Chasing Sunshine | JJ Maybank

10 // The Lucky Compass

There wasn't much of a chance to dwell on my current friendship problems, because from the minute I stepped foot through the door of Coastal Rescue, it was all hands on deck. One of our volunteers I had crossed paths with a few times was rushing past just as I was clocking in my time card, arms laden with medical supplies and spare towels. 

"Hey, what's going on?" I asked, and he stopped briefly so I could relieve him of a few things. With his load lightened, he was able to walk faster and motioned with a nod of his chin that I should follow. 

"Rosie just responded to a turtle stranding that a tourist called in. Most of the damage looks to be from fishing line, but I wasn't able to get a real good look," he explained breathlessly as we hurried down the hall side-by-side.

"Great," I groaned, already dreading whatever scene I was about to be met with when we arrived in front of the med-bay doors. He merely grimaced at my sarcastic comment of displeasure and pushed them open with one shoulder, holding the door open so I could slip past him and into the room. 

I definitely disappointed with the sight I was greeted with, correct in my assumptions that it wouldn't be pretty. Rosie was hunched over the stainless steel exam table, intently focused on the ugly strand of bloodied fishing wire she was holding from the flipper of a small, listless sea turtle. She looked up as she saw us approach and smiled light-heartedly. "How nice of you to join the party," she greeted and I sighed, dumping the supplies on the counter next to her. 

"This is not my idea of a party," I commented, pushing the pan of saline-soaked gauze closer to her as she reached around fruitlessly for it. 

She tsked and continued wiping dried blood and debris away from the wound site. "It's not as horrible as it looks. There's a lot of swelling, and of course, we'll need to rule out an infection, but it's nothing we haven't dealt with before."

Yeah, that's the problem. But instead of dwelling on the fact that I had seen one too many cases almost identical to this one, all of which could easily have been prevented if human beings weren't so careless, I decided to keep my mouth shut and concentrate my efforts on helping out.

Pulling on a pair of exam gloves, I took a deep breath and asked, "Well, what do you need me to do?"

"For starters, you can help-" Rosie began to instruct, before the obnoxious chime of the office cell phone rang from her back pocket. "Perfect timing," she muttered, holding the length of wire pinched between a pair of tweezers out to me, so I could take over, "When they told me they'd have our lines up and running, I wasn't expecting them to never stop ringing."

I moved into her place towards the head of the turtle as she peeled off her own gloves and dug the aging phone from her jeans and stepped outside to take the call. Immediately falling into a natural rhythm, I picked up where Rosie had left off, delicately untangling the line from the chelonian's front right flipper and neck inch by inch. 

After a minute or two, my eyes flitted upwards once to scan over her whole body, noting the exhaustive way her head laid on the table and the sunken-in appearance where her skin met her  shell. The volunteer who had walked with me down here was still standing in the corner, waiting apprehensively for further instruction. I nodded towards the stack of towels he had brought in with him and said, "If you could wet some of those down and lay them around her, that'd be great. She's just looking a little dehydrated."

"Oh yeah, of course," he replied, dark green eyes flashing with excitement at the prospect of having something to do. 

"Thanks, uh..." It was with a high degree embarrassment that I realized I couldn't remember his name, and the back of my neck burned crimson.