Beck watched fat freckles and swelling blisters burgeon across her girlfriend’s face and shoulders on their seventh day stranded in their emergency dinghy. A speck lost somewhere on the Pacific Ocean.

On the first night, as the adrenaline from the crash ebbed, Beck watched Bea’s eyes grow heavy before slumping against the stiff, inflated side of the dinghy. Beck tried to rid her girlfriend of the shivers coursing through her body as the temperature plummeted, but it was no use. As the sky melted into the dark sea, the stars exploded, providing the narrowest silver lining in a grave situation. Beck stared up at the Milky Way, seeing the grandness of the galaxy for the first time, devoid of all light pollution.

Beck and Bea were the ‘it’ couple of their Air Force Academy class. Nearly interchangeable in name and credibility, they were far from identical in demeanor. Beck was the ying to Bea’s yang. Beck faced everything head-on and critically, while Bea led with empathy and grace. They were the perfect team.

During their final year at the academy, Beck and Bea were going two years strong, the top two of their class, and ready to take the next step in their relationship: they co-purchased a 2017 Apollo Fox. The two-seat, STOL aircraft was an easy-to-handle and easier-to-land plane—the aircraft equivalent of riding a bike and the epitome of joyrides for aviators.

After a year of tinkering and fixing it up to tip-top shape, they agreed to do something bigger before settling into their new, strict routine that would be their lives post-academy. They were told not to take the cruiser around the world—that it wouldn’t hold up in oceanic conditions—but that was what made the trip worth something. Beck didn’t want to do what had been done before; she wanted to make “herstory.”

After their graduation, while the rest of their class went to Cancun to take body shots and swim with turtles, Beck and Bea decided to finish what fate had denied Amelia Earhart.

They had it all planned out. They would fly around the world from Oakland, California, and back. They mapped out their stopovers, fuel supply, maintenance, and contacts at each of their rest points.

They’d been holding onto their singular bottle of sparkling cider through the journey, vowing only to pop it after they passed Amelia’s probable crash in the lower Pacific nearing the end of their journey—not to toast surpassing the heroine but to celebrate her bravery for creating space for women in the air. They traced her journey to finish that which fate forbade.

Beck and Bea had just popped the cork on their cider when the turbulence hit, rocking the plane. Switching from autopilot and securing their seatbelts, Bea took control in the front seat. They’d felt worse in the air, but the undertone of their predecessor’s journey, and the startling vast blueness of an uncalm ocean struck fear into a place they had never felt fear.

Beck had one steady hand on Bea’s shoulder from her passenger seat directly behind the pilot, and the other secured on the door’s handle, prepared to evacuate if necessary. The dinghy was ready to launch as soon as Beck pulled the emergency hatch. Parachutes were at her feet, prepped to sling on in a moment’s notice—the emergency provisions pack attached to parachute number one, designated to the passenger.

“I got it!” Bea called over the headsets.

“I know you do, baby! Easy does it,” Beck replied. She forced a level of stillness into her voice that only the Air Force could teach. But Beck didn’t believe their words. They’d been through enough training to know when evacuation was imminent.

However, Beck gave her girlfriend the benefit of the doubt for longer than she should have. She watched Bea’s arms strain to steady against the unrelenting wind. Sweat broke out across Beck’s forehead, and she was too aware of the wet, sticky floor under her boots from the spilt cider. She could feel pieces of the plane ripping under the wind. Beck knew better than to try to take over from the rear passenger seat. Interfering with another’s job in a plane gets you killed. The passenger seat had its own responsibilities, including evacuation protocol, and Beck’s hand remained firm on the emergency exit lever.

When Beck deemed necessary, it was the pilot’s job to get them in position.

“We need to evacuate, Bea,” Beck said over the headset. “Get us closer to the water.”

“No! I can do this!” Bea replied through gritted teeth.

Beck reared back at the rejection. They weren’t supposed to question each other. They were supposed to trust the other’s instincts.

“Bea, now!”

Bea didn’t reply and instead continued to force the plane through turbulence that wanted to chew them up and spit them out in ugly, masticated pieces.

Reluctant to superimpose her partner, Beck held her breath and counted, waiting as long as she dared before lunging across the seat in front of her. Beck grabbed the controls and forced Bea into a dive so steep that she’d have no other choice but to proceed with evacuation.

In the brief moment before Bea regained control of her now forced position and Beck retreated to her rear seat, Beck saw betrayal in Bea’s eyes, but Beck had no time for guilt. She readied for the unplanned sea-leg portion of their journey.

The evacuation was a blur lasting thirty seconds and forever. Beck could make out the individual waves rising to meet their craft, so as soon as their parachutes were strapped and secure, she yanked open the emergency exit door. The wind pummeled the air from her lungs causing an ironic sensation of drowning to fill her chest. With the emergency pack clipped securely to her own chute, Beck pushed Bea from the craft, regretting the caustic action as she heard her girlfriend attempt to profess her love in case it all went wrong.

 But Beck refused to believe it would go wrong. Refused to believe they wouldn’t come out of this stronger, so there was no need for dying words.

Beck jumped three long seconds after Bea to be sure she wouldn’t stray too far or crash into her love on the way down. The limp, partially inflated dinghy was hurtling towards the water, which drew dangerously closer. Their chutes would barely slow their descent before they broke the surface.

Bea pulled her chute as soon as she cleared the plane. Beck watched its functional opening and relieved, pulled the chord on her own pack when clear.

Just as her chute jetted from the pack on her back, a large piece of debris hit the chute and launched itself and the dense fabric toward Beck’s helplessness. The world turned. She felt the thick cords affixed to the chute wrap about her as she spun rapidly toward the raging waves waiting to swallow her plummeting body.

By the time she was able to right herself, partially disentangling the chute enough to open it to a degree, the waves were opening up. As she crashed into the freezing currents, she saw Bea in the water.

Then, Beck saw nothing.

Bea managed to get to Beck before the chute and emergency pack weighed her too far beneath the surface. Bea yanked a barely conscious Beck over the side of the raft with the strength of a mother lifting a car off her baby. And, gasping and coughing as one, the two settled into their new abode. A new silence draped over them as they regained their breath.

The first night they said nothing, only holding one another in their arms and watching as their plane, the symbol of their relationship, sank to the bottom of the ocean. They sat in their raft as the air turned cold and their breath moved together. After a limitless stretch of night, the sun made its lazy rise on the horizon as it disseminated the galaxy into a pale blue sky contrasted with the deep navy of the ocean.

“I’m sorry.” Bea’s raspy voice broke the surreality of the moment, wrenching Beck from her faraway thoughts. She hadn’t noticed her girlfriend waking.

“I should’ve trusted you,” she continued, “I’ve never doubted your judgement before, but it just felt too real, and at the same time I couldn’t accept that it was happening.” She paused. “I could’ve killed you.”

Beck heard the terror trembling in her confession. Instead of replying with insincere affirmations, Beck held the canteen of fresh water out to Bea, making sure she took a long pull from the metal spout before providing her with the reassurance she was desperate for.

“Do you remember,” Beck started, ignoring Bea’s apologies, “when we had our first fight, and you thought it would be the best idea to make up by getting me a puppy?”

“What?” Bea looked at Beck like she was crazy.

“You found yourself wandering up and down the kennels at the humane society thinking a puppy would fix our relationship. A relationship that wasn’t even bruised let alone broken.

“After an hour you gave up. Somewhere in your gut you knew a puppy was the wrong idea and you followed that gut, because that would have been a disaster. You did the same thing up there.” Beck pointed up to the bright, cloudless sky. “Your gut wasn’t looking out for yourself, your gut was looking out for me. That’s why you held on too long, you thought it was the right thing to do not for yourself but for me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Know what?”

“I never told you about the animal shelter. I was too embarrassed.” Bea was looking at her strangely, the shock wearing off, steadying.

“Because for the first and only time in our relationship you came home smelling like wet dog,” Beck replied. “It wasn’t hard to piece together.”

Bea blushed and a smile hinted at the corners of her mouth.

“Now what do we do?” Bea asked.

Beck knew she only asked to keep the conversation going—to keep the words out in the air rather than rattling around her head getting louder. Bea knew what to do as well as Beck did.

“We wait,” Beck replied. “Our location was transmitting and our family and friends have our route. It won’t be long before a rescue chopper arrives.” Pending currents and weather conditions, Beck hoped they’d be saved by the next unbothered sunrise, but she knew that was wishful thinking.

“And if it doesn’t?” Bea asked, again projecting her worries into the calm of their new, blue domain.

“They either will or they won’t,” Beck replied calmly, trying to keep the pressure of the situation from rising. “We can’t control anything outside of this raft.”

Bea swallowed hard but nodded her response. They went through their supplies, making mental lists of how to ration to make the most of what they had. Thanks to Beck’s quick thinking, they at least had their life vests, their emergency pack, a hunting knife, and a full canteen of drinking water.

In their emergency pack was a fishing string and hook, barely expired beef jerky, sunscreen, a flare that they would wait to use hoping a chopper would be looking for them when they did, and a handful of granola bars.

“Guess we didn’t think we’d be all that hungry, huh?” Bea asked, dropping the skim provisions back into the pack.

“I’ve wanted to drop a few pounds anyway,” Beck replied. “Your love has made me fat.”

Bea obliged her efforts to lighten the mood with a pity laugh.

Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, they rationed out the provisions. Beck made sure Bea lathered on a heavy layer of sunscreen before the damage set in. They broke into the beef jerky, hoping the protein, fat, and iron would stave off the worst of the hunger before it got bad. Granola bars would be eaten once a day in the mornings with only sips of water to dampen their drying tongues and chapped lips. They would fish if they had to. Beck hated the idea of trying to fish only to either wind up with empty stomachs or food poisoning, but Beck needed Bea to survive, so she would do what she had to.

After their second full day under the sharp rays of the sun, the monotony punctured their calm. The wind hadn’t blown. The clouds never came. And the waves never grew. All the remnants of the storm that stranded them vanished like a cruel joke.

Beck watched as Bea deteriorated, trying to hold it in—hold it together—but she was slipping. She let loose more whimpers. Bea’s shaking hands swept over her reddening body feeling the swell of blisters forming—the measly tube of sunblock no match for their environment. At first, Beck prayed for rescue. She prayed to hear the beating blades of a chopper on the horizon. When desperation turned to despair, she prayed for rain.

“I don’t want to die, Beck.” Bea pushed the words out of her dry mouth. They had previously lulled into an indefinite silence undocumented by the stagnant time. Beck looked at her again and saw the shadow of a jutting cheekbone and cracked lips. The sun was poisoning her and Beck could do nothing to stop it.

“You won’t die out here, Bea,” Beck replied. “Any minute now they will find us.”

But the minutes pressed on until the sun sank mercifully and gave them time to be consumed by the increasingly unremarkable galaxy.

On the fourth day, Beck forced the last granola bar on Bea. She barely put up a fight. Too weak and depraved to contest the unfairness of the rations—the jerky already fully digested and the water down to drops.

“You’ll need to start fishing soon,” Beck said, satisfied now that the granola bar was chewed and swallowed.

“Why me?” Bea asked, eyelids closed against the pounding sun.

“Because I’m providing the bait.”

Without allowing Bea the chance to puzzle together what Beck meant, Beck chopped off her pinky toe. She had positioned her unfavored foot on the pack to avoid accidental punctures in the dinghy and swung the blade hard and heavy in a swift arc to her toe. The red chipped nail polish added a grotesque contrast to the deeper red of her blood excreting around her foot. The fourth toe was barely attached—a casualty in her pinky’s martyrdom.

“I’m going to be sick!” Bea shouted as much as her dry vocal cords could muster before unfortunately hurling the last granola bar over the side of the raft. Bea would have to start fishing immediately before she grew too weak and the bait rotted.

“Why Beck?” Bea asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Beck didn’t know what exactly she was asking: why did she lop off her toe? Why did this happen to them? Why hasn’t anyone shown up for them yet? She didn’t know but decided on the easiest to answer.

“Because you need to do this before it’s too late.” The nub where Beck’s toe used to be was jagged and stark against their bleak surroundings, but she didn’t feel any pain, only worry. Worry for her love. Pain and fear had gone down with their plane; there was only Bea now.

“You need to use the flare tonight. When the sun sets,” Beck said. “Someone has to be looking for us by now.”

Bea nodded, too defeated to argue.

The flare was a waste. Beck waited throughout the night for someone to emerge from the horizon, but instead the cursed sun chose to rise again.

Beck watched the ugly blisters burst on Bea’s stretched skin as she worked the line with all the energy she had left. She caught nothing. Beck sacrificed another toe. Their water was gone—the salty, cruel waves beneath them nothing but a taunt.

Day six ran into day seven.

The line was still. Beck’s third toe was wasting in the water below them. Bea was in and out of consciousness. Beck tried to tear her gaze away from the horizon. The helpless feeling of abandonment sank deep in the pit of her stomach. No one was coming for them. The horizon was frozen as it was, unbreakable. Watching the visible line where the deep ocean and the depthless sky meet became abortive.

Beck took over the line rather than trying to raise Bea. She needed her rest if she was going to make it. While the line bobbed uselessly, Beck looked at the sky, willing even a bird to break its monotony.

She didn’t know how much of the day had passed before she’d made up her mind. Bea needed to eat. Aside from the roughly cut stumps on her mangled left foot which seeped sticky, congealed clots of blood, Beck felt remarkably okay—better than Bea. She could do this. She had to do this.

She inspected the smooth curve of her calf muscle. She would say she caught a small tuna. Gutted and skinned it and threw the rest back. She would put the pack over the lower part of her leg claiming she didn’t want to have to look at her foot. She would say she already ate her share of the fish and that Bea needed to eat all of it to get some of her strength back because they would find her any day now...

Beck lifted the hunting knife that had maimed her three times over with a promise for more. She bit down hard on her bottom lip feeling her teeth puncture through the parched skin. She tasted blood and willed herself to ignore the thought that crept to the forefront of her mind: this is how I taste. This is what Bea will taste.

Disassociating her leg from the rest of her body, she grabbed the calf muscle, thick from years of academy training, and sliced deep before she could change her mind. Unfortunately, the strength she needed for a clean job was lost days ago. She managed a deep initial cut, but the blade hitched when she tried to bring it down to sever the chunk on the back of her leg. Biting her lip harder—tasting herself—she sawed. Within moments, she was holding a hunk of her own calf muscle in her wavering hand.

She felt numb. The gaping negative in her leg didn’t spill blood but rather oozed it. She’d have to remove the skin off the chunk so Bea wouldn’t see it belonged to her—not tuna. Even then Beck was relying on her girlfriend’s desperation and raw hunger to make her believe whatever she needed to in order to survive. Beck needed her to survive. Bea wouldn’t go out like Amelia. She had more to give the world. More paths to pave.

Her severely dehydrated flesh peeled from the muscle with relative ease. The strip of skin hardly left her fingertips, having thrown it over the side of the dinghy, before Bea was rousing. Not wanting to lose momentum, she held out the meat to her.

“Here, I caught a small tuna while you were sleeping.” Beck steadied her voice.

Bea stared at her, processing the information Beck was willing her to swallow.

“It’s tuna,” Beck said more forcefully. “I’ve already eaten my share. You need to eat it.”

The pack covered her percolating leg and Bea had no tangible reason to suspect this wasn’t what Beck was claiming it to be. She reached for the meat. She didn’t want to eat it. Beck could see that in her eyes, but her girlfriend’s body moved with hunger, not reason.

Day seven was closing as the sun shot pink and purple hues across the blank sky. Bea managed to think a little straighter after having eaten earlier, but their position was still helpless. Bea watched the sky through salt-caked eyelids—her hope as dried up as the rest of her—when she heard it first.

“Beck.” She shot up so quickly her vision blurred to a pinpoint before clearing. “Do you hear that?”

Beck didn’t. Instead of watching the horizon, she was watching Bea—watching hope bloom from her disbelieving eyes.

“It’s a chopper,” she breathed. Her chest rising and falling heavy as she made her way to her feet to wave her arms. Sure enough, a black dot penetrated the sunset, shattering their monotony, and was heading straight for them.

Bea started yelling. She tore what was left of her dry vocal cords and waved her stiff arms in the air.

Beck watched her from her spot on the raft, unable to do what Bea was doing. She’d done her part, now it was Bea’s turn.

The rescue happened so fast Bea could hardly believe it wasn’t more than a sick twist of her imagination. The chopper came straight for her and Beck as though led by some ethereal signal. The cleaving blades in the sky broke through the unbreathable silence of the past week.

Blinding spotlights hit the raft while heavy blades pushed waves away from them in large rippling circles as the craft lowered to greet them. A rescue ladder unfolded towards them, and with it, a person haloed by the bright lights above. If Bea had tears left to cry, she’d sob. But her wracking chest was unaccompanied by the drops that begged to fall.

The uniformed woman descending to meet her was an angel answering her prayers. Her voice abandoned her as the woman entered the raft, told her everything was going to be okay, strapped a harness and safety rope to her, and whisked her up the ladder—up to a heaven.

“Beck...” she managed to scrape out of her raw, crusted throat as she was laid on the readied gurney in the chopper bed—medics flitting about her.

“I’m sorry, Beatrice,” the angel said. “It took longer than we planned to locate you this mission out. We don’t have the time or fuel to transition for a body retrieval. We’ve communicated the coordinates, and a second rescue is on its way. Don’t worry, you’ll be home in no time.”

Body? Bea thought. Beck wasn’t dead. Beck was alive. A new panic settled into Bea’s gasping chest as distorted memories resurfaced of the past week: Bea pulling Beck’s body out of the currents, Bea remembering her walk through the kennels, Bea listening to Beck inside her head telling her to use her toes as bait, Bea wielding the hunting knife, Bea pretending that tuna came from Beck’s outstretched hand. It had all been her, not Beck.

The memories reorganized themselves into the truth: Beck was dead. The horrid image of her girlfriend’s dead, bloated body decaying in the dinghy with her seared into her brain. Of Bea’s fingers flitting over the dense bruise encasing her girlfriend’s bent neck. Of Beck’s unblinking eyes willing her to live—begging her to do what she needed to do, and Bea contorting her mind around the images of what she’d done to survive.

As saline coursed tangibly through her veins on their flight away from her love, she finally shed the tears drowning her.