the water stopped, the wound started to bleed again.

  “Persistent bleeding, but no artery damage,” Matt told Darrell, who informed the emergency dispatch.

  “Give me something dry and cotton,” Matt said.

  Ken unzipped his drysuit and took off his t-shirt. Matt wrapped it tightly around Tina’s leg. He ripped it at the knee and tied it on each side. “That should hold you,” he told her.

  “That hurt,” Tina whispered. Her voice was raw and she immediately started coughing again.

  “You have water in your lungs. Don’t talk. Don’t breathe heavily. Take only shallow breaths,” he reminded her.

  Matt turned to Ken. “Stay with her. Remind her to breathe slowly and shallowly. Make her sit partially upright and leaning onto her right side.”

  Matt went to talk to Darrell. “Tina’s having problems breathing. I think she got too much water in her stomach and lungs. She was underwater for a long time. I think the air sacs have collapsed in her right lung and her left could go at any time.” He turned to look at Tina. “Tell them to get here quickly. Ask them what we should do.”

  Darrell looked at Matt wide-eyed for a moment and then handed Matt the phone. Matt detailed the situation and then listened. “They say it’s going to take the Coast Guard twenty-five minutes to get here. They can have an ambulance here in ten if we can get her to the Pierce Point Ranch. Anyone know where that is?”

  “It’s about a ten or fifteen minute walk from here, at the Tomales Point Trailhead,” Darrell told him.

  “I can carry Tina. Can you carry the little girl? Have Ken and Marjeta help?” Matt asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Darrell said. “We can take the girl, but are you sure you can carry Tina that far? And should she be moved?”

  Matt spoke into the phone with the emergency operator and then he motioned for Marjeta. He handed her the phone. “Stay on the line and relay any information.”

  Marjeta nodded.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Matt said, corralling everyone. “The ambulance will meet us at the trailhead. But we have to get there.”

  He pointed to the girl’s father.

  “You’re coming with us. Ken and Darrell will carry Karen. I’ll take Tina. Marjeta will come with us and stay on the line with emergency services.”

  He pointed to Viktor.

  “Viktor, can you put out the fire and then take the rest of them back in the kayaks?”

  “Yah!” Viktor replied, nodding.

  “There’s not enough room in the ambulance for all of you, so you’ll have to go back on the water. We’ll send word when we’ve reached the hospital,” Matt told the group.

  He walked over to Jiri and shook his hand. “Excellent job on the CPR. You saved her life. You should be proud. Now go help your father get the rest of these folks back safely.”

  He wrapped the blanket around Karen. “How are you doing, little one?” He picked her up and handed her to Darrell.

  “Walk fast, but carefully,” Matt said to Darrell. “Marjeta, hold the flashlight so Darrell can see where he’s going.”

  He walked over to Tina and Ken.

  She started to stand. “I can do this,” she whispered.

  Matt scooped her up in his arms. He narrowed his eyes and spoke sternly. “Shut up. Don’t talk. Just breathe shallowly.” He looked at Ken. “Hold the flashlight so I don’t stumble and fall on her.”

  He carried her away from the fire, following Marjeta, Darrell carrying Karen, Karen’s father and Ken. “You’re shivering,” Matt said to Tina.

  Tina grunted in agreement. She fought back a cough.

  “Ken, give me the light.” Ken put it into Matt’s hand. “Go back and get the wool cap out of your kayak. Another blanket or coat. Anything to keep her warm.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Ken said.

  “Just stay on the trail and you’ll catch up to us,” Darrell told him.

  Ken ran back to the camp. The full moon lit the trail well enough so he could see and not stumble or turn an ankle. When he arrived at camp, Jiri gave Ken his cap and Viktor gave Ken his wool sweater. They found two more blankets in an emergency pack.

  Ken caught up with the walkers quickly. He gave one blanket to Karen’s father, who wrapped it around the child’s legs and tucked it under Darrell’s arm. Ken put the wool cap on Tina’s head and put the wool sweater in the bowl of her belly to trap the heat. He wrapped the remaining blanket around her legs, careful not to touch her wound. He wrapped the scarf around her neck and tucked it up until it reached the bottom of the cap. Tina’s face was very white in the moonlight.

  “Do you want me to take her?” Ken asked.

  “I have her. Go spell Darrell,” Matt replied.

  Ken took Karen from Darrell who dropped back to hold the flashlight for Matt.

  It took them eighteen minutes, walking quickly but carefully, to reach the trailhead. The ambulances were there waiting for them, their red lights bouncing off the sand dunes. Matt, Ken and Marjeta rode with Tina while Darrell and Karen’s father went in the second ambulance with Karen. They reached the hospital in thirty minutes and the two patients were checked in and hooked up to fluids and monitors within the hour.

  The doctor came into the waiting room. “Is anyone here family?” he asked.

  “We’re all family,” Marjeta replied. “How is she?”

  The doctor turned to Matt. “Well, you were right about the collapsed alveoli. Are you a doctor?”

  Matt shook his head. “No, but I’ve had some emergency medical training.”

  “Is she going to be OK?” Marjeta asked again.

  “She’s stable. She’s getting fluids to stabilize the salt content in her blood. I gave her a sedative so she can sleep. Her leg wound has been cleaned and stitched and I see no complications from that. She’ll have a scar as a reminder, but the wound will heal.”

  He rubbed his hand over his bald head. “Her lungs, though.” He shook his head. “If she makes it through the next forty-eight hours, she’ll be fine. She won’t be winning a shouting match any time soon, but we’ll have to monitor her closely until then.”

  “What are the possibilities?” Matt asked.

  “In most near-drowning victims, the laryngospasm is what saves their lives,” the doctor explained. “That’s how little Karen survived. Upon water entering the airways, the larynx or the vocal chords in the throat constrict and seal the air tube. This prevents water from entering the lungs. Due to this laryngospasm, water enters the stomach in the initial phase of drowning and very little water enters the lungs. This is why Karen coughed up water; it was water from her stomach.”

  He motioned for them to sit down. “Tina, however, wasn’t drowning. She was holding her breath, trying to save Karen. People can voluntarily hold their breath for some time, but the breathing reflex will increase until the victim will try to breathe, even when submerged, which is what Tina did. The breathing reflex in the human body is weakly related to the amount of
oxygen in the blood but strongly related to the amount of carbon dioxide. As the level of oxygen in the blood decreases, the level of carbon dioxide increases. Increasing carbon dioxide levels lead to a stronger and stronger breathing reflex, up to the breath-hold breakpoint, at which the victims can no longer voluntarily hold their breath. If water enters the airways of a conscious victim, the victim will try to cough up the water, or swallow it, thus inhaling more water involuntarily.” He fiddled with his scrub cap.

  “Tina gulped a lot of water in her stomach and in her lungs. Water damages the inside surface of the lung, collapses the alveoli, the air sacs, and causes a hardening of the lungs with a reduced ability to exchange air. This may cause death, even hours later.”

  He reached out and held Marjeta’s hand. “I’m not trying to scare you, just trying to tell you why the next forty-eight hours is so important.”

  “Salt water is much saltier than blood, and due to osmosis, water will leave her blood stream. The thicker blood requires more work from the heart, leading to cardiac arrest. This is why it’s important for us to rebalance the salt level in her blood, to prevent cardiac arrest.”

  “So you see, even though she didn’t drown, she still isn’t out of danger. Her lungs could become so damaged that she could stop breathing. Or she could go into cardiac arrest. We’re going to keep her for a couple days to monitor her. You can go home and get some sleep. She’s not going to wake up until late afternoon. I’ll call you if there are any changes.”

  “I’ll stay,” Marjeta and Ken said at the same time.

  “No, really. It’s better for her if no one is in the room. Go home, change your clothes, change out of your wet suits, get something to eat and at least wait for the sun to come up before you return.” He rose.

  “Call me. The second she wakes up, I’m the first to know,” Marjeta insisted.

  He nodded. “You know I will.”