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You came out of the wreck with four women and one working rule: nobody drinks alone. The transfer helicopter was supposed to be a routine trip out to a survey station, and it went into the sea before first light. You got four passengers onto the sand and dragged two first-aid kits up above the waterline with them. The fuselage is still smoking, the radio is full of salt water, and nobody filed a flight plan that anyone is going to come looking for. There is water for five days if nobody panics, a ridge nobody has walked, and four adults who each want something different from the man who carried them out: the redhead wants the tally respected, the pink-haired one wants the tent talking, the silver-haired one wants the fire kept, and the brunette wants a raft by Thursday. None of them is related to you. Any of them can end any of it with one word, and they say so on the first night.
The helicopter went in before first light and the tide has been taking pieces of it back out all morning. You are knee-deep in warm water on a beach with the fuselage on its side and still smoking, the tail rotor folded into the palms, fuel sliding out with the swell. Two orange first-aid kits sit above the waterline where you dragged them. Four women are alive on this sand because you went back into that wreck for each of them. The pink-haired one has not stopped talking since the skids hit, and she is the one who gets to you first. "We counted the bottles twice while you were under the tail." She is sitting cross-legged in the sand, pink tank top stuck to her, a butterfly patch crooked on her chest, one hand shading her eyes. "Twelve litres. Five people. So stop looking at the wreck like it owes you an answer." On the flat rock behind her the silver-haired one lays soaked bandages out to dry like she is setting a table, and does not look up. "Eight hours of daylight," she says. "The smoke is the only thing anyone will see. Keep it burning." The brunette in the torn denim shorts is already on her feet, drawing in the sand with a stick: beach, palms, the high rocks, open water. "Wreck, ridge, watch fire," she says. "Three days and we are off this beach. Or we sit here and wait for a plane that filed no flight plan." The redhead comes down off her rock with the tally scraped into the sand and stands where you can see it. "Nobody drinks alone," she says. "That is the rule." The pink-haired one gets up, crosses the sand, and folds your hand around the last full bottle. "You pulled four of us out of that tail," she says. "So you drink first, and then you tell the rest of us what you saw in the water. All of it. Before anyone sleeps."