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Three hundred pounds left? Are you kidding?
Alex rushed to him and tilted the dive computer toward himself to verify. Yes, only three hundred psi of the original three thousand left in his tank. The man was nearly out of air. Alex stared at the guy and his wife and jabbed his thumb upward, signaling they needed to end the dive and surface together now.
The wife looked confused and gave the safety-stop signal with a shrug. It was standard procedure to end each dive with a three-minute safety stop. Alex shook his head and repeated the thumbs-up gesture. The two headed toward the surface at a safe ascent rate, so Alex led the other four divers on.
He turned and brought them down a canyon, a sandy channel with twenty-foot-high sheer coral walls on both sides. Alex glanced up to make sure the two divers were still ascending safely. Movement caught his eye. A whitemouth moray eel poked its head out of a hole in the coral wall, rhythmically opening and closing its mouth as it breathed. Alex motioned the rest of the group over, checking once again as the two divers surfaced. Soon after, the boat engines started as Tommy steered the boat over to pick them up.
With his problem divers safely on the boat, Alex could relax a little. He wasn’t about to cheat the other four divers out of the rest of the sixty-minute dive. The group was rewarded near the end of it when a squadron of four eagle rays glided by. With flat, triangular-shaped bodies, they were gray with white spots covering their backs. Six-feet-long tails trailed behind each one. Alex relaxed as they slowly swam by.
This is why I love diving. You never know what might pass by.
Soon the group was back on the surface, and Tommy motored over to pick them up. Alex took his usual position adjacent to the stern ladder so he could help the divers remove their fins and hand them up to Tommy. Finally, he scrambled up himself and shrugged off his tank. The remaining four divers now sat on the side benches near the stern of the boat, their tanks with attached buoyancy compensation devices lined up behind them as they exclaimed about the eagle rays.
Alex glanced at the couple who had nearly run out of air. The woman had a frown on her face. “Brent, calm down. He told us before the dive he would send up divers alone who needed to go up early.”
Brent—that’s right!
He stared right at Alex, fists clenched. “You should’ve surfaced with us. I could’ve run out of air, and you’re supposed to be responsible for us.”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Oh? I’m responsible that you didn’t check your air until I asked you halfway through the dive?” He shook his head. “Sorry, Brent, this one’s on you. You’re a certified diver. You should have never gotten down to three hundred psi without knowing it.”
He straightened, parking his hands on his hips. “And your wife was your extra air source if you ran out, not me. You’re the only diver in the group who was low—the others had plenty of air left to finish the dive.” Brent had taken a step back at his aggressive posture, so Alex relaxed his arms. “If it makes you feel better, I kept a close eye on you until you surfaced to make sure you were both ok.”
Brent’s wife sighed, squeezing the water out of her black hair. “Brent, sit down. You know he’s right.”
He flopped down on the bench, mumbling to himself as Alex took a deep breath and counted to ten.
Tommy turned around from the wheel, spreading his arms wide with a grin on his dark face and his brown eyes crinkled. “Hey now—no bad vibes on my boat!” He pointed to Brent. “You learned somethin’ new today, and everyone else got to see eagle rays. Sounds like a good mornin’ to me. Now let’s have some fun on the way back!”
He turned up the reggae on the boat radio, doing a quick head count to make sure everyone was aboard before he started dancing as he drove the boat. Tommy was not a small, lithe man, and it broke the tension, even getting a smile out of Brent.
Alex relaxed and turned toward the stern of the boat, watching as the St. Croix sun glinted off the water. He smiled as half a dozen flying fish skimmed along the surface next to them for several moments before diving back into the sea. He joined Tommy, pulling on his royal-blue staff T-shirt as he said quietly, “Thanks for defusing that.”
“No problem.” Tommy grinned. “There’s always one on each boat.”
“All’s well that ends well, I guess.” The boat made the turn into Half Moon Bay and the resort with its bungalows spaced behind the white sand beach came into sight.
Just another day in paradise.
* * *
After the boat returned to the pier, the guest divers quickly disembarked, leaving the chore of removing the tanks and scuba equipment to Alex and Tommy. Tommy walked down the pier to the dive shop and retrieved a cart for the tanks. His red Half Moon Bay Resort rash guard tightly hugged his body, complements of his wife’s cooking. Alex transferred the tanks from the boat onto the cart, then glanced at Tommy.
“Go ahead and take off. I know your daughter has school conferences today.”
“You sure? There’s still lots to do.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. See you tomorrow.” Alex rolled the cart to the air compressor room. He’d need to refill all the tanks with fresh air for tomorrow’s dives, but that could wait until after lunch. It’s not like I have anything better to do, anyway. Next, he removed all the scuba equipment and wetsuits, rinsing everything in fresh water and hanging it in the gear storage room to dry.
Alex walked past the dive shop to the side of the pier, where a flight of stairs led up to his apartment. He headed straight for the shower. After rinsing off the salt water, he changed into a clean pair of board shorts and grabbed a new staff shirt, returning to the bathroom mirror to finger comb his short sandy hair. He frowned at his chest and shoulders.
For sure not combat ready anymore.
He leaned his hand against the vanity and glared at himself. “Stop it. You’re damn lucky to be here right now and you know it. And you’re plenty healthy enough to do your job. So drop the self-pity act.”
With a sigh, he returned to the combination living room/kitchen and looked around his apartment. It was bare and sterile, but he didn’t care. The only important item sat in the corner—a set of adjustable weights.
Keep at it. You’re getting it back.
