The Storm and the Darkness by Sarah M. Cradit Read Free Book Online Page B

fine doctor . His father’s words, once so hurtful, now rang hollow. He knew what he had given up, and it had been his choice; it was never one he regretted.  
    Sometimes he still opened the door to his father’s old office: that large, dark room that had started as a converted den, and later Jon had helped expand by tearing down the walls into the family room. The equipment–both that which his father was approved to use in his home and that which he was most certainly not–remained untouched, buried under sheets and dusty plastic. In his father’s final years, patients extended beyond the island to some of the surrounding islands and even the mainland. Dr. St. Andrews not did only the procedures willingly, but he was also able to do them at a fraction of the cost that the larger hospitals would charge. He never turned away a patient who was unable to pay.
    Jon sometimes wondered how his father had been allowed to get away with it for so long: the intravenous equipment, the gurneys, the scalpels and operating instruments. Jon’s hands burned hotly as he recalled the first time his father had handed him a scalpel.
    “You want me to hold on to it?” Jon had asked.
    “I want you to cut.” His father’s face had been so even, impossible to read as ever.
    Jon had been surprised, but he had also been ready. He had watched his father doing this for years and, at sixteen, he had seen the procedure many times now. Removing a gall bladder was something he could have described with his eyes closed. His father always taught him by asking questions– Why am I doing this, Jon? –rather than simply telling Jon what to do. Why am I holding the clamp here, instead of further up? Why is this area more prone to bleeding? Why do we use less sedative with this procedure?
    Jon always knew the answers, and like his father, he was exceptionally calm under pressure. Jon had not hesitated, or questioned, or balked when his father handed him that scalpel. Drawing in a deep breath, he steadied his hand, and made the cut.
    But never had he been tested more than when it had been Finn on their table, bleeding and near death.
    It was the summer Jon turned sixteen, only weeks after his first surgery with his father. Finn was just thirteen, and was in his reckless, wild phase. Jon had known what Finn was going to do before Finn even did it.
    Several years before, their father began teaching Finn how to navigate the old fishing skiff, a project boat that was never quite finished. This act of mentoring was a begrudging one, as Dr. St. Andrews was still deeply disappointed by Finn’s lack of potential, but he saw it as the one way he still might forge a connection with his younger son. By the time Finn was twelve, he was already captaining the boat, though their father never let him go out alone.
    “Never trust the ocean,” he would say. “The day you think you have her figured out is the day she will get you.”
    But Finn was young, and adventurous, and made up his mind to captain the boat by himself on his thirteenth birthday. Jon figured it out in time to find him, but was unable to stop him.
    “You’re either coming or you’re staying, but this boat is going out to sea today,” Finn had said, chest puffed out, hand on the mast, proud.
    Jon knew it would end badly, but he wouldn’t let his brother go out alone so he joined him. Jon’s fears came true a half-mile out to sea when the propeller became entangled in an abandoned trawl. Finn panicked and leaned over the side of the boat when a fin broke off and sliced across his chest, knocking him unconscious. The fin then ricocheted and gashed Jon in the chest. It was a blow that should have knocked him out as well, but the adrenaline was coursing through his veins. Jon radioed ahead to his father, who calmly walked him through how to get them home. With his brother dying in his arms, the ride home was perilously long and Jon was trembling so hard that he could hardly hold the radio.
    His