My Journal

By Harriman Nelson

24.  Waiting

Doc had declared Lee stable enough to be transported to Bermuda General Hospital where more intricate tests could  be performed. Seaview’s MRI hadn’t found any sign of an embolism and the hole Doc had drilled into Lee’s skull to relive the pressure and inter cranial bleeding had done its job. Even so, Lee was still unconscious.  Will was cautiously optimistic but my nerves were shot to hell. So much so that I’d taken to tobacco again, after my brief respite, that Chip had warned everyone aboard that if they loaned me more cigarettes they’d be placed on report.

Squeezing Lee’s hand, and running my fingers over his shaved head, I took my leave of him and patted Mrs. Crane’s shoulder. I had to admire the fact that she’d been at his side almost as much as I’d been. Well, perhaps more since I’d had to dart out frequently to take a drag of real honest to God tobacco before I had a melt down necessitating I be restrained.

And so, desperate for a smoke, I snuck into Spark’s cabin. I knew he was a habitual smoker and would probably not notice the theft of a few packs from his stockpile of cartons.

 I opened the  closet, (where I knew he kept his cartons, much to the displeasure of his vocal roommate-space is limited, even aboard Seaview). 

“Are you sure?” Chip said from outside the cabin, “that’s all it was? An error in the programming?”

I quickly took refuge inside the closet and slid the door closed, holding my breath as best I could, lest I be discovered. It was almost laughable that here I was, the owner of the sub and their employer and I was actually hiding from them.

 “That’s about it,” Sparks was saying as the men walked in and toward the desk. “Apparently tied in with the problem we had with our metal detectors. It was a bundled program, and affected by the sunspots, or solar flares we had and are having again. As for the calls and emails from Boston, they were moved to quarantine systems.  The techs are still trying to figure out why there wasn’t any kind of notification about that. They’re pretty upset. Especially since you and the Skipper had a bad falling out about it all.

“Here, see this code?” Sparks said as he tapped the keyboard.  “Voila…you’ll be able to retrieve those quarantined emails and there’s a link to the voicemails.  Oh, and sir? We’re getting flooded with requests to resume the excavations, even a Presidential request. I was going to give them to the Admiral but….”

“I’ll take care of them…”

“Sir? Is…is the Skipper going to be okay? Frank says he’s probably going to be vegetative for the rest of his life….”

“We don’t know that. Lee’s surprised us before. And we need more sophisticated tests to determine things.”

“I need a drag,” Sparks said as he opened the closet door, (which wasn’t in Chip’s direct line of view), and widened his eyes in surprise. “I just remembered that I left my pack in the Wardroom,” he winked  at me and closed the closet door which hid me from view again.

“You know, sir,” he continued, “as a smoker, I know what the Admiral’s going through. I wouldn’t be so hard on him for picking up the habit again during this crisis, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“It’s my job as Acting Captain to keep him from harming himself.”

“Yeah, but it’s a fine line between protecting him and overstepping his constitutional right to smoke if he wants to.”

“Then I’ll just have to say the smoking lamp is out for the whole boat…”

“Even without a military or mechanical excuse?”

“I’m worried enough about the captain. I don’t want to have to worry about the admiral as well. The Skipper may need Nelson, a whole and hearty Nelson, whether he wakes up from the coma or not.”

 “Mr. Morton,” O’Brien said over the PA, “Sickbay reports they’re prepping the Skipper for transport.”

“Very well,” Chip said as he flipped the intercom, “prepare the Flying Sub for immediate launch and inform Bermuda she’ll be underway shortly.”

“Aye sir.”

“Well,” Sparks said, “I sure hope things turn out.”

“Me too, Sparks, me too.”

I heard both their footfalls as they left  and closed the door. With  a sigh of relief, I emerged from the closet, with several packs of cigarettes in my arms. But suddenly Chip’s words registered. Lee needed me. Comatose, vegetative, or completely normal, Lee needed me.  And then I remembered that was the very reason I tried to stop smoking in the first place. Somehow my nerves had made me forget that, and I promised myself I would never forget again and put my purloined  packs back in the closet.

And I prayed that one day Lee and I would have a good laugh about my brief sojourn as a closet smoker, literally.