Stone Hearts — Chapter 17: Anchors Aweigh

What happens when a surgeon turns his eye from the operating room to crime fiction? In "Stone Hearts", Craig R. Smith, MD, cardiac surgeon and former Chair of the Department of Surgery, builds a medical caper rooted in transplant, intrigue, and the peculiar moral weather that hovers above and beyond the hospital.

Follow along each Friday as we release the novel one chapter at a time. You can also see more on Dr. Smith's Substack, Long Incision.

In Chapter Sixteen: Cartier, Peter, Grace, and Reggie visited the Taylor home to retrieve his passport, cash, and a few other items. He found his sentimentally significant Cartier gold watch with the cash and took it with him, after a sudden display of anger at Grace. Grace took Reggie’s car to complete the provisioning, while Peter and Reggie drove to Glassboro, where they retrieved more cash and some clothing. They rendezvoused at the Taylor house and returned to Dulcinea together, prepared to depart in the morning.

Spring, 1974

Inside the galley Grace set her heavy purse and two full grocery bags down on a counter, then turned to face Reggie. “Turn around so I can help you take off the chains.” She lifted up the back of his barn coat, removed the carabiner, shook the leash to create slack on his end, then disconnected it from both rings. “Slip the nooses off your wrists, then take the coat off.” He complied, and the whole contraption fell away from his back and free of the coat sleeves. The chains made a soft metallic scrunching sound when Grace coiled them neatly on the table. Reggie conspicuously inspected the bruising on his wrists, making sure Grace could see them. The skin on his watch wrist was deeply abraded but not bleeding. “That’s what happens when we lose our temper,” Grace said, attempting conciliatory cheerfulness with a stage-wag of her finger. “I’ll follow you to your stateroom. Through the bulkhead, first door on the right.”

In my new life I tolerate this, you cocky cunt, thought Reggie, but a day may come. “Stateroom” seemed to Reggie a rather grand name for a cabin just forward of the galley, with a small sink and head, and a bunk against the hull with a single porthole above. Grace pulled out one of three large drawers under the bunk. “Put your clothes in here.” She rapped lightly on another drawer with her knuckles. “There’s a waterproof box inside this one, for your passport and cash and such.” She showed him how the latches on all the doors worked, and how to flush the head and pump water. Walking out the door she said “You can change into your own clothes and join us in the galley for dinner.”

Grace appeared to have second thoughts, and stepped back inside. “I’m sure you’ve figured out that I would have left you in the river last night. You’re on board only because Peter had one of his ‘life over mission’ moments. I don’t entirely disagree with that impulse, but it’s a little absolute for me. Not all lives. Don’t test the equation.” Staring at Reggie she concluded the message was sinking in, and her expression softened. “So you know, I’m not inhuman. You see, I think you still had a pretty good chance in the water, if you had the sense to get back to the east shore, even if you washed up on all those razor rocks near the bridge. I bet you had another ten, maybe fifteen minutes. But Peter….” She decided not to complete that thought and departed, closing the door behind her.

Reggie changed clothes. It felt good to be wearing his own underwear, Levis, and rugby shirt. He threw his high-tops in the drawer and donned his LL Bean deck shoes, a popular campus staple rarely worn on a real deck. The waterproof box within the stern-most drawer had plenty of room for his passport and cash. He thought for a moment, then took off his Cartier watch and dropped it in the box. After stowing his clothes and other possessions he sat on the bunk and surreptitiously scanned the interior of his cabin, looking for evidence that he could be observed from without. Finding nothing obvious, he removed $400 in cash from the box and rolled it up in the toe of a sock that went back in the clothing drawer. It would be just like the bitch to count it, he thought, but that was a chance he was willing to take. He imagined Grace confronting him…if she did, he thought he’d try shaming her for snooping; it felt too soon to make more definitive moves. It was time for dinner…he decided not to leave Cartier in the waterproof box, and put it back on his wrist.

Reggie entered the galley carrying his folded, borrowed clothing, which he set on a bench in response to a gesture from Grace. Dinner was a simple re-heated pasta dish. Reggie volunteered to do the dishes. Peter showed him how to work the sink, then sat back down to continue studying charts and tables. Glancing over Peter’s shoulder, the gross outlines were obvious to Reggie—Long Island Sound, the Connecticut coastline, a slice of the Cape and islands. Grace sat in front of a bank of small screens and keyboards nestled in the equipment along the starboard bulkhead, turning dials, typing, and writing into a spiral-bound notebook.

Reggie had finished the dishes and was cleaning up the counters when he noticed that Peter was staring across the cabin, ignoring the work in front of him. Reggie sensed a chance to ask some questions designed to show that he knew a little bit about boats and sailing. “Dulcinea’s no small craft, is she? I’m guessing her waterline’s at least sixty feet.”

Peter didn’t seem to mind being interrupted in his reverie. “Good guess. Nineteen meters, a little over sixty-three feet.”

“And sloop-rigged,” Reggie observed. “Makes for a tall mast. Must be seventy or so? I’m not good in meters.”

“You’re about right. The mast is twenty-two meters. She could carry more but we’re not racing.”

“No low bridges ahead, right?”

“There’s the Hellgate railroad bridge, but it’s well over a hundred feet. Cutting through Spuyten Duyvil would save some time, but impossible with the mast up. Now I’m curious—where’d you learn about sailboats?”

“I was in the Cape Cod Sailing Camp a couple summers in middle school. And we did some bare-boating vacations out of St. Thomas around the same time.”

“Can you navigate?”

“Not really. Not without Loran and someone who knows what they’re doing. I can read charts well enough to keep the hull wet. What’s her draft?”

“Keel’s 2.2 meters. Around seven feet. When we get to the Sound we’ll see if you’re good enough to keep her keel out of the sand.”

Reggie eagerly accepted the challenge but decided not to stretch his nautical credentials any farther. Peter returned his attention to matters on the desk. The galley fell silent for another hour while the crew worked and Reggie brooded. After a final flourish of clicking switches and ratcheting dials Grace returned to the galley table and sat down next to Peter, across from Reggie.

Peter took the lead. “We’ll be underway during slack tide, around 05:00. We should be in the harbor by sunrise, past most of the ferry traffic before it starts.” He set one of the charts closer to Reggie and roughly pointed out a course going around the Battery and back up the East River. “From the Battery we time it so we can catch flood tide going through Hellgate, during daylight. Then the hard part’s over. We’ll be well out in the Sound in the afternoon.” He paused to let Reggie study the chart. “Looks like pretty good weather, at least for the first few days. Sixty to seventy, mostly sunny. Tomorrow there’s no science to do so Grace will be on deck to help. You can sleep in and join us when you’re ready to learn something.”

Grace leaned across the table towards Reggie, eyes sparkling. “Peter said you shared a new version of the events that brought us all together last night. Deal gone bad, left for dead …plucked out of the fire, then into the freezing cold river you go. Is that a fair summary of the latest?”

Reggie did not like this brassy bitch. Or did he? He had to admit she was striking; looking at her stirred something. “Close enough.”

“Still begs the question ‘why the river.’ Your story about the big angry guy from the neighborhood who couldn’t swim at least had a certain internal logic. But at this point I’m willing to let the details go—on the assumption you had one hell of a good reason. Swimming to Jersey would not be that, unless you just didn’t have the balls to jump off the George.”

Reggie thought back over what he did remember…vodka whirlies, self-disgust, suffocating shame, but reasons? Maybe conceding something would keep him in the ring with Grace. “My reasons felt pretty compelling at the time. Would I do it again? I don’t know. Maybe not. But then we never would have met!”

“Very touching, Reginald. While we’re on ‘reasons,’ there’s a reason I’m bringing this up. Your former friends from the other night will wonder if you’re alive. After a while, so will your family and other friends. Doesn’t matter if any of them understand why the river looked like a good choice, even if they were one of the reasons. They will know, or they will find out, that most bodies in the Hudson turn up somewhere between the bridge and the harbor. But not all.”

Grace paused to eat a forkful of pasta and take a sip of burgundy. She looked directly at Reggie over the rim of her glass. “Of course, there is a ‘not all’ category with any disappearance. And it’s not about perfect math literacy on the probabilities. There’s only one thing that will stop some people from hoping, and other people from looking.”

A familiar mixed feeling floated up in Reggie’s memory, tied to those times in school when he truly understood something important about a difficult subject, and felt anointed with intelligence for a few precious moments before the concept slipped through his cerebral fingers like water through cupped hands. In this case the aftertaste of vanished insight was more disturbing than poignant. What is their plan for me? Should I ask?

It was dark outside. The portholes framed sparkling city lights reflected on the water beneath a sliver of horizon. Grace stood up with a definitive air of closure and said to Reggie “I’ll leave some breakfast on the table.” Peter locked the companionway door. Bedtime, Reggie assumed, and retired to his stateroom ahead of Peter and Grace. He settled into a proper bed for the first time in three days, enjoyed stretching out his legs under the sheets, and tried not to think about the one thing, or anything else. The gentle rocking and soft sounds of lapping water kept him awake for a few minutes.

Reggie woke in complete darkness from a deathlike dreamless sleep to new sounds and motion. He had to struggle for a few seconds to remember where he was, the effort to orient competing with a sudden and desperate need to urinate. Where is the head again? As he staggered in that direction he remembered to look at Cartier—5:18. Bladder distension relieved, he fell back into his bunk in the dark and debated what to do, in the minute before he fell sound asleep again.

Sunlight was streaming in the porthole the next time Reggie startled awake. His space was moving faster, he could now hear the engine clearly, and the hull was moving more dramatically in more directions. Not a pleasant sensation, he noted. Studying Cartier—7:34—made it worse. He closed his eyes again. That wasn’t curative either, so he stood up and assembled his clothes. The shaggy face in the mirror over his sink was a displeasing image but he decided shaving could wait until things stopped moving so much.

Passing through the galley Reggie avoided the sight of breakfast on his way to the deck. At the top of the companionway sunlight struck him in the face, accompanied by an assertive breeze. Dead astern was the Statue of Liberty, swaying back and forth. A large wake from a Staten Island Ferry was approaching Dulcinea’s starboard side. The low outline of Governor’s Island was hardly moving. Peter was at the helm. Grace sat on the cockpit bench facing Reggie, faintly but unmistakably smiling. Motion was making sense again, and he immediately felt better.

Diesel exhaust from the auxiliary engine trailed away over Dulcinea’s wake, leading Reggie’s eye through the empty space astern—it was briefly unsettling to realize that the dinghy must have been left at the mooring. But here he was, and he was alive. He sat down on the bench a respectful distance from Grace and said “Good morning!” He couldn’t help being awed by the southern tip of Manhattan looming over the port bow, by the year-old brooding cuboids of the World Trade Center that fractured the skyline. Was the Dulcinea a spaceship to Mars? Which would be more strange—the journey, or the new planet?