Page 3 of The Tides Between Us

GIANA

Istared at the door he had just disappeared through. My heart pounded in my chest and I tried to regain my composure. He was a pleasant surprise this morning. Most people who dropped off animals or called us to come pick them up were never concerned with their rehabilitation process. There was a part of me that knew he probably didn’t really care but was just trying to be polite.

Whether he came back again or not, he was already imprinted in my memory and I would gladly store him there. His skin was sun-kissed. His hair was a light shade of brown that shimmered with natural highlights in his tousled waves. He was wearing a pair of board shorts and a tank top that revealed his muscular arms.

I had spent enough time around the ocean that I knew a surfer when I saw one.

He wasn’t what I needed to be focusing on, although he had really caught my attention. I returned back to the syringes that I was filling with medications for some of our turtles. After grabbing them, I headed over to the one building that housed about fifteen pools for some of the different animals and began to give the medication to the ones that needed it.

The facility was world renowned. Most of the animals that we rehabilitated were all native to Florida, but occasionally we would get one transported in from other states along the East Coast. We had a hospital, research center, and a rehabilitation section. It was quite impressive and I was working my dream job here.

I finished up with the medication rounds I had been assigned to before returning back to the main building. After cleaning everything up, I headed back to the room where the turtle was that the surfer guy had brought in. Pop-Tart, he decided to name her. It was peculiar, but who was I to judge?

Crew lifted his head as I stepped into the room and nodded to me. He was our head veterinarian here. I worked more on the research side as a marine biologist, but we were down a few vet techs, so I helped out wherever they needed me. Miranda moved beside him as she arranged some different supplies.

“How are things looking with her?”I signed to him as he stood up straight.

“We’re going to need to do surgery to repair her flipper, but I’m fairly confident we will be able to fix it well enough that she can be rereleased. We will have to wait until we see how surgery and recovery goes before determining that.”

I smiled at him. That was great news. Sometimes the damage was too extensive to the animals we got here and we weren’t able to rerelease them into the wild. Hearing we would hopefully be able to return her to her natural habitat was amazing news.

“That’s great,”I signed to him as I looked at Miranda while she began to prep Pop-Tart for surgery.“Is there anything I can do while the two of you start Pop-Tart’s surgery?”

Crew’s forehead creased. “Pop-Tart?” he spoke aloud while signing. “Who decided on that for her name?”

“The guy who dropped her off named her before he left.”

Miranda smiled and Crew gave me a look of curiosity. “Interesting.”

“Can you check the dolphin pool?” I read Miranda’s lips as she spoke. She wasn’t as good with ASL like Crew was. “There’s a list of some things that needed to be done. Shaina should be coming in around ten and I think Dominick was coming in this afternoon.”

I nodded my head.“Yep. Good luck with surgery and keep me updated.”

“Will do,”Crew signed back to me before the two of them directed their attention back to Pop-Tart. I excused myself from the room without another word and settled back into the silence that had always enveloped me.

There was a sense of solitude and comfort that came with the silence. There were also times where I couldn’t help but feel like I was alone in the world. I knew I wasn’t. I lost my hearing when I was eight, so I've spent most of my life not being able to hear. It honestly felt like a distant memory now, but it still lingered.

I gave up the thoughts long ago about wishing I could hear again. Instead, I was just left with being able to hear my own thoughts or the sounds inside my dreams. I still dreamt with sound. Because I had lost my hearing during late childhood, it was possible for me to dream that way.

When I was a child, I ended up severely sick with influenza. It ended up affecting my heart, which had me hospitalized for quite some time. The doctors had me on crazy amounts of medication, which had an adverse reaction that had actually caused permanent hearing loss. It was frightening as a child, but my family was always supportive.

My parents and my brother and I all learned sign language together. It was the biggest blessing in my life. I had a way to communicate with people. And then when other people in my life made the effort to learn how to communicate with me, it showed how kind-hearted some could really be. Instead of being dismissive, they made accommodations for me.

I headed over to the building that had a massive pool inside that housed some of the dolphins we had. I went through Miranda’s list and the other odd things she had listed until Shaina came in and took over.

After handing everything over to her, I locked myself away in my lab for the rest of the day. We had a few turtles come in recently that we had quarantined because of an infection. I was doing research as it was a different variation than the one we were used to seeing. I took a quick break for lunch before burying myself back in my work.

As the day grew closer to an end, my phone vibrated from where it was sitting on my desk and I grabbed it to check. A text message popped up from my best friend Winter. We had a group chat with her and I and my brother’s girlfriend, Harper.

Winter

We’re still on for girls’ night tonight, right?

Harper

Absolutely. There’s this new restaurant Nico was talking about that I think we should try out. It’s called Botanics.

I was so thankful for the two of them. Winter and I had been friends since we were kids as we had both grown up in Orchid City together. We grew apart for a few years when she left for Vermont for college, but since she moved back home, we picked up like we never lost time.