He Broke My Bones to Keep My Heart

Corinne Hayes has spent six years training Echo, a six-ton bull orca at Pacific Coast Marine Park, until a performance goes horrifically wrong: Echo clamps his jaws around her right calf and drags her to the bottom of the tank. She wakes in hospital with her right leg gone below the knee. For twenty-seven days her husband Garrett never leaves her bedside, and even her surgeons call him a saint.

Six months later, drawn back to the facility, Corinne overhears Garrett and her former apprentice Tessa Ward in the locker room. Tessa speaks of Echo being trained behind Corinne's back to latch onto a right leg and dive three times, and asks whether the four-million-dollar accidental disability payout has cleared. Garrett answers that ruthlessness was needed for Tessa to stand beside him on the main stage.

Corinne confronts them, then finds a closed-facility log signed by Garrett and verified by Tessa, describing conditioning of a right-side target. She photographs every page. What she does with what she now knows is hers to decide.