Atlas

Twenty Six

24 hours earlier

"I'm beginning to hate the smell of fish." I crinkled my nose.

"Really?" Reece looked at the ocean and smiled. "The sea always reminds me of dad. He taught me how to sail my first boat."

I rolled my eyes and walked a bit faster to catch up with mom. "Mama," I grabbed her hand. "If I knew this project was going to be out at sea, I would have reconsidered staying home with dad and playing chess."

Just then, the light ocean breeze blew past me. It sounded cute on the first day, but here we were for the seventh day in a row, and I knew I would never buy another ocean salt scented product ever again.

She squeezed my hand. "How are you feeling, my love?" She had been really supportive of the breakup. I had thought she'd forgotten about it considering she had way more important things to worry about, but she still took care of me every minute she got. She didn't even say a single bad word about Atlas. All she told me was that she trusted in my upbringing, and she knew I would walk away from a situation where I didn't feel respected.

I hadn't really said anything bad about Atlas to Reece or mom. I hadn't told them what happened in Abingham either. The breakup did come as a shock but I didn't want to taint my memory of him by speaking trash about him all the time. Sometimes I really wanted to, though.

Being out here in the ocean didn't help. I had a lot of time to think – we only rescued two small refugee boats so far – so some of our time was spent in training.

We would take a ship out to sea when a refugee boat was spotted, and a team of volunteers would then take a smaller boat to bring the refugees back to the main ship.

On the main ship, mom and the other doctors would treat emergencies on board, where the ship would take everyone back to base, which was decided by the MRCC port of safety – under EU laws of course.

Reece and I, so far, had assisted the refugees once they were on the main ship, by bringing them blankets, treating small injuries, that kind of stuff. The tasks for us very easy, but the whole experience was very chaotic.

Reece loved it. Saving lives – that's what he was born to do.

On the ship today, I noticed, there weren't many people. There was our usual recovery team, a panel of doctors but that's about it.

"Slow day, I think." Mom explained.

As the ship rolled on, I held back the nausea. I climbed on to the deck with Reece, staring off into the waves.

"Quit thinking about him."

"What? I wasn't—How'd you know?"

"Easy guess." He laughed. "Seriously, though, the dude's a jerk."

"I don't think he's jerk. What he did was quite awful, though."

"Then there's you, defending him after what he did." He rolled his eyes. "If I were in your shoes—"

He cut his sentence short, because something else had caught his attention. "There." He pointed to the far distance. "Do you see it?"

Sure enough, a tiny speck of yellow and red could be seen, almost swallowed by the waves. "I'm gonna go tell the others."

He turned back and fled towards the midship. The refugees had already been located a few minutes earlier, and the ship was heading towards them.

Mom was setting up the emergency room on board with the other doctors, the rescue team was preparing the gear. As the boat grew closer, my breath stopped in my throat. This boat was overloaded with people, half them were in the water clinging onto the boat.