It sounded like a creaky door. Or a lazily deflating balloon. Or a territorial humpback moaning out its claim to the waters of the North Pacific.
What it didn’t sound like was lungs. At least not healthy, normal lungs.
Mai Fitzgerald closed her eyes and adjusted her grip on the stethoscope. It was all there—the prolonged expiratory phase, the diffuse high-pitched wheezing, the hoarse… junkiness classic for chronic bronchitis. She imagined the patient’s breath, hot and frantic, scrambling to make it through her tight, scarred airways.

Jurgen was skeptical. Cautiously, he tugged on the line to make sure the grappling hook had found its hold. It had. Stable as the cable seemed, though, it proved difficult for Jurgen to identify how, specifically, hijacking a 19th century galleon stranded in the gelid black waters of the Arctic Ocean might help him find a sense of purpose.