“I’ve got to get copies of Thor with the dolphin,” he told her.
“Sure. I’ll send them to you. What’s your e-mail?”
“I don’t have a pen or paper,” he said.
“No problem.” Carson turned to dig again into her bag, pulling out her card. “Here’s my card. Just e-mail me and I’ll send them to you.”
“Great. Thanks.” He tucked the card into his shorts.
“You were great out there,” Carson said.
“I’ve been training here for almost a year now.” He smiled a bit sheepishly. “They’ve offered me a job.”
I’ll bet, she thought to herself. There’d be a line of women at the gate clamoring for tickets. “Congratulations.” She grinned and, turning her head, stared into a pair of dark brown eyes. “And your dog, too?”
He laughed and reached out to pat the dog’s head. “Where are my manners? Carson, this is Thor. Thor,” he said to the dog, “say hello to the pretty lady.”
Thor shifted his adoring gaze from his master to Carson and lifted his giant paw.
“Whoa,” she said as the paw hit her lap. “That’s a pretty big paw you got there, pal.” Carson loved dogs, especially big, gentle ones. Thor reminded her of Blake’s dog, Hobbs, with his large block head, wide chest, and floppy ears. He also had large, soulful eyes she could lose herself in. They reminded her of Blake’s eyes.
“He’s a great dog,” she told Taylor, who was watching Thor with affection.
“Yep, he is,” Taylor agreed, patting his head again. “He was rescued from the pound and trained as a service dog. He’s a mutt, but I’m guessing he’s part Great Dane and part Lab and part something else that gave him that patch of white on his chest that looks like a lightning bolt. Reckon that’s how he got his name.”
Carson began to absentmindedly scratch Thor behind his ears, and his tail started thumping in response. Taylor was a Marine with a service dog, she thought to herself. Interesting.
“You said you were in a program with Joan?”
Taylor looked across the walkway to where Joan sat on the dock watching Nate.
“I was here for the Wounded Warrior Project.”
Carson wasn’t surprised to hear that. She’d read that the Dolphin Research Center had a program for wounded warriors. Yet, when she thought of a wounded warrior, she thought of someone with physical injuries.
After an awkward silence Taylor said in a softer tone, “I know what you’re thinking. Where’s the wound, right? You don’t see the injury.”
Carson couldn’t reply. Blunt though it was, he was right.
“You can’t see all wounds,” Taylor said. “Especially not in this war. Sure, some of us in the Wounded Warrior program have missing limbs, or are in a wheelchair. Some have serious burns. But all of us have PTSD.”
Carson knew quite a bit about post–traumatic stress disorder because she’d studied the symptoms after Delphine’s accident on the dock. It was a debilitating condition that followed a terrifying event. She’d had bad nightmares after the fire that killed her mother, and she’d tucked away that traumatic memory in her mind for years, only to begin to deal with it now. After Delphine’s accident she had been stricken with guilt and regret, but she’d been able to move on. She’d read how PTSD left one feeling emotionally numb, especially toward people they were once close to. Learning that had helped her to understand Nate’s angry behavior toward her.
“I think my nephew, Nate, had PTSD from the accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Actually, it involved a dolphin. Delphine. She used to come by our dock on Sullivan’s Island. One morning she got caught in the fishing line and was badly hurt. Luckily we got her to a rehab facility in Florida, but Nate was pretty traumatized by it. You see, he was the one who’d put out the fishing lines.”
Taylor turned a sympathetic glance toward Nate. “Poor little guy. He must have taken it all pretty hard.”
“So did I,” Carson added, her voice catching unexpectedly. She cleared her throat. “Joan’s doing a wonderful job bringing him out of it.”
“She’s good at that.”
“What made you want to start training dolphins?” she asked Taylor.
“A lot of it has to do with that little dolphin out there.” He jutted his chin to indicate the lagoon.
“Which one?”
Taylor scanned the water, then reached out to point to a smaller dolphin. “That dolphin swimming near the dock closest to us. That’s Jax.”
“The little guy. I noticed that he’s missing part of his tail fluke.”
“Yeah, Jax is a real survivor. He was just a calf when he was found near dead in the water near Jacksonville. That’s how he got the name. They captured him and brought him to Gulf World in Panama City. The tip of his dorsal fin, half his left fluke, and part of his pectoral fin were bitten off before he got away. You can still see the scars left by the shark’s teeth on his flank. From the measurement, they figured he was attacked by a bull shark.”
Carson shuddered, remembering her own near miss with a bull shark earlier that summer.
“It’s a good guess Jax’s mother was killed trying to defend her calf. They saved his life at Gulf World, then he was placed here for a permanent home.”
“He wasn’t released?”
“He never would’ve made it out in the wild. Not only because of his injuries, but because without a mother to teach him the ropes, he’d starve or be shark bait. He was only about a year or so when he came here. Now Jax is part of the gang. He has his injuries, of course. And he’s younger than the others and still has some growing to do, so he doesn’t jump as high as the other males.” He grinned. “But Jax doesn’t care. There’s nothing he can’t do. He jumps, leaps, does all the routines right with the pack. Here’s the thing. The other dolphins don’t see Jax as injured. And Jax doesn’t see himself as injured.” He swallowed hard. “That says it all.”
Carson heard the emotion in his voice and understood why Taylor felt such a strong connection to the brave young dolphin.
“The program directors gave us this,” Taylor said, reaching up to pull out a silver chain from under his shirt. He turned so she could see a small silver dolphin tail fin attached to the chain; the left tail fluke was missing. “That’s Jax’s fluke.”