The Stranger in the Lifeboat

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Sea
Day twelve. The water from the rainstorm will buy us a few more days if we
ration correctly. Yannis wanted to gather what was in the raft bottom, but
Geri said no, we don’t know how much seawater got mixed in. We can’t take
a chance. Drinking seawater is potentially deadly. It leads to muscle spasms,
confusion, and, of all things, dehydration. How strange, Annabelle. So much
water everywhere, and all of it undrinkable.
We have also suffered another small casualty. The handheld fan. It died an
hour ago. Geri had been holding it up to little Alice’s face when the blades
stopped. Most of us were watching, and a few of us groaned. Lambert
groaned the loudest.
“You wasted it,” he said.
“Shut up, Jason,” Yannis said.
Earlier this morning, Geri, Yannis, Nina, Lambert, and I sat outside the
canopy while the Lord slept underneath it. We don’t stay outside for long, as
the sun is brutal. But we wanted to speak where he couldn’t hear us.
“Do you think he created that rain?” Yannis whispered.
“Don’t be stupid,” Lambert said.
“We still don’t know how he survived in the ocean,” Geri said.
“He got lucky. So what?”
“He gets hungry and thirsty like we do,” I said.
“And he sleeps,” Yannis added. “Why would God sleep?”
“What about Bernadette?” Nina asked.
“That’s hard to explain,” Yannis admitted.
“No, it isn’t,” Lambert said. “What did he actually do?”
“He brought her back to life.”
“You don’t know that. She could have woken up on her own.”
“She did die a day later,” Geri said.
“Yeah,” Lambert added. “Where’s the miracle in that?”