Chapter 26: The Last Sail
My father lived nine more days.
They airlifted him from a field hospital on Stock Island to Jackson Memorial in Miami as soon as the winds dropped. His heart had been damaged badly. Too badly. The doctors were honest with us.
"He was lucky to survive the night," a cardiologist told me. "Whoever did those compressions in that boat gave him these days. Use them."
I got to the hospital fourteen hours after landfall.
Zuri was sitting in a chair beside his bed, wrapped in a Red Cross blanket, holding his bandaged hand. Darnell was asleep in the chair in the corner, still in his soaked uniform. Tyler was asleep on the floor.
My father opened his eyes when I walked in.
"Son," he said. "You missed all the fun."
I sat down on the edge of his bed and cried like a little boy.
He let me.
For nine days, our family lived in that hospital room.
Zuri read him books about sea turtles. Tyler brought him key lime pie he wasn't allowed to eat, and my father ate it anyway. Mateo drove down from Savannah. Captain Diane Reyes came. Marcus Webb came. Denise Holloway drove nine hours from Atlanta with a tin of homemade pecan cookies.
And Darnell came every single day after his shift.
On the sixth day, my father asked to speak to him alone.
I don't know everything they said.
But when Darnell came out of the room forty minutes later, his eyes were red, and he was holding an envelope.
"He gave me something," Darnell said.
"What?"
"He wants me to give it to her. When she's eighteen." He swallowed. "He said she'll need somebody besides you to tell her about the night of the storm. He said every kid needs more than one person who was there."
On the eighth day, my father asked for the Simone.
"Dad, you can't—"
"Not to sail," he said weakly. "Just to see her."
Tyler drove back to the Keys. The little blue sailboat had survived the storm, tied in a hurricane hole up a mangrove creek. He took a video of her rocking gently at her mooring in the morning sun and brought it back.
My father watched it over and over.
"She's a good boat," he whispered. "Small. Holds on."
On the ninth night, he asked for Zuri.
She climbed up onto the bed beside him, careful of the wires.
He put his arm around her.
"Zuzu," he said. "I want to tell you a secret."
"Okay."
"The first time I met you, I was scared of you."
She looked up at him in total astonishment.
"Of ME?"
"Of you. I didn't know how to love you. I was a stubborn old fool. And your mommy, your Mommy Simone, wrote me letters for years, trying to teach me. And I never wrote back."
Zuri thought about this.
"That's rude, Grandpa."
My father laughed. It turned into a cough.
"It was very rude," he agreed. "And then I saw you holding on to that rail. And you taught me in one minute what your mommy spent three years trying to teach me."
"What?"
"That family is the people who hold on to each other," my father said. "Not the people with the same blood. The people who hold on."
Zuri laid her head on his chest.
"Grandpa, are you gonna die now?"
He stroked her curls.
"I think so, sweetheart. Soon."
"I don't want you to."
"I know."
"Can I hold on?"
"You can hold on as long as you want," my father whispered. "And when you're ready, you can let go. Just like on the stairs. Remember? Somebody came. And somebody will always come for you, Zuri. Your daddy. Darnell. Tyler. Mateo. All of them."
She was crying now.
"Will somebody come for you, Grandpa?"
He closed his eyes.
"I think your Mommy Simone is coming," he said softly. "I think she's been waiting a long time to tell me she was right."
Zuri lifted her head.
Then, very softly, she started to sing.
"If you're lost and you're scared and you can't see me…"
May you like
My father smiled.
He was still smiling at 3:14 in the morning, when his heart finally let go.
