The sound of his voice generally means that it's Tuesday somewhere between nine and ten o'clock in the morning when we practice general emergencies and report to our abandon ship stations.
"Code Bravo for exercise. Deck one, zone one," the voice rings out.
Like the military, cruise ships have their own lingo for such hindrances as a leak in the hull or an explosion in the engine room. Rather than screaming, "Fire!" and causing the guests to panic, we speak in code.
After the announcement, the fire team stops what they're doing. Drill is usually planned when the majority of meal service is over so the eggs are not abandoned on the griddle. They dash toward their lockers to don their protective gear and to wield their hoses and then report to the designated zone.
With the exception of commanders, the fire team is composed of volunteer shipmates. We've all been trained how to operate multiple extinguishers on all types of fires. Captains often prefer to use an onboard team over a band of professionals on shore because the shipmates can better navigate the vessel's labyrinthine corridors. The same goes for the medical team, who receive in-house training and respond mostly to fallen senior citizens.
As for me, I wait for the general emergency alarm: six short blasts and one long. Generally there is about a ten to fifteen minute lag between the initial message and the alarm, but that is not always the case. If I'm at work when I hear the first announcement, I continue working, but I try not to begin any time-consuming task because the bell could ring at any moment. I could wait five minutes or an hour.
If I'm in my room at the time, I slip into my blue jumpsuit, tie my shoes, and stash my sunglasses in my shirt pocket. Then I read at my desk until the deafening beeps interrupt the silence. I make my way to the mid-ship staircases where I find my lazy shipmates waiting for the elevator. We're supposed to be practicing for the unlikely event of an emergency, but not everyone takes this seriously.
Since when did this attitude become accepted as cool? I never seem able to adopt the popular mindset at the same time as my peers. I would much rather goof off during the dinner service, which, perversely enough, my shipmates conduct themselves more seriously than they do while training for a crisis.
I climb up to deck six and cross a fancy wine bar to reach the promenade track that encircles the ship. Once outside, I head toward my locker room. Bulbous, orange lifeboats are parked above my head. Workers in blue jumpsuits climb ladders to reach them on the upper deck.
I pass by a herd of newcomers standing stiffly at the assembly station. Their necks are squeezed by puffy life vests. I remember what it was like to stand there in silence mere weeks ago. My only responsibility was to yell out my safety number when the team leader read it from her sheet. I watched everyone zip by me with their automatic, Tuesday-ingrained movements to their preordained spots. I was a confused baby lamb corralled in a cramped pen. If the ship were to start sinking, someone would come to rescue me.
But now I walk past them with my own mechanized movements to perform my duty that is designed to prevent the newbies from drowning. I put on my harness like a hiker's backpack and fasten the straps around each of my thighs. I approach a large crane and open the gate nearby and hook my carabiner around a vertical pole. Behind me there is no railing to separate me from the sea six stories below. The first time I found myself near the precipice I hoped I would get to rappel down the side of the ship, but the harness was not designed for enjoyment. Its purpose is to prevent me from falling overboard.
My partner files into our tiny pocket and latches himself to the other side of the fence. My partner is a broadcast technician responsible for filming material and maintaining the network channeled into crew TVs. He's been a journalist in the States and has worked on another cruise ship in the Caribbean. Even though his job is much cooler than mine, drill unifies us all. Life-threatening situations have a tendency to reduce even the most technologically savvy individuals to bare limbs and muscles capable of the simple dexterity and strength to get out of harm's way.
Between my partner and me lies a cylindrical container with a hard plastic shell. Inside lies a shriveled-up life raft capable of expanding to hold 35 people. Ten more of these shells stand behind my partner, and there are several of these stations on deck each equipped with their own crane.
A stout man named Hector is the team leader who operates the crane and yells out the instructions. He wears Ray Ban shades and lifting gloves to protect his hands from the grease on the lever. He told me he wants to go on vacation in Thailand to get shredded. At first I was intimidated by his size and by the tone of his voice. He would ask me questions about the life raft as though he were giving me a pop quiz.
"What does the container line do?"
"How long is the painter line?"
"What is the secondary means of inflation?"
I was new, and I had never seen this monster unleashed from its cage. During drill we simulate inflating the raft by hoisting a giant dumbbell overboard, and I pretend to inflate the metallic object by pulling on an invisible line. So far, drill was all about pretending. The painter line was however long I imagined it to be. As I stared out at the snow-tipped peak of Mauna Loa from the port of Hilo, I tried to envision myself amidst a violent storm, smothered in salty spray, swathed in darkness as I squinted in the moonlight to read the instructions and corresponding pictograms on how to inflate the life raft. The task seemed similar to assembling a complicated IKEA futon while skydiving.
I didn't have a complete understanding of my duty until the Coast Guard came onboard for an inspection. The safety officer, let's call him Paul, arranged a training for all the life raft teams in preparation for Coast Guard's arrival.
Paul's head is shaved and his cheeks are coated with a thick beard. Usually he walks around the ship in a white jumpsuit and a pair of Nike running shoes. Each time he passes me, he mumbles, "What's up?" in such a dry tone that gives me the impression that he generally despises most people but has accepted the fact he must interact with them. His casual use of profanity combined with his neon-tipped footwear often makes me forget that he is a three-striped officer.
Assistant managers have one stripe; GMs have two. Department directors and the captain have three stripes on their epaulettes. It is a strange phenomenon to witness how symbolic shoulder decorations can alter a person's psychology. All the striped officers wear white shirts and white pants, a vivid outfit that clearly distinguishes them from the laborers. When I see stripes I often double check that I'm not breaking any rules, and I do my best to appear innocent and obedient.
The white uniforms have a Pavlovian effect on me that makes me slightly tense and more alert. I begin to associate officers and managers with their uniforms as though they are tattoos unable to be removed. I have difficulty imagining these people in civilian clothes, living ordinary lives, shopping for deodorant, taking out the trash, or eating at a restaurant they don't manage. When I chance upon a casually dressed manager, I often do not recognize him.
Whoever created this uniform system understood the division of labor and its subsequent mental side effects. However, when I see Paul in the hallways I often try to envision his personal life, and I wonder how he got here. He is very friendly with many of my coworkers in a mocking way. He strikes me as a former frat boy who half-jokingly bullied guys with inferior practical skills associated with masculinity such as leaning under the hood of a car and vaguely pointing to indistinguishable parts of an engine and giving highly unspecific directions about what to do to get the motor running.
When Paul is in his element, however, he knows how to run the show, and he demands respect. He is a man you do not want to see angry, especially if you are the source of his anger.
During the drill, Paul gives the go-ahead to Hector who stands ready at the crane with his gloved hands and his dreams of bulking up in Southeast Asia.
"Prepare the raft," Hector yells.
I'm not involved in the deployment of the real raft since I'm new. An experienced team is performing the real procedure. The man in my position hands a shackle to his partner who aligns the ring into the crevice of the hook. Using two small rods that look like lipstick cases, the two men attach the pieces together, and now the shell is connected to the crane.
Hector raises the shell by rotating a lever. At this point, Paul playfully undermines Hector's strength and mocks all those protein shakes and daily lunches of quinoa. This mocking is typical of hyper masculine men who harbor deep fears of revealing their feminine qualities, so they make sure to emphasize these exact qualities in other equally hyper masculine men.
Because of the jokes, Hector pumps the lever faster so as to convince his audience of his beastly fortitude. Then he slews the raft outward as the other men hold the left and right lines to stabilize the shell. Once the shell is completely off the deck, the man in my position hands the left line to Hector and pulls on the painter line. One hundred feet of cord gradually emerges from a tiny crevice in the container.
The man gives the line a final tug, the shell bursts open like an air bag in a car crash and dangles below a tangled ball of orange and black. Compressed air canisters hiss. The life raft inflates as it hangs suspended above the water and level with the ship. The bottom of the raft is thick and black, and an orange roof sits atop the base like a tipi. The lip of the raft is only a step away from the ship's edge.
I wanted to board the raft and then get in the water. I wondered if there were saltine crackers stashed inside a pouch somewhere. I tried to imagine drifting out to sea in this tiny float. What if I encountered a real emergency? What would I bring with me? How would I handle surviving at sea with people I barely know?
As soon as I asked myself these questions, I realized this pretend scenario is not so different from surviving on a cruise ship that isn't sinking. Oftentimes there are no instructions of how to act in any given situation. You merely react instinctively to escape pain and and flee toward comfort.
This is what we are all trying to accomplish in life, but in the real world away from the ship we do not practice fleeing in such mechanized ways. On the ship, we prepare ourselves to elude death, while telling ourselves an accident will never happen to us. We prepare to abandon our jobs, our routines, our possessions. We practice how to move on with this life and seek temporary relief. In this manner, every day is a drill for the next.
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