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The three of them wheeled a patient into the infirmary, transferring them from the gurney onto the bed, and starting the process of whatever it was the patient needed. It was a woman that the ship had rescued, having found her on a boat that was sinking. She was pretty alert, but she had some cuts and scrapes, not all from the boat. She had gotten into a fight with someone. As they worked, Avery asked, “What’s your name?”
“Eloise. Please-, they’re coming, I can’t stay here-“ The woman replied.
“It’s ok, Eloise, you’re safe now. We’re gonna take good care of you.”
“No, you don’t understand, they-“
“Who, Eloise?”
Whoever it was had her really stressed out, she was hyperventilating.
“I was working on a cargo ship, and things got so bad, I took one of the lifeboats, and I just went but they caught up to me, they shot up the boat.”
“Her blood pressure’s getting too high,” Max said, looking at the monitor. Avery looked at it, then turned back to Eloise, holding her hand.
“You’re safe here, Eloise. We’ve got you.” She said.
A moment later, an announcement went off through the ship. “All passengers, please return to your cabins.”
Avery, Max, and Tristan looked at each other. What was going on?
Eloise, who had calmed down a little bit, was very alarmed by this. “Is this not normal? What’s going on, what does that mean?”
“Not typically, but that doesn’t mean anything. There’s any number of reasons they could do that.” Avery reassured her.
What wasn’t reassuring, however, was the loud pop they had heard moments later. They all looked at each other, concerned.
“Surely that’s not…?” Tristan whispered to the other two.
Max grabbed a radio and asked “What’s going on out there?”
“…Nothing good.” The captain said, grimly.
“I’ll go check it out, you guys stay here with the patient.” Max said, walking out, taking a bag of medical supplies with him.
Max walked out into the deck, where he saw everyone corralled together sitting down, and two men with guns. “Over here, sit down!” One of them yelled. “Leave the bag there.”
“It’s just medical supplies,” Max replied.
“Leave it. There.”
“Ok,” He said, dropping it and going to sit down.
The other man, who looked like the leader, said “We’re looking for Eloise Sanderson, she abandoned us and we need her back. Have any of you seen her?”
No one said anything. “No one? Come on. She has to be here, her sinking boat was right around here, and so are you, and you guys aren’t gonna just let her drown. So where is she?”
Avery and Tristan were talking, away from the patient.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.” Tristan said, nervous.
“It’s gonna be okay, Max is gonna come back here any minute and say everything’s good.” Avery replied.
When the two of them first started, something similar had happened. Someone had come on wanting money, and one of the passengers tried to confront them and got seriously injured. They lived, but that’s still a harrowing thing to go through.
She went to check on the patient, and saw something outside the window. A cargo ship, just like Eloise had said. Tristan had also walked over to the patient, but Avery gestured for the two of them to go back over there, away from the patient. “There’s a cargo ship outside.” Avery said.
“Just like Eloise had said.” Tristan replied.
It was clear they were on the same page, so Avery turned back to the patient and said, “We’ll be right back, alright?”
“Uh… ok...” Eloise replied, unsure.
The two of them snuck around where Max had gone, and when they got there and saw what was going on, they ducked behind a wall. One of them peeked out with their phone camera, seeing what was going on. “There he is, I see him.” Tristan whispered.
“What do we do?” Avery whispered back.
“I don’t know, tell the captain?”
“He probably already knows,”
“It’s worth telling him anyway, that we saw it for real.”
“Alright.”
They snuck away, but were caught by one of the men. Not the leader, but the other. “Hey! You two back there, stop!” He said, running towards them. Everyone turned to see who it was, especially Max, who sighed.
The man grabbed both of them by the arm. “Hey, let go of her!” Tristan tried to swat the guy’s arm away from Avery, but was whacked in the head with the back end of the gun.
“Agh!” He groaned. “No…” Avery said quietly. The two of them went to sit down next to Max.
“Hey,” Avery said reluctantly.
“They want her,” Max said quietly.
“Great,” Tristan mumbled.
“How’s your head?” Avery asked, looking at it. It was bleeding a little bit.
“It’s fine,” He replied.
“You didn’t have to do that for me.”
“I couldn’t let him treat you like that,”
Avery smiled softly.
“So has anyone seen her?” The main guy yelled.
No one said anything, just looked at him, scared. “Maybe they don’t know what she looks like,” The other guy said quietly.
“Yes, exactly!”
He started to look for a picture on his phone, and Max whispered to Tristan. “I think we could take them, I have a plan.”
“Ok,” Tristan replied.
“You’re going to do what?!” Avery asked.
“When he shows the picture, I’m going to say that I treated her, but she didn’t make it. Then when they’re focused on me, you sneak up behind them.”
“Alright,”
“What about the second one?” Avery asked.
They thought for a second. “We’ll figure it out,”
“Look at the picture, have you seen her?” Bad guy #1 said, doing a very bad job of showing it to everyone.
Max stood up, and both bad guys looked at him. “I’m the ship’s doctor, I treated her. Her injuries were too extreme, she didn’t make it.”
They looked at him, processing. Meanwhile, Tristan was sneaking up behind them.
He pushed bad guy #2 into the pool, which was right behind him. Bad guy #1 turned around to look, which was the perfect opportunity for Max to grab the guy’s gun from him, pointing it at him. Tristan did the same thing with bad guy #2, who was crawling out of the pool.
A couple moments later, the captain showed up. “Get off my ship.” He said sternly to the bad guys.
———
Eloise was still on the bed, and Max was explaining what had happened.
“Thank you so much,” Eloise said, crying.
Meanwhile, on the bed right next to her was Tristan, sitting there as Avery patched up his head.
“If you feel off, let me know. I wanna make sure you don’t have a concussion. You know the drill,” Avery said.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” Tristan replied. “I’m glad it went better than last time,”
“Yeah, me too. Thank you.”
Max whipped around. “What do you mean last time?”
“Three years ago when we first started here, a group of pirates wanted money. A passenger tried to stop them and got shot.” Tristan explained.
“Oh, wow.” Max exclaimed. “Were they ok?”
“We treated him, and he lived. Still,” Avery said.
“Yeah,” Max said. “We all got through it though, together.”
Avery smiled, pulling both him and Tristan into a group hug.