Sharks In The Time Of Saviors

Kaui studies engineering at a college in San Diego. She likes the classes even though her classmates are mostly boys. She makes new friends, including Van, a muscular girl with a “hacked bob haircut and eyes that were both bored and ready to start a fire” (92). Kaui grows close to Van and describes her as “the one” (92). Kaui does drugs, visits a strip club, and climbs an old grain silo with her friends.

Even though she talks to her parents on the phone, she misses the islands less and less as time passes: “Hawai‘i was starting to lose.” (100). During their conversations, her parents eventually always ask her about Noa, which annoys her.

Working as a paramedic in Portland, Nainoa and a colleague respond to a call at a filthy meth house. Nainoa does defibrillation on a patient, but the man’s heart has stopped beating. It is unclear if he is near death from a drug overdose or from being hit with a bat during a fight with another man in the house. As he does compressions on the man, Nainoa feels the addict’s body wanting to repair itself. He also feels colors, “the yellow tarry rush of meth’s hate booming through his veins, then the jagged red memories of anger that came and went like thunderheads inside his skull” (107). Nainoa continues the compressions even after it is apparent the man has died. His colleague, Erin, tells him to stop so they can transport the patient.

On the gurney, the man inexplicably wakes up and says, “Holy, holy, holy” (108). Suddenly, all his vital signs are perfect. When Erin confronts Nainoa about the incident, he says he does not know why the seemingly dead man came back to life. Erin is skeptical. “You did something,” she says (111). She mentions other incidents involving Nainoa and patients.

The next day, Nainoa goes to see Khadeja, a woman with a six-year-old daughter whom he has been dating. They go for a walk in a park, where Nainoa tells her he has “powers,” saying, “I’m connected to things no one else can see” (114). Khadeja notices how birds start singing when they enter the park. She tells Nainoa that animals are “one of [his] things” (115). She then recalls how Nainoa once calmed a drunk woman’s agitated dog just by touching it. That was when she realized Nainoa would be good with her young daughter Rika. The two end up kissing in the park.

Kaui rejects her parents’ pleas for her to return to Hawai‘i for summer break, believing all their attention will be on her two brothers. She stays on campus in San Diego even though her friends, including Van, leave for home. She spends the summer working in an office and waiting tables. In her spare time, she indulges her new climbing hobby: “I’d get itchy hands and grab my climbing shoes, find a closed-down crafts store or bricked-up condemned industrial block, and climb and climb and climb” (121).

Kaui is surprised when Nainoa calls her to say he is “seeing all these things” when he works on patients (123). Kaui tells him he sounds “a little nuts” and suggests taking a break from ambulance work (123). Nainoa responds that he can’t take a break.

After the college reopens for the fall term, Kaui and her friends go to a wine festival. In the bathroom, Kaui kisses Van. They hitch a ride back to the campus and hold hands the whole way.