The paramedic—he’d seen worse—just seemed to shrug it off, dragging his patient up over the curb even as Bill, fumbling forward, managed to take hold of the abraded heels and lift them from the pavement. “Set him down,” they heard the paramedic say. “No, not in the dirt—right here, right on the walk.” Awkwardly, in a stoop that had him bent over double, Bill swung the man’s legs into alignment as the paramedic eased him down—waist, shoulders, one hand to protect the head, easy does it, and there was their collective burden, harmless enough now, laid out on his back like a sunbather on a glittering gum-spotted beach. Satisfied, the paramedic straightened up and threw a quick glance at the bus before hurrying up the walk and disappearing into the building, leaving Bill there to stand watch.
That was the scene: the man called Bill, skinny, sunburned, his shoulders slumped and his waxen hair flattened to his head as if it had been dripped in place one hot strand at a time, standing there over the man who wasn’t breathing and whose throat was discolored under the point of his up-thrust chin—dark there, too dark, as if he’d decided to grow a goatee after all. Bill shifted in place, put his hands on his hips, dropped them. There was a smell of the sea, tepid and redolent of small deaths. Someone was revving a motorbike in the alley next to the clinic. A car rolled slowly up the street, its windshield molten under the sun.
And then the paramedic (his name was Oscar, Sten would later learn, Oscar Ruiz, of Oakland, California, sixty-two years old and in his first month of retirement) emerged from the building, an attendant in pale green scrubs hustling along beside him, pushing a gurney. Everyone leaned forward to watch as the attendant bent to the motionless form, checking for vital signs—futilely, as far as Sten could see, though one woman kept insisting there was no reason to give up hope because the electroshock machine, the defibrillator, was a real miracle and it had saved her husband, twice. “The guy’s gone, can’t you see that?” the man behind her put in, and a whole sotto voce debate started up. Sten ignored it. He sat there with the rest of them, sweating, thirsty, wanting only to be back on the ship. The police would be coming now, he knew that. At the very least he’d be required to give a statement, they all would. But what then? Would they charge him? Would he and Carolee have to stay here in this reeking excuse for a city for days on end—weeks, even—while all the others climbed back aboard the ship and cruised away into the sunset?
His eyes shot to the driver. The man had swung his legs out into the aisle to get comfortable. He had a cellphone to his ear now, speaking his whipcrack Spanish into the receiver, and who was he contacting if not the authorities? Sten looked to Carolee and she breathed his name, twice, in a kind of moan: “Oh, Sten, Sten.” She fidgeted in the seat, and whether consciously or not, she pulled her hand away from his and rubbed her palm, the moisture there, on her shorts. She spoke in a whisper: “You think they’ll let us go back now?”
He shrugged. He wasn’t exactly in a talkative mood. All he felt was tired. Sleep, that was what he wanted, another realm, a way out of this. He watched dispassionately as the paramedic helped the attendant load the limp body onto the gurney and wheel it up the walk and into the yawning double doors of the clinic. Everybody saw it, the retreating feet, the wheels of the gurney, the doors snapping shut like a set of jaws, and as if at a signal, people began stirring. Here came Bill, the good Samaritan, to lead it off, mounting the steps of the bus and sliding into the front seat beside his wife. A man Sten couldn’t place stood and started sorting through the daypack he’d stowed overhead. There was a rustle of bags and papers, as if a stiff internal wind had started up to whip through the bus. Bottles of water appeared. Power bars. Cellphones. The unpleasantness was over now and it was as if nothing had happened: they were tourists deprived of a nature walk and thinking only to get back to the boat, to their cabins and staterooms, to privacy, air-conditioning, cocktails, dinner at the captain’s table. They’d had an experience, all right, something to text home about, but it was over now.
“Driver?” It was Bill, the first Bill, the bald-headed one, who seemed to have become their spokesman. He was seated two rows up from Sten and Carolee, his shirt soaked through with sweat and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His wife was there beside him, her brittle hair set aflame by a shaft of sun slanting through the window.
The driver was in no hurry to respond. He pursed his mouth. Tapped the cellphone at his ear. “Driver?” Bill repeated, and finally the man swiveled round in his seat and lifted his eyebrows as if to say What now?
“We just wanted to know what the holdup is.”
The driver said something into the phone, then pulled it away from his ear and held it up like an exhibit in a courtroom. “I am talking,” he said, “to la Fuerza Pública, the police. You will need to make a testimony for the facts of this”—he couldn’t find the word—“today. A la reserva. The crime. You must make a testimony of the crime.”
“Yes, all right, fine,” Bill said, waving a hand in dismissal. “But can’t we do that back aboard ship? We’ve been through a lot here, I’m talking trauma, real trauma, and it’s not doing anybody any good to sit here sweltering for no reason . . .”
“Take us back,” a voice boomed from the rear of the bus.