by Bill Rancic
“Everything you’ve done for me the past couple of days. It was above and beyond the call of duty.”
He smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. “I didn’t do it for duty,” he said. “I’m glad you’re doing better. We were really afraid for you for a while there. We thought you might end up in a coma.”
She touched the bruise on her head and said, “I don’t know that I’m all better yet, but I suppose being awake is a good start.”
“When we get rescued, they’ll give you an MRI and make sure everything’s okay. I’m sure you’ll be fine,” he said.
She sat and watched him carefully. There was a tension around Phil’s mouth and eyes that gave him away: he knew more about this situation than he was telling. What was he not saying?
“You had this happen before, didn’t you?”
He smiled, grimly. “I know a little something about it, yes.”
“So tell me,” she said.
“You don’t want to hear about my life.”
She waved her arms around, encompassing the plane, the passengers, the boredom and cold. “You have a better time to talk to me than now? Come on, let’s hear it.”
And so he told her about Emily, her diagnosis, her treatment. How the cancer moved from her ovaries throughout her whole body, eventually metastasizing in her brain. How it changed her moods, her personality, made her angry, made her hateful. How he’d cared for her evenings and weekends for months on end, working all day to keep their health insurance and then tending his dying wife all night to keep her comfortable, keep her alive. It was the most beautiful picture of devotion she’d ever encountered, and it made her desperate, thinking of Daniel freezing in the snow and herself unable to help him in any way, unable to do anything but sit and wait. As helpless as Phil had been, watching Emily die little by little. At least Phil had gotten to be with Emily when she died. Kerry might never see Daniel again.
When he was done, she said, “It’s possible he’ll never come back, isn’t it? Daniel, I mean. We might get rescued, and if he doesn’t come back, I may never know what happened to him.”
Phil said, very quietly, “It’s possible, yes.”
She shook her head to get rid of the image of Daniel half-buried in snow, his face blue. “Would you have gone? If it had been your wife, your Emily, would you have left her?”
Phil was silent for a little while. He said, “I did leave her.”
“What?”
There was a grave hesitation on his face, emotions crossing one over the other so quickly Kerry could hardly keep up with them. “I left her once. At the end.”
“Why?”
“I—” She could see him fighting with himself, trying to decide how much to trust her, trying to decide if he wanted her to know so much. If he could live with her knowing. Then he said, “There was a day, a terrible day, when I’d had enough. She was so sick, and I was exhausted and wrung out. She’d been throwing up all day, and her medicine was making her hallucinate. She thought I was her father one minute, and then the next minute she said I was trying to kill her, that I was poisoning her food. She hit me, and I . . . I lost it. I walked out the door and got in the car and drove around.”
“Where did you go?”
He told her about driving to the lake. The towel, the stove, the fire—everything. She could hear his voice cracking, breaking.
“My God,” Kerry said.
She was thinking how lucky they were, how much worse it could have been, but Phil’s face crumpled in horror and self-recrimination. He was punishing himself for what he saw as an unforgivable act. How long had he been beating himself up for this so-called crime? For a moment of entirely human weakness in the face of devastation?
“The home-health nurse covered for me, said she’d sent me to the store to get Emily’s medication, but she knew, she knew I’d left. It was only because of the nurse that I didn’t go to jail, only because of a neighbor I didn’t kill my own wife through negligence.”
“Phil, I’m so sorry—”
“I’m a horrible person, Kerry. I don’t deserve to be happy, I don’t deserve your pity or your friendship.” His voice was so choked with emotion he could hardly breathe; the sight of him gasping for air brought her to tears. No wonder he’d been so reserved, so cold all this time. No wonder he never talked about himself. He’d been shouldering the most terrible self-hatred she’d ever seen. Here it was, naked and human, and beautiful, in its way.
She stood up and went to him immediately, putting her arms around his shoulders and letting him sob into her neck as she said, “You didn’t kill her. You didn’t cause her cancer or give her hallucinations. You had a moment of self-preservation, Phil. That’s all.”
“I didn’t, I left—”
“The nurse didn’t turn you in because she knew what you were dealing with. She’d probably seen it a hundred times before. Everyone has his breaking point.”
“She was my wife. I should have been there to take care of her every minute.”
“And if you hadn’t left, she still would have died,” Kerry said. “You have to forgive yourself. That’s what she would want, I’m sure of it.”
“You think so?”
“Of course,” Kerry said. “She loved you.”
23
Daniel woke with the first light of the morning on his face and the feeling that he was alone.
He sat up. It was dawn, the light growing blue around the edges of the world, but the snow had stopped. For the first time in days, the wreck would be visible from the air. The lost passengers could be found. He and Bob could start back immediately, he thought, and started gathering his things, the first real hope he’d had in days making him move faster than he’d thought possible.
He rolled over to tell Bob the good news and only then realized why he’d thought he was alone: the old man wasn’t in the shelter. He’d taken his roll of coats and blankets and gone. His footsteps—the big fish-shaped print of the snowshoes Daniel had helped him make with duct tape—led down toward the frozen creek, then went downstream, farther away from the wreck.
Damn. He knew exactly what had happened: Bob had woken early, seen that the skies were clear, and known that Daniel would want to go back. Damn him! Bob was so sure this was the way to help, that there’d be a town just around every hill. He must have thought he could keep walking and find help, find a road on his own. He hated waiting around for someone else to rescue them, and he always had to be right—it had to be his way.
He’d left because he’d been sure, he’d known, that Daniel would come after him.
Not this time, Daniel thought. Let him freeze his stupid ass out here. You don’t have to go after him. You don’t have to. The old man’s lost his mind. The only smart thing to do is turn around and go back and wait with the others.
That wasn’t such an easy decision, though. They’d been walking for two days. It would take two to get back, at least. But if there was a town nearby, if they were close . . .
Jesus. He was doing the same math Bob had, apparently. Whichever direction he chose might be fatal. There was no way to know.
The wind was so powerful that it felt like it was pushing him backward with all its might. He was weak from hunger and lack of sleep. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were completely numb. His hands, too, were literal blocks of ice, an icy blue-white that ran nearly the length of each finger. Frozen solid. He could no longer feel his fingers well enough to tie on his snowshoes or unzip his pants without Bob’s help. And he needed to piss, badly.
Using the edges of his gloves, he rolled the pants down over his hips, gasping from the feel of the cold on his genitals. Oh God, hurry up.
He looked down and saw a dark-brown stream staining the snow. That was a bad sign.
His most urgent need taken care of, he wrangled his pants back up and tried to think. Near the creek lay
a small bloody bundle of fur that had been a rabbit, its fur matted with blood. Most likely a fox had gotten it the night before. The fox needed to eat; it was a fox, after all. Daniel couldn’t spare any pity for the rabbit, not under the circumstances. Then again, he was thinking that the rabbit, given a choice, would probably have preferred to live.
Keep your eye on the ball. You take your eye off the ball for even just a second and someone could die.
There were so many variables Daniel couldn’t control. If the black box was working properly. If the rescue planes were near enough to hear it. If Phil managed to live long enough to tell the search crews the direction Daniel and Bob had gone.
If Kerry was still alive. Too many ifs.
At last he gathered his bundle of coats and blankets quickly and set out after Bob, though he didn’t see any sign of the old man on the horizon. He must have left much earlier than Daniel had thought. So he walked. Without snowshoes, it was extremely difficult going, so he stuck to the creek, where the snow was thinner over the ice. The wind, which had moved in from the north now that the storm had blown itself out, roared down the valley floor between the hills and right into Daniel’s face like an angry bear. More than likely the rescue planes would find the wreck today. More than likely Phil would tell them the direction Daniel and Bob had gone. More than likely they would reach a road or a town sometime today. It was still possible, wasn’t it?
It was also possible that the rescue planes, sent in their direction, would find nothing but two men from Chicago frozen to death in the snow.
He didn’t want to admit to himself that half the problem was stubbornness, his own as much as Bob’s. He’d set out to do this thing, to find help. He’d promised Kerry that he would see it through to the end. He couldn’t go back.
By noon he’d made little progress—only about two miles by Daniel’s reckoning—so he stopped to catch his breath and drink his little ration of water and refill his bottles. His face was so stiff he could hardly move it. Probably it was white with frostbite; he’d seen photos of mountain climbers with the planes of their cheeks and forehead blackened with it, the tips of their noses damaged beyond repair. Daniel hardly needed a mirror to know that his own face must look similarly wind-blasted, though it was much too late to worry about disfigurement, about scarring. Staying alive was the only thing that mattered.
The only thing in the world was snow, and the frozen dark line of the creek. The wind, the sun. He pulled his coat against him. His eyes hurt from staring at all that white in the blinding sun, but nowhere did he see a speck of a plane or hear the thwack-thwack of helicopter rotors. The only sound was the rattle of his own breathing. His heart still pumping. Moving him closer to—what? He didn’t even remember anymore. He picked up his feet and put them down without even remembering why.
Not long after noon, his breath so loud in his ears it drowned out the wind, Daniel found Bob sitting with his back against a tree trunk to one side of the creek bed. It was a bad spot to stop, not sheltered enough; the wind was shaking every stray fiber on Bob’s clothes. He’d taken off his snowshoes and sat with them in his lap, loose in his hands, but he wasn’t looking at them, wasn’t trying to put them back on. He was breathing heavily—as Daniel walked up, he could see the puffs of white coming out of his mouth one after the other so quickly they were virtually indistinguishable—and his face was purple with strain underneath its coating of frostbite.
For a minute neither man spoke. The wind was louder than words, and anyway, it felt like too much effort when simply breathing hurt. To acknowledge the truth would have been to acknowledge that it had been a mistake to make the effort, and Bob never admitted to his mistakes.
Instead he made a noise of pain, a gasp.
“What’s wrong?”
“Damn.”
“Pain? Where?”
“My chest. Like a locomotive is sitting on me.”
Daniel opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind. What he wanted to say was, I can’t say I’m surprised, the way you smoke. It’s a wonder it didn’t happen years ago. Instead he only said, “Here, lie down. Breathe slowly. I’ll get you some water.”
“No point.” Bob’s face twisted with pain again. “Sorry. About this. I’m sorry. You wanted to turn around and go back this morning. To wait with the others. Right?”
Daniel looked up at the blue sky. Surely by now the rescue planes would be circling, they’d be headed for the wreck. Back at the crash site, they were probably already building a signal fire. If Phil and Bev had managed to keep Kerry alive long enough, she might be in the hands of medical professionals by the end of the day.
“They’re probably being found as we speak.”
“Yes?”
He shaded his eyes against the glare of the snow. “If they make a fire, they’ll be visible from miles away. It’s just a matter of hours now.”
“I’m sorry,” Bob said. “You should have. Turned back this morning. Left me out here. Would have served me right.”
“I wouldn’t have made it. It was too far. We’re better off sticking together.”
Daniel closed his eyes and tipped his face to the sky. Snow was falling onto his wind-blasted face. He could feel the urge to lie down powerful inside him, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
“You still have your lighter?” Daniel asked.
Bob gave him a look that was full of questions, but then he nodded and indicated the inside pocket of his parka. Daniel took it out, then set about clearing a spot of its snow, scraping and scraping until he got to the bare dirt beneath. He gathered the lowest branches, the driest and deadest ones, along with some pine boughs. Then he took the bit of paper and dry kindling and, using Bob’s lighter, set the whole thing aflame.
The little orange glow was like the first ray of hope in that white place. He added a larger branch to the fire, and when it was going enough, he set the green branches on top, watching the smoke rise and rise into the clear blue sky.
When he’d built up a good column of smoke, he sat next to Bob in the snow, feeling exhaustion overtake him, and closed his eyes.
24
They heard the first plane around noon. It was the boy, the kid with the broken teeth, who noticed it first—Zach, Kerry thought his name was. He’d stood up and pointed at the sky, insisting the plane was there, and the hopeful adults had shaded their eyes against the bright sunlight and waited with their breath in their mouths. They waited, but the blue sky showed nothing but a few wisps of cloud, and after a few moments the mother turned to the boy and said, “It’s nothing, you heard nothing.” But the boy insisted he was right, it was there, he was right, he was right.
The adults waited, and in a minute they, too, saw the white shape of the plane moving between the hills, and as one they jumped up and waved and shouted, “It is a plane! We’ve been found, we’ve been found!”
Except that the plane was too far away to see them, too far away for them to be sure. Outside in that bright air, Kerry could see that the sun was nearly overhead, the shadows shortening. The minute her face hit the air outside, she felt how much colder it was, how bitter—the storm had blown itself out and left a frigid dome of icy air in its wake. She shielded her eyes and looked. The plane was here. It had to be here, somewhere.
In the far distance, she spotted a small white turboprop making its way slowly across the blue sky a few miles to the north. But something was wrong—it wasn’t moving like a rescue plane. It wasn’t coming toward them. It was off in the distance, like a ship’s sail seen against the horizon. Kerry stood and watched it cross between the crests of two low hills.
A voice spoke at her elbow: “Someone found us?” It was Amber, the first flight attendant, standing outside in her foraged coat and boots, watching the plane cross the distant sky.
It was too far away to see them, Kerry was realizing, barely more than a white dot on the horizo
n. What’s more, it was going in a relatively straight line, not circling, not turning in the air like a search plane might. Was it a search plane? Or merely traveling from one place to another, oblivious to the fact that there was a missing transcontinental jetliner somewhere below? Either way, it was too far away to spot the wreckage where they stood.
“They must have,” Kerry said. Though she felt a profound sense of unease, she thought it would be best to sound certain.
Amber watched with her for a minute. Then she said, “They don’t see us. We need something to signal with. Look for as many green branches as you can find.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Trying to make smoke,” she said, and ran off to find Phil.
Kerry and the others broke off branch after branch, dozens of people working furiously, working with the most hope they’d felt all week.
By the time Amber came back with the lighter, the plane had moved so far off to the north Kerry was afraid there was no way their little bit of smoke would be visible. Still, they were going to try, Amber said, putting the greenest branches on the fire to smoke. In a few minutes, they had a towering black cloud billowing up hundreds of feet into the sky. If it was visible over the treetops, if anyone was still looking for them, surely they’d find it.
When the fire was going strong, the flight attendant took Kerry by the elbow and said, “You should go inside. Phil’s not doing so well. He was asking for you.”
Kerry picked her way through the dark inside the plane to the place where Phil lay. “They coming?” he asked, his breath coming in little gasps. Beverly was hovering over him, touching his belly, feeling the hard spot there, the place where she said the blood was pooling into his abdominal cavity. He was ghastly pale now, a green tinge around his mouth and eyes. Bleeding to death, Beverly had said. The former nurse gave Kerry a grim look. He’ll die today, her look said. It said, There’s nothing more I can do.
“Soon,” Kerry told Phil, and was pleased when he gave her a little smile. “I promise. They’ll be here any minute.”