My Wife And I -shipwrecked On A Desert Island -... Official

We had nothing. A pocketknife from my soaked trousers. One of her hairpins. The clothes on our backs. For the first three days, we did what most people would do: we panicked separately.

When the fever broke, I woke to find her asleep sitting up, her back against a tree, one hand still resting on my chest. Her face was gaunt. Her hair was a nest of tangles. And she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I built a signal fire that wouldn’t light. She collected rainwater in a hollowed-out gourd. I tried to climb a cliff to scout the island and fell, gashing my shin. She tore a strip from her blouse to bandage it, her hands steady.

A speck in the sky. Then a buzz. Then a shape. A small plane, flying lower than usual. I had saved our one flare for fourteen months, guarding it like a holy relic. My hands shook as I fired it into the air—a red star bleeding across the blue.