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Chapter Text

When Harvey gets a call in the middle of the night, he leaps to answer it. Medical emergencies don’t happen often in this small town, but they aren’t unheard of either, and Harvey is all they have without being taken the hour drive into Zuzu city. The ring tone chimes in the darkness of his bedroom. Harvey throws the blankets off and sits up quickly. He takes a moment to glance at the time before answering.

“Is this a medical emergency?” Harvey answers, getting right to the point.

“Yes,” Willy’s voice, the fisherman living on the docks, yells. Wind buffets the phone’s speaker and makes it difficult to hear Willy. “I need help at the docks as soon as possible!”

Lightning flashes outside Harvey’s window, briefly illuminating the space. Not a moment later he hears thunder both outside his home and on the phone.

“I’m coming. Tell me what happened.”

“I can’t hear you, doc! Not over the storm! Just hurry, he’s bleeding real bad!”

Harvey doesn’t waste more time trying to talk. He hangs up, shoves his phone in his pajama pockets, and throws on a shirt. He’s pretty sure it’s inside out, but there’s not time to care. He grabs a jacket—the rain is pounding on the windows and the roof—and his weather resistant duffel bag with his emergency kit. Some high quality rubber boots with excellent traction finish off the look and Harvey pulls his pant legs over the tops so they don’t collect rainwater.

As ready as he’ll ever be, Harvey hurries down the staircase and through his clinic. He opens the front door. Wind shoves the door into him and tries to throw it open as the rain comes down at a heavy angle. Harvey strains to make it past the threshold and close the door. It’s a short jog to the beach, but it’s dark, very dark. He pulls a flashlight out of a side pocket of his bag and shines it ahead.

As soon as he reaches the sand, he’s scanning, looking for anyone that may need his help. The flashlight catches someone on the dock, straight ahead, to the right of Willy’s house. It’s Willy, holding his hat on his head with one hand and waving the other in the air.

Harvey flickers the flashlight on and off a few times to let Willy know he sees him and makes his way to the dock. Willy waits for him, but when Harvey approaches, he doesn’t see any blood.

“Whose hurt?” Harvey says, nearly having to shout to be heard above the storm. It’s an abnormally violent storm for early summer.

“Well—” Willy starts and stops, then makes a gesture to follow. They start toward the far end of the deck, walking past Willy’s house. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I’d jump in myself, but…” he stops at the end and shows his hands.

Willy has Raynaud’s syndrome, a condition that causes his fingers to lose blood circulation and become cold and numb, particularly in cold weather. Right now, in this storm, his fingers are varying shades of blue and white.

“I don’t think I could swim like this,” Willy says.

At first, Harvey is worried about Willy’s fingers. But then he processes the other man’s words. Someone has fallen into the water and is bleeding out. Harvey grips the nearest docking post and leans to look into the ocean. The waves are aggressive. They slam against the dock supports, against nearby rock, and crashes against the shore behind him. Harvey shines the flashlight down into the murky water and scans.

Someone is down there, arms wrapped around a post. Whoever it is appears masculine, with muscular arms and back, and his upper body is naked. The waves batter against him just the same as the rest of the terrain, and by the looks of it he’s barely keeping his head above water. Blood darkens the water around him in concerningly large pools.

“Shit,” Harvey says. “You have a life buoy?”

Willy gestures to a circular red and white float with a rope attached on the dock next to him. Willy says, “I already tried it. He wouldn’t grab on.”

Lightning cracks, closer than ever, with thunder rumbling right behind. The man in the water doesn’t flinch, just keeps holding on. It looks like his grip is loosening. Harvey has two choices. He can throw the buoy in and try to yell at the man to grab it… or he can jump in.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay,” Harvey mutters as he drops his duffel bag on the dock and quickly pulls off his jacket and boots.

“Take this,” Willy offers the life buoy.

“Thanks,” Harvey says and puts it on around his waist. “Maybe tie the rope off here? You might not be able to keep hold of it with your fingers numb.”

“I can do that!”

He’s not exactly sure how he’s getting to shore after jumping in, but Harvey can’t wait any longer. As soon as the knot is tied, he holds onto the buoy, pinches his nose closed with his other hand, and jumps in. The water is cold. It bites at his skin and tries to steal the breathe from his lungs. The surge tosses him around until finally he surfaces and takes in frantic breaths. Willy now holds the flashlight and uses it to shine the light on the man. Harvey is a small distance away and he tries to swim closer.

Unfortunately, he’s never been a good swimmer. Harvey has always felt more in tune with the sky than the sea—and right now it seems the sea has it out for him. A large wave crashes over him and rips the buoy off of him. The surge pulls him under.

Harvey is in darkness except for the lightning and the ray of the flashlight frantically searching the surface. If Harvey had taken a moment to the think, he might have waited for someone else to come and rescue the man. What good is a doctor if he’s dead, drowned and swallowed by the ocean? But there wasn’t time. Even now, as he’s tossed around in the current, clouds of blood drift through the water.

A large shape moves in the water. Harvey can’t do anything but struggle to surface as it passes by, within arms reach. It’s not the inky blackness of a void, but the solid black and white of an orca. Harvey’s first thought is that perhaps the man has been attacked by the orca, and that makes him immediately worried for his own safety. A second shape, a second orca pushing close to the dock, scoops it’s nose against Harvey and starts to swim. The force of it’s swimming helps fight the water, and he stays in place against it’s nose.

The two creatures chirp and call between each other and before Harvey knows it, the water is shallow enough he can stand with his head above water. The orca can’t seem to go any farther—it’s partially beached itself with its back peeking out of the waves—but it’s far enough to get Harvey to safety. He’s about to scramble for the shore when he notices the first orca, also slightly beached, and the injured man’s upper body draped over it’s face.

These orcas did not attack him, Harvey concludes. They are helping. Harvey fights the waves, fights the shifting sand beneath his feet and the surge that hides beneath the surface. One of the orca’s blows water out of its blow hole hard, the mist mixing with the rain in the air. Once he reaches the injured man’s side, the wounds become more obvious. Abrasions, cuts, and bruises mar his skin, injuries that suggest being thrown against rock or coral. His skin is dangerously pale and his skin is freezing. But there’s far more blood in the water than makes sense for those wounds—he needs to get him back to the clinic to properly evaluate his condition.

“Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Killer Whale,” Harvey says as he stands behind the man and scoops his arms under his armpits and interlocks his fingers over his chest. He moves backward, dragging the man along with him toward the shore. The man is heavier than expected, and by the time they are mostly out of the water, the waves just touching Harvey’s legs, he’s out of breath.

The orcas whistle and chirp and huff out small, short breaths through their blow holes. Harvey has no idea what they are saying, but he waves in thank you anyway. It seems the polite thing to do. But the next step is to be the doctor that he is. Harvey kneels in the sand, breath heaving and heart rate rapid, and looks at his patient.

Harvey blinks. Rubs his eyes with the backs of his hands so as to not get sand in his eyes and looks again. The scene before him remains unchanged.

The man isn’t a man, he’s some sort of… aquatic humanoid. His skin is pale, yes, but Harvey suspects his natural skin tone is that akin to a shark or dolphin. He has long hair, tangled and knotted and sticking to his forehead and cheek with salt water. Gills along his neck flutter with weak, shallow breaths and, most fascinatingly, from the hips down he does not have legs—he has a tail. A long, approximately ten foot long tail dominates his lower body.

Harvey doesn’t know what to think.

The merman groans in the sand, the sound strangled and pained as his gills flare up and Harvey’s attention is drawn to the bleeding wound in his abdomen. It looks like a bullet wound, definitely not a stab wound, but first thing’s first—he needs to control the bleeding and he can’t do that here in the rain and the sand.

“We’re going to Elliott’s cabin!” Harvey says. “Help me drag him!”

Willy hesitates. “Shouldn’t we try keeping him secret? I don’t want him ending up in a lab somewhere.”

“Now’s not the time, I need him inside before I can treat him and I’m not sure he’ll make it to the clinic like this. Come on!” Harvey grabs under one of his arms and Willy grabs the other. They drag him as quickly as they can and when they reach the door to Elliott’s cabin, Harvey pounds on the wood.

“Elliott! This is an emergency, open the door!” Harvey shouts. He pounds on the door insistently, not letting up until it opens. Elliott looks grumpy, and Harvey wonders if he even heard Harvey’s words over the storm. But he sees the smears of blood on Harvey’s soaked shirt and pants and the form behind them.

“Oh good god, come in, come in,” Elliott says and steps aside. “I can clear a table.”

“Don’t bother, the floor will be easier,” Harvey says.

Willy and Harvey drag the merman inside. Elliott finally registers the sight and gasps, but to his credit stays level-headed. As soon as the door is closed and the merman is safely in the middle of the floor, Harvey gets to work.

“Elliott, I need as much light as you can give me. Willy, keep the flashlight pointed right at the wound.”

It does appear to be a gunshot wound close to his left hip and by quickly feeling along his back, Harvey finds the exit hole.

“The bullet left him, but there could be fragments, especially if it hit his pelvis,” Harvey says. He pushes a hand gently on the creature’s stomach and it whines, even while unconscious. It’s abdomen is hard. “There’s internal bleeding. Elliott do you have Maru’s phone number?”

“I believe so,” Elliott says, voice heavy with concern. “I can tell her to come here.”

“Please do. I’m going to need the help.”