So far there had been 20 days and 20 nights of non-stop, torrential, pitiless rain. Stuffed to the gills with animals two-by-two, the Ark wasn't a pleasant place.
“This has got to be your stupidest idea yet. How long did you say we have to keep this up?”
Did Noah have to hear that again?
What would his wife be like on day 28? Or 39?
“I told you. We're just following orders.”
They glared at one another in the limited, dank space available with so many animals.
“Orders? You had an order to float around with two rhinos?”
She had a point. Rhinoceroses are terribly large, ungainly, and far from pleasant passengers. They are provoked by the slightest insult.
“Hippos are even worse.”
Another good point. And Hippos take up even more space than rhinos.
“Noah, did you know there'd be 40 days and nights of this? I mean, before you agreed to become captain of this… This…”
What was the word?
“Do you mean Ark?”
“No, I don't mean Ark.”
“How about ship?”
“No, I don't mean ship either.”
It was more like a floating garbage barge.
Everyone enjoys a pleasant voyage, maybe a day at most. At that time, boats were wooden and flat-bottomed. The Ark was, well, in her opinion, ridiculous. “Do you realize we have weasels here, Noah? Who wants to be shoulder-to-shoulder with weasels?”
His defense, again, was following orders. From Noah's point of view it was simple. If you hear a booming voice from out of nowhere – seemingly from out of a whirlwind – shaking you to your very foundations, commanding you to do something, you do it.
“Suppose it told you to sacrifice one of the children? I suppose you'd do that?”
“Who'd ever ask for anything like that?”
She asked out of frustration. It's difficult to clean up from rhinos.
After the third day, she turned a green color from seasickness.
By the end of the first week, she gave up on any idea of having a night of restful sleep.
Now into the 20th day afloat, she disliked all creatures great and small. “Noah, I thought that there'd always be some relief, no matter how bad it got, when you talked about the Ark.”
Her face might've been a bowl of split pea soup, that shade of green, if soup could have so many lines of irritation.
“Look… I'm just following directions.”
“Yeah… But I never thought it would get so I didn't like platypuses.”
They are adorable creatures. Everyone likes them.
“But try to sleep when they're squirming and growling all night.”
Platypuses are nocturnal creatures. When one of them lays an egg right by you, that egg takes up added space. There's only so much room you can give up – that is, little – when you're pressed next to a rhino. Next to a hippo… It's even worse…
She looked at her wet, bearded husband.
At the so-called "captain".
“Alright, Captain Noah, from now on when it comes to cleaning up, you take care of the hippos…”
David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).