Chapter 12 — The Cable Splicer Beneath the Sea

The Man Who Had Two Fears

At five o'clock in the morning, with one hour left before the diving team departed for the reinforcement shift, Sơn found Nghiêm Việt Trung sitting alone at the stern of the ship, holding a satellite phone but not calling anyone, just staring at the bright screen as if trying to decide something.

"Not sleeping yet?" Sơn asked, sitting down a distance away from him, his voice now much less defensive than the tense exchange on the first day.

"Can't sleep for two days," Trung replied, putting his phone in his pocket. "Every time I close my eyes I think of the list of unfinished tasks, the unanswered calls, the people waiting for me on the other end of the line."

"You have relatives on Cồn Nga island, right?" Sơn asked directly, based on a hunch formed from the way Trung reacted every time the island was mentioned, a tension that went beyond normal work responsibilities.

Trung was silent for a moment, then nodded slightly, as if admitting this to a near-stranger was much easier than telling a colleague at the office. "My mother lives there, with my aunt. She moved to the island to live with her since my father passed away, almost ten years ago."

"How is your mother?"

"She has end-stage kidney failure and must undergo regular dialysis three times a week at the island medical station. A mobile dialysis machine connects data to the provincial hospital so doctors can remotely monitor and adjust the regimen when needed," Trung said, his voice lowered, revealing a part of himself that he rarely showed anyone at work. "Without a network connection, the purifier still works mechanically, but no one can monitor abnormal indicators in real time anymore. If there are complications, the island medical station will have to handle it themselves without any remote expert opinion, like last night's maternity case before we were reconnected."

Sơn sat quietly, understanding why Trung was so urgent that he was almost desperate in the first calls when the ship had not yet left the port. "So all this time we lost connection, I didn't know if my mother was okay?"

"I don't know anything," Trung replied, his voice cracking a bit, for the first time revealing real emotions instead of the assertive appearance of a regional technical director. "I tried to contact the medical station's backup satellite phone, but that line prioritizes emergency cases, I don't want to use it just to check on my mother when there might be someone else who needs it more."

"She is seventy-two years old this year," Trung continued, as if once he opened his mouth, the things he had kept secret for many days began to flow out unstoppably. "Since the day my father passed away, she absolutely refused to come live with me in the city, saying that she was used to the sea, used to the wind, used to the smell of dried fish drying in my aunt's yard. I couldn't argue with her, so I installed the best portable dialysis machine I could find for her, and convinced the island medical station to periodically monitor her, on the condition that the data is always transmitted to the provincial hospital via a network connection."

"What about my aunt, is there anything I can do to help you in times like these?" Sơn asked, wanting to understand more fully the picture that Trung was carrying in his heart.

"My aunt is also sixty-five this year, her health is not bad but not enough to handle complicated medical situations," Trung replied. "She can only stay by my side, hold my mother's hand, and call someone at the medical station when there is anything unusual. But if the medical station cannot contact a higher-level hospital to ask for advice, then all my aunt can do is just wait in anxiety, just like I am waiting here."

"Sounds like a tough trade-off," Sơn said.

"That's true, but at that time I believed it was safe, because this cable line had never had any major incidents during its eight years of operation." Trung smiled softly, a smile more bitter than happy. "I work in the telecommunications industry, I understand better than anyone that no system is invulnerable, but people still tend to believe that disaster will not fall exactly when they need it the most."

"That's the real reason why you urged us from the beginning, not just to report to the provincial leaders," Sơn said, not a question, but a confirmation.

"That's right," Trung admitted. "I'm sorry for not making it clear from the beginning. I think if I said personal reasons, people would think I was taking advantage of my position to prioritize personal matters, so I only talked about the number of four thousand people on the island, although that is also completely true."

"Those two things are not mutually exclusive," Sơn replied, his voice softer than Trung expected. "You can both take care of your mother and really care about the other four thousand people. None of us think you're fake, even if you haven't said your own reason."

Trung looked at Sơn, something in his eyes softened, as if part of the burden he had carried for many days had just been lifted. "You said I was a man with two fears, right?" He asked, repeating a phrase Sơn had used not long before in a tense meeting. "Scared of losing my mother, and scared of watching thousands of others suffer the same fate because I didn't do it fast enough."

"I don't think it's a weakness," Sơn said. "People who fear nothing are the ones to worry about, because they have nothing to lose, and people with nothing to lose often make the worst decisions."

A more comfortable silence fell between the two, different from the tension of previous exchanges. In the distance, the sound of waves crashing against the side of the ship was still steady, but now the sound no longer felt purely menacing, but more like a common count that both men, in different ways, were trying to keep up with.

"I have a favor to ask you," Trung said after a while. "If possible, when the connection is stable again, I want to call my mother before calling anyone else, even before I report to the provincial leadership. I know that sounds selfish."

"Not selfish at all," Sơn replied, stood up, preparing to return to the cabin to prepare for the upcoming dive. "That's the first thing I would do if I were in your position. Just keep your phone with you, I'll let you know as soon as the connection is reinforced." Trung nodded, clutching the satellite phone in his hand as if it were the most precious thing he owned right now. When Sơn walked a few steps, he called after him.

"Mr. Sơn," Trung said, his voice more sincere than at any time during the past two days. "Thank you, for listening, and for doing the job I never had the courage to do."

Sơn stopped and turned his head to look at him for a moment. "Everyone is doing what they can do best, in their own way," he said, then continued walking towards the preparation compartment.

In the preparation compartment, Bách was checking the specialized sandbags and cable protection shields that would be brought down during the next dive, while Chu Tuệ Lam re-measured vital signs one last time before allowing Sơn and Bách to enter the compression chamber. Thư stood nearby, having changed from the night shift, preparing to hand over the liaison position for a much longer work schedule than previous shifts.

"Have you been talking to Mr. Trung for so long?" Bách asked when he saw Sơn walk in, unable to hide his curiosity.

"YES," Sơn replied briefly, not going into details of Trung's private story, although his voice had a completely different tone than when he was at the stern of the ship. "He's not the type of person I initially thought. Everyone has their own reasons to be afraid, just not everyone knows how to say it," Bách nodded, did not ask further, just continued his work with a new focus, as if that brief statement was enough for him to see Trung, and perhaps even Sơn himself, in a different light.

Thư looked at the clock on the wall, there were forty-five minutes left before the dive officially started. She quietly checked the entire communication system one last time, not because she suspected there was a problem with it, but because she had learned, after only three short days on this ship, that careful preparation was never too much, especially when ahead was a dive that everyone, even if no one said it out loud, felt its weight greater than any previous dive. Forty-five minutes, she counted in her head, then got down to business, trying to keep her mind occupied with the numbers instead of with thoughts of what might happen at the bottom of the ocean in the next few hours.