by Bill Rancic
“This weather can’t last much longer. And if it does, then we go find help.”
“You’re out of your mind. The safest place is here, with the plane. Anyone walks out of here, they’ll never be seen again.”
“I didn’t say it had to be you, did I?”
“Who, then? Surely you’re not thinking of yourself.”
“I don’t see why not.”
Of course Bob didn’t see why it shouldn’t be him. He never did. He charged into situations and then made everyone else clean them up—everyone else being Daniel. Well, not this time.
Still, worry nagged at him. The passengers were cold; they had very little food or water. Most of them were hurt, some badly, especially Kerry and Phil. Daniel stood staring at the whiteness swirling overhead and knew that their best chance would be if the snow stopped in the next hour, and the rescue planes could have maybe four or five good daylight hours to find them. Find them, and airlift them to safety.
But if the rescue planes didn’t find them today, people were going to die. It was that simple. Daniel thought of all the injuries he’d seen inside the plane—the broken bones, the bloody limbs, the internal injuries. At least two bad puncture wounds that he’d seen. And Kerry . . . Kerry, with her concussion and her new pregnancy, struggling to stay awake against cold and hunger and pain.
If the planes didn’t come today, it was likely they wouldn’t be coming at all, that they didn’t know where the plane had gone down.
Someone would have to find help, Bob had said. A phone, a town. Someone would need to lead the rescuers to them.
It was insane to think about; it was suicide. Leaving the crash site and walking into the Yukon wilderness with no supplies, no food, no decent equipment? Bob was crazy even to suggest such a thing. Well, let him go. Daniel had people here who needed him, and he wouldn’t leave them, not for anything.
He shuffled back inside, his eyes adjusting to the sudden dark. He answered the questions thrown at him by the shivering survivors as best he could: Are we rescued? Have they found us? He looked around at the sea of hopeful faces, the injured and sick, and shook his head, no. “Not yet,” he said, trying to sound more hopeful than he felt. “But they’re coming. I’m sure of it. Don’t worry, everyone, it will all be over soon.”
One of the younger kids said, I want to go home! until his mother shushed him, saying, “We all want that, so there’s no use crying about it,” and quieted him down again.
Daniel kept his face down, going as far forward as he could in the main cabin until he came to the place where Kerry lay on the floor. He knelt beside her and brushed the hair out of her face. She was cold, cold on her face and hands, and he picked them up and started rubbing them to warm them.
“Kerry,” he said. “Open your eyes, babe. Please.”
Nothing. He bent over her and brushed his hand across her cheek, across the dark circles under each eye like a dusting of soot. “Hey,” he said. “Wake up. It’s morning.”
“Mmmm, no,” she murmured, but she didn’t open her eyes. She looked very young and pale, even the freckles on her nose drained of color. But they were all pale, all weak, suffering in various forms from shock and cold and lack of food. Maybe she wasn’t any worse off than anyone else. Or maybe she was.
How could he have been so stupid, so careless, as to fall asleep when he’d promised to take care of her? He’d sworn he would keep her safe, and the moment she’d needed him the most, he’d failed. I should have set my alarm. I should have woken myself.
You take your eye off the ball for even just a second and someone could die.
He shook her a little more vigorously now. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t do this to me. Please, Kerry. I need you to look at me right now.”
She stirred a little and opened her eyes, briefly fixing on him. “Something’s wrong,” she muttered.
“What do you mean, ‘something’s wrong’?” he asked, but she was out cold again—no amount of calling her name and shaking her would wake her up again this time.
“Beverly!” he exclaimed, waking half the plane with a single word.
Beverly came awake at once and crouched over Kerry. “What’s wrong?”
“She opened her eyes and said, ‘Something’s wrong.’ But then she went back to sleep, and now I can’t wake her up at all.”
Beverly opened each of Kerry’s eyelids and flashed the emergency flashlight in them. She lowered her voice and said, “That’s not good.”
“What do you mean, ‘not good’?”
“I’m not a doctor! Don’t bark at me!” Then she took a breath and said, “I don’t know all the details. She might end up with memory problems. Maybe some physical or mental impairment. If we’re not careful, she could slip into a coma.”
Coma. The word he’d dreaded the most. His beautiful Kerry, damaged—and pregnant. What would a coma do to the baby, out here away from anything but the most rudimentary medical care? “Would it matter if she was pregnant?”
Beverly’s eyebrows lifted. “What do you mean?”
“She said she might be pregnant. A few weeks. She took a pregnancy test, and it came up positive.”
Beverly shook her head as if she couldn’t believe they’d been so careless; Daniel could hardly disagree with her under the circumstances.
“She needs a hospital and an EEG, maybe a CAT scan. I can’t help her like this. I don’t know what else to do. I haven’t worked as a nurse in eight years.” Beverly put her hands out, and Daniel could see that her eyes were hard with frustration and helplessness. There was nothing any of them could do under the circumstances.
Oh, hell.
In a day, they’d gone from planning their wedding to worrying about memory loss, brain damage, coma. Death, though he knew Beverly would never say so out loud.
Come on, Kerry, wake up. Wake up and show me this is all a bad dream, that it’s not as bad as I’m imagining it.
He lifted her eyelids one by one, but she still didn’t stir.
“Is it a coma?” he asked.
“Not yet, I don’t think. She did speak, you said. She opened her eyes. But if we don’t get her help soon . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Isn’t there something I can do?” he begged.
“I hate this waiting around. She needs a hospital.” Bev held out her hands as if to encompass the plane, the passengers, the whole sorry and sordid situation in which they all found themselves. “I don’t even have decent bandages to work with here. And there are some people a lot more hurt than she is. I’ve treated two serious puncture wounds, and there’s at least one compound fracture that I’m worried about. Not to mention your friend Phil. He might have internal bleeding and possibly bladder damage. He’s very pale, and there’s a hard spot in his abdomen where the leg of the chair hit him. That’s usually a bad sign.”
“And you haven’t told him yet.” Daniel looked over at the place where Phil sat with his eyes closed, leaning against the wall of the fuselage.
She glanced at him, too, as if afraid of giving away her concern. “I don’t want him to worry more than he has to.”
“We’re all worried. He deserves to know the truth.”
The former nurse shook her head and changed the subject. “Kerry needs to be airlifted out of here as soon as possible. If we can get any kind of wireless signal . . .”
“We can’t. I tried, believe me. I climbed up to the top of the ridge and checked. Nothing.”
“What about a fire?”
“It wouldn’t do any good until the storm lifts. No one would see it.”
Daniel looked over at the place where Phil sat against the wall of the cabin, his hands pressed against his abdomen as though he were trying to stem the invisible tide of blood inside his body. Daniel thought of the sound he thought he’d heard outside, the low drone of a rescue plane, or had it only been
the wind?
“They’ll come back soon,” he said, mostly to himself.
Bob had talked about leaving, about going for help, walking toward—what? They didn’t know which direction to go. Daniel had told him it was suicide, and it was.
He looked down at Kerry, all the color drained from her face, and thought, Bob can go if he wants to, but I won’t. I’m not leaving her to do his damn bidding, not this time.
13
Phil wandered out of the fuselage into the dim midday light, shielding his eyes to watch the sky for signs of human life other than their own. He felt tired, achy and listless; the spot where the chair leg had hit him felt swollen and a little too firm, as if the flesh beneath were slowly turning to stone. Worst of all, he felt useless, one more of the walking wounded, not well enough to help gather the last of the food or wood for a signal fire, not well enough to dig or, like Beverly, treat the injured, but not sick enough to lie down or sleep, either. All he could do was sit and worry about Kerry, worry about the rescue teams that weren’t coming, worry that he wasn’t doing enough to help anyone or anything.
He could see Kerry asleep on the floor near the front of the cabin, deep inside where it was warmest, Daniel sitting with her head in his lap and stroking her hair, his eyes dark and haunted. Phil knew that look only too well; he’d seen it in the mirror not so very long ago.
So when the inside of the cabin started to feel like a grave, Phil had done the only sensible thing and climbed outside. The cold air on his face should have felt good after a night inside the plane with the collective breath of fifty other people, but it was too cold to be pleasant, only bitter. Yet it was the only place he wouldn’t have to sit and watch Kerry and Daniel suffer, so it would have to do for the moment.
He found a couple of suitcases and piled them one on top of the other to make a seat, pulling the hood up on his coat and tucking his hands inside his pockets. Near a spot next to the fuselage, protected from the wind, a few passengers and the flight attendant from the tail section, Kecia, were trying to get a fire going, but the wood Daniel and Bob had stashed inside the cabin the night before was still damp, and the passengers were only able to get a little bit of paper to burn, a quick puff of light and smoke that flared up and went out almost in the same moment. Phil thought of offering to help, then thought better of it—there were already four people huddled around the makeshift fire pit. Everyone, it seemed, was trying to find ways to fill the hours, trying to find something useful to do with themselves while they waited for the storm to blow itself out.
After a little while Daniel came outside and sat down next to Phil on a couple of carry-on bags, watching the others at their fire-making, his face twisted with annoyance. “You might as well try to get the snow to burn,” he told them. “Look how damp that spot is. You need to scrape all that snow away from the ground or you’ll have nothing but a soggy mess. And you can’t use that wet stuff for firewood, it won’t burn.”
“It might,” answered the flight attendant, whose injured arm Beverly had strapped to her side. “If we can get it to catch.”
“I tried it last night. No good. It might be dry enough in another day.”
“We have to have a fire,” said a figure in a navy-blue coat and black balaclava; Phil thought it was a man until it spoke and revealed itself as a woman. Phil didn’t know why he was surprised; none of the passengers were wearing their own clothes. Everything had become communal property.
Daniel said, “Better take the wood inside and let it dry out. Tomorrow we can try again.”
“We can’t wait until tomorrow,” the woman said, her voice rising to the edge of panic. It was the mother of the little boy with the broken teeth—Zach, Phil thought his name was. He’d never found out the mother’s name. “We’re going to freeze to death out here if we have to wait until tomorrow with no fire.”
“Listen, the storm doesn’t seem to be letting up,” Daniel said. “Our best bet is to stay inside out of the wind.”
“Couldn’t you lie and let me hope?”
Daniel frowned. “What good would that do?”
“Another whole day.” Her voice cracked and her arm went around the boy, who’d come outside looking for his mother. “What will we do?”
Her face began to crumple, and Daniel said, “I tell you what. I could use your help. I might try making some snowshoes. If we had some snowshoes, we could get around a little easier. Maybe find a cell-phone signal or something.”
“Snowshoes?”
“Find some green branches, anything with leaves or needles, anything relatively thin and bendable. The lower branches would work fine.” He turned to the boy, huddled close to his mother. “You look for string, or twine. Anything like that. Bring it to me when you find it.”
“You know how to make snowshoes?” the boy asked.
“I do. It’s easy.”
“You promise?”
Daniel drew his fingers slowly across his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said.
The mother and son jumped up and scurried off to do the things Daniel had asked of them, relief on their faces.
“You really know how to make snowshoes?” Phil asked when they’d gone.
“No, but I’ve worn snowshoes before.”
“Not really the same thing.”
“I might be able to figure it out. It’s kind of like a tennis racket for your foot.”
“Sounds like wishful thinking to me.”
“You have any better ideas?” Daniel asked. They were both silent for a minute, then Daniel said, more gently, “They needed something to do. It’ll keep their minds off how scared they are.”
As the woman and her son were bustling around looking for the things they’d been asked for, judging the worthiness of this or that piece of wood or bit of string, Phil started to see the purpose of it, “purpose” being the apt word. Daniel had given them something to occupy their thoughts and make them feel useful, at least for a little while. In a group of people on the edge of hysteria, a little purpose, a little direction, went a long way. It was no wonder Bob trusted Daniel so much: he understood how to deal with people in terrible circumstances.
Phil watched Daniel stand up, ducking his head to go back inside. Probably checking up on Kerry. She needs a hospital, Beverly had said when Phil asked the nurse about her. A doctor, an EEG scan. She needs an IV and a warm bed and something to eat.
Don’t we all, Phil had said, and went outside to wait.
—
The snow continued all that day and into the dark hours after the sun set and the temperatures dropped, the wind picking up even more. The passengers who’d been sitting outside went back in, driven by hunger and cold, and Phil followed them. They’d eaten what little food they had the night before and early this morning, not bothering to ration, assuming they would be found by the end of the second day. Now there was nothing left. They were facing another night in the cold, this time with nothing to eat or drink.
This was when things would start to get bad. He’d seen it so often at accident sites, after natural disasters, whenever he had to deal with the grieving family members of dead employees. The first day of bad news was always one of shock and slow, desperate acceptance. It was the second day when the anger started, when people who’d received bad news started to ask themselves the hard questions: Why my family, why now, why this? The second day was always the loudest day, the one in which the china got broken, the cars got totaled. The second day was when Phil’s real work began.
The third day, on the other hand . . . Well, with a little luck they wouldn’t be out here for the third day.
It was late, and Phil was resting against the bulkhead when the flight attendant he’d spoken to immediately after the crash—Amber, her name was—went outside with a pan to scoop up a few handfuls of snow and bring it inside for the thirsty passengers. She’d already han
ded out several handfuls of the stuff when Daniel started shouting, “Don’t do that!” startling Amber into dropping the snow, and the entire plane full of passengers turned to look at him. “It will drop your body temperature! You’ll give everyone hypothermia.”
The flight attendant stopped and gave him an irritated look. “What do you suggest we drink? Urine? People are dehydrated.”
“Look, we can live a couple of days without water, but not if we all freeze to death first.”
“I don’t remember you being in charge here.”
“I’m telling you, if you give them snow to drink, you will kill them.”
The passengers were looking up at this exchange, fear and horror on their faces, not sure which of the two of them to believe. On the one hand, they were thirsty. On the other hand, were they willing to risk dying for a drink of water?
Amber shoved the pan of snow at Daniel and said, “Fine, then you be the one to tell them they can’t have anything to drink.”
“Fine.”
Phil watched this blowup in alarm. Just minutes ago Daniel had managed the situation outside with care, taking into consideration the fragile emotional state of the survivors, but now he was causing just as many problems as he was solving, starting to crack under the strain of why me, why now? “Hey,” Phil said to Daniel in a hoarse voice. “Don’t scare them. They’re already scared enough.”
“Someone has to keep everyone alive,” Daniel said. “You going to do it?”
Phil ignored that dig and said, “You’re taking too much on yourself. Why don’t you check on Kerry again? Maybe get a little rest?”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, and I won’t tell you how to do yours.”
Phil didn’t answer. All day Daniel had been bearing the weight of Kerry’s illness, of the frustration and fear of the rest of the passengers. His emotions were stretched to the breaking point, and his co-worker was nothing more than an easy target. Phil knew that. He wasn’t taking it personally.
Phil only said, “This isn’t a Petrol accident. None of this is your job.”