“I’ll feel fine if you come with us tomorrow.”

“This my ‘aina. This my turf. I know the way.”

In the morning Moe whistled from the driveway, then called out on the stairs and on the lanai flattened his face against the sliders, wearing the same T-shirt and torn shorts as in the night, his hair kinked and mud-matted, a big dark dusty angel, the oily smear of his face on the glass.

“We go in my truck, crew cab. Your car, they think maybe you’re cops.”

Moe drove; Olive sat in the cramped backseat with Sharkey, her feet deep in clutter, one door wired shut, the upholstery fuzzy with dirt, the engine coughing as it labored up the road amid the hum of gas fumes and burned plastic, Moe grunting each time he shifted to a new gear. The sensations of these details reminded Olive of the night before, her panicked search for Sharkey in that truck.

Sharkey said nothing, and Olive wondered what she would do if he tried to throw himself into the road. She’d managed to restrain agitated patients, but never alone—it was usually a group on the flailing person, a nurse on each limb. But he sat next to the door that was fastened shut by thick twisted wire. He’d have to fight past her to kill himself now.

Moe said, “How you doing, brah?”

Olive took Sharkey’s hand, out of tender affection but also to test his mood. His dry palm, his slack fingers surprised her—his loose grip was not that of someone possessed by any urgency. It was like holding a child’s helpless mute hand.

“How am I doing?” Sharkey said. In the same searching whisper he went on. “I feel I am someone else. I just don’t know who.”

“You da Shark, brah.”

Olive tugged his hand to reassure him. They were passing Waimea Bay, near the entrance to the parking lot. They did not need to mention the drama of the previous night—the groan of the waves lamented it, the rip and ruck from the shadow zone of the far-off storm was like a feverish memory of desperation.

It seemed that Sharkey heard it that way, yet his voice was reflective, rueful, when he began to speak again, interrupting himself to start over several times, to make himself clear.

“I did it because I felt ashamed and guilty,” he said. “And now I’m bummed and more ashamed because I did it.”

What he’d done was understood. No one spoke, and after that pained confession, Olive thought, what could one say?

“Thanks,” Sharkey said. “You saved me.” He was studying the ocean; they were at Chun’s Reef now. “When I was a lifeguard I never had to save the same person twice.”

At the bypass road, Olive said, “Maybe park by the fence—near that big tulip tree.”