The Stranger in the Lifeboat

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there were eight of us: Yannis, Nevin, Mrs. Laghari, Nina, Geri, Jean
Philippe, Bernadette—who was lying under the canopy, her head bandaged—
and me.
Geri found the sea anchors, two small yellow fabric parachutes, and she
threw them in the water and tied them through grommets on the raft.
“These will slow us down so they can find us,” she said. “But we already
drifted a lot.”
Nina was crying. “Does anyone know we’re out here?”
“The yacht must have sent distress signals. We just have to wait.”
“Wait for what?” Mrs. Laghari asked.
“A plane, a helicopter, another boat,” Geri said. “We gotta stay alert and
use the flares if we see something.”
She suggested we get out of any clothes that were holding the cold water,
and she gave Mrs. Laghari a large pink T-shirt from the backpack she’d
grabbed before abandoning ship. I remember Mrs. Laghari asking Nina to
unzip the back of her gown, then requesting we turn away while she
struggled to get out of it. Even on a lifeboat, people have their modesty. The
explosion had come during a dinner party, and the sight of most of us in dress
clothes, now soaked and ripped as we huddled inside a raft, was a grim
reminder of how little the natural world cares for our plans.
After that, we were mostly silent, just staring at the heavens, hoping to see
an approaching airplane. None of us slept. A few of us prayed. It wasn’t until
the sky began to lighten that we spotted anyone else. Geri had found a
flashlight in the ditch bag, and we took turns waving it like a beacon.
Somewhere around five in the morning, we heard a distant yell.
“There,” Geri said, pointing, “about twenty degrees to our right.”
Up ahead, in the flashlight beam, was a man gripping a chunk of
something. As we drew closer, I realized it was actually a piece of the
Galaxy’s fiberglass hull, and the man clinging to it was the ship’s owner,
Jason Lambert.
I fell backward, trying to catch my breath. Not him! He made a guttural
moaning sound as the others struggled to pull his corpulent body into the raft.
“It’s Jason!” Mrs. Laghari yelled.
He rolled on his side and vomited.
Geri turned to the horizon, which was coming clear with the daylight.
“Everyone look carefully out there! This is our best chance to see if anyone
else survived!”