by Jeremy Bates
“Not yet!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Branches are thin!”
“Maybe you should come back down?”
“Little farther!”
There was movement again—then a tremendous crack, like a starter gun going off. A huge commotion followed, branches shaking and snapping as if the tree was suddenly full of riotous monkeys.
He’s falling! Oh my fucking Lord, he’s falling!
Mel and Nina screamed in unison, short, high-intensity bursts of alarm.
John Scott didn’t plummet straight to the ground. It was a staggered descent, like a pachinko ball teeter-tottering through the maze of pins. He would drop five or ten feet until he hit a large branch, flip one way or the other, drop farther, hit another branch, on and on.
He didn’t utter a sound, and I had no idea whether he was conscious or not. All I could see were his limbs flip-flopping every which way.
Then, miraculously, he came to a rest twenty feet up.
“John!” Mel cried. “John!”
He didn’t reply.
“John!”
“Give me a boost,” I said quickly. “I’ll get him.”
Mel didn’t seem to hear me. She was staring up, her eyes bulging in her pallid face. Her hands were no longer steepled but covering her mouth, the way a child does when he or she accidently blurts a swear word in front of Mom or Dad.
“John!”
“…yeah…” It was weak, more a groan than a word.
Alive. “Can you move?” I called.
“…no…”
“Hold on! I’m coming up.” I turned to Mel. “I need a—”
There was another whack-snap as whatever perch John Scott had landed on gave out. The ride began all over again, though this time it was much quicker. One moment he was twenty feet up, the next he plummeted through the final few branches. He hit the hard ground with the dead, heavy sound a medicine ball makes when it strikes the floor of the gym.
I heard him blurt “oomph!” as the last of the air was knocked from his lungs at the same time I heard something much worse: the sharp, wet snick of a bone fracturing.
Then John Scott began to scream.
His face and arms were covered with multiple cuts. His pullover was torn in a half-dozen places, red blooming beneath. He looked as though he had been dragged through a thorny bramble, and I suppose in a sense he had, albeit a gigantic, vertical one.
His left leg—the one he’d had so much trouble hooking over that first branch—was folded in upon itself. It was bent at such an impossible angle I thought his knee must have popped out of its socket. Yet that couldn’t be the case, for below the knee there was a strange protrusion several inches tall pressing tautly against the denim of his loose jeans. I knew what must be causing the alien bulge, and my stomach roiled nauseously.
“Oh gosh!” Mel shrieked. “Look at his leg!”
I barely heard her because John Scott was still screaming, half in pain, half, I think, in dismay as the extent of his injury dawned on him.
I wanted to help him but was paralyzed by my inability to decide what needed to be done. This was no schoolyard gash you got when you tripped during a five-on-five match of hoops, which the doctor could sew up with a few stitches.
His leg was snapped in fucking half.
I turned to Mel and Nina, wanting someone else to take charge. Mel was pointing a crooked finger at John Scott’s leg while hopping up and down on the spot, looking for all the world like Beetlemania had just gripped her forty years late. Nina was facing away, maybe wanting to puke again and discovering she was all puked out.
I ran to the camp, my legs moving at a faster speed than my thoughts. All I knew was that I needed something to make a tourniquet. I stopped at the extinguished fire, hesitated only a moment, then ran to Neil’s tent. I undid one of the guy ropes and ran back to where John Scott lay writhing in pain on the ground.
At least’s he’s moving, I thought. It could have been worse. He’s not paralyzed.
I brushed past Mel and dropped beside John Scott. He had stopped screaming with an apparently Herculean effort. His mouth was stretched into a trembling grimace. A vein pulsed in his forehead.
“I’m going to make a tourniquet,” I told him, looping the string around his thigh.
“No!” he hissed.
“I have to stop the bleeding—”
“You make a fucking tourniquet, you’ll kill my leg. It’ll have to be amputated.”
I hesitated. “What do you want us to do?”
“My pants. Take them off.”
“Why—?”
“You have to reset the bone!”
My stomach dropped as his words hit home. He was right. We were going to have to somehow shove the fractured shinbone back into the flesh.
I undid the laces of his Doc Martins and tugged the shoes off one after the other.
“Mel!” I said. “Help me!”
I fumbled his belt open, unbuttoned his jeans, and unzipped the zipper. Even now, under a crushing level of stress, I was uneasily cognizant that I was performing a homosexual action.
Mel appeared on the other side of him.
“We’re going to pull his pants off,” I said. “Slowly.”
She nodded and together we hitched his pants down over his thighs, stopping when they bunched above the knees. We grabbed the cuffs and slid the pant legs over his feet.
I did my best to tent the denim as it moved over the exposed shinbone, but there wasn’t enough free material and it dragged. I expected John Scott to howl in pain, but he remained resolutely silent except for the ragged, snorting breaths coming through his nose.
Then the pants were off.
“Oh…” Mel said, and that single word was full of horror and disgust.
The injury was something straight out of a film studio’s special effects department, because the sight was so grotesque it couldn’t be real, the waxy skin nothing but silicone rubber, the red mush of exposed flesh red-dyed foam.
John Scott’s tibia protruded a good four inches from the lipless tear it had made in his skin, bright white, like some colossal, prehistoric tooth. Stringy bits of tendon and ligament clung to the bone while blood pooled in the bed of flesh where it was supposed to be, overflowing down his leg in crisscrossing rivulets. His left sock was soaked red.
John Scott had propped himself on his elbows so he could see. I expected him to be big-eyed and slack-jawed with shock and disgust. Instead his face was a steely mask of ferocious determination, and right then I had a newfound respect for the guy. I don’t know how I would have reacted in his situation, but I was sure I wouldn’t have managed his level of composure.
“Now what do I do?” I asked him.
“You gotta push the bone back in.”
“Just push it?”
“Do it!”
I didn’t think you could simply shove a bone back into its fleshy housing. You had to create some sort of traction, stretching the limb taut, so the broken halves of bone didn’t overlap each other.
“Nina?” I said over my shoulder. “Nina?”
“Yes?” she said.
“Go get me a clean shirt, any shirt, and the bottle of whiskey. It should be by the fire somewhere.”
I heard her hurry off.
“Mel,” I said, “get behind John Scott, behind his head.”
“Why?”
“Hurry!”
She crouched behind John Scott’s head and began telling him he was doing good, he was going to be all right. Nina returned and handed me a pink tee and the bottle of whiskey.
“Okay, listen to me, Mel,” I said. “Grab John Scott under his arms, and when I say go, you pull him toward you.”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
She grabbed John Scott beneath the arms. I pressed my knee firmly on his left foot, pinning it in place.
“Okay—go!”
Mel pulled. John Scott cried out. She stopped.
> “Keep pulling!” I said.
“He’s hurting!”
“You gotta keep pulling. Now—pull!”
She pulled. John Scott bit back the pain this time. When his left leg had stretched as far as the intact muscles would allow, I wrapped my hand in the pink shirt, placed it on top of the shinbone, and shoved the shinbone back into place. John Scott screamed. The bone slid home surprisingly easily.
“Last thing,” I said, uncapping the whiskey quickly to keep up the momentum we had created. “This is going to sting. Ready?”
John Scott opened his eyes and looked at his leg mutedly. There was still a huge red weeping gash, but at least there was no bone sticking out.
He nodded.
I poured the alcohol over the wound, using everything that remained in the bottle. John Scott convulsed. A moan escaped his clenched jaws. I wrapped the bloodied shirt around the wound, pressed a tent pole against his lower leg, and fastened the impromptu splint in place with the guy rope.
John Scott flopped onto his back. He was breathing heavily and dripping with perspiration, but I thought he would be all right.
Part of me was thrilled by our accomplishment, but another part told me not to celebrate prematurely, because successful operation or not, John Scott wasn’t going to be doing any walking for a while—which put a major crimp in our exit strategy.
CHAPTER 29
Rather than attempt to move John Scott back to camp, we brought Neil to our new location at the base of the fir so we could keep an eye on him. Then Mel and Nina got busy tending to John Scott’s variety of superficial wounds, which were mostly on his face, arms, and torso. Since there was no water or whiskey to clean the cuts with, they mostly applied pressure with yet another T-shirt to stop the bleeding. Bruises invisible before now started to appear all over his body. His right biceps and shoulder had turned a yellowish-brown, while a large purplish area had appeared on his right thigh, where his Calvin Klein boxer shorts ended. I kept an eye on his left leg below the fracture, making sure it didn’t become numb, cold, or pale, which might indicate a severed nerve or blood vessel. So far so good, it seemed, as I could distinguish nothing but a slight discoloration and puffiness.
He was damn lucky, I thought, to have fallen from the height he had and survived with only a broken leg, as bad as the break was. Nevertheless, he was far from home free. The risk of infection was possible during any open fracture, especially one that occurred in the wild where there were no proper disinfectants or antibiotics. Moreover, he might be bleeding internally which we were not aware of. Best case scenario then: doctors drive a metal rod down the marrow canal of his tibia and he sets off airport alarms for the rest of his life. Middle case, he gets gangrene and loses the leg. Worst case, he goes into hemorrhagic shock and suffers either brain damage or death.
The bottom line was that we had to get John Scott and Neil to a hospital, pronto. Unfortunately, unless the cavalry hadn’t totally bungled things up and were still coming to rescue us, the possibility we get to a hospital any time soon seemed extremely unlikely.
My stomach growled hungrily. It obviously didn’t care about anything except getting fed. I swallowed, which was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The headache continued to throb, only now it would flare up if I moved my head too fast. Although it was still morning, I wanted to close my eyes and drift off into sleep, to get away from all this, but that was not an option.
Mel came over and joined me beneath the pine tree where I had retreated to so I could think about our next move without distractions.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I said.
“What are you doing over here?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you mind if I sit here with you?”
I shook my head, and she snuggled against me.
“John Scott is doing…okay.”
“Good,” I said.
“You saved his leg.”
“I did what he told me to do.”
“It might have gotten infected.”
“It still might.”
We went quiet.
She said, “I want to go home, Ethan.”
“Me too, Mel. Me too.” I wrapped an arm around her—and felt something press into my side. I glanced down. “What’s in your pocket?” I asked.
She sat up straight again. “My pocket? It’s—nothing.”
“Mel?”
She was staring at an invisible spot on the ground ahead of her, as if by not acknowledging me I would forget about her. An ostrich with its head stuck in the ground had a better chance of being more inconspicuous.
“Show me,” I said, my mind already three steps ahead, trying to guess what she could be hiding. My first suspicion was a phone—but that made no sense.
“It’s nothing,” she repeated.
“Then show me.”
“No.”
“I’m not letting you leave until I see what it is.”
“Jeez, Ethan! You don’t own me.”
“You’re starting to worry me, Mel. What is it?”
“It’s nothing! It’s just—it’s food. Okay?”
She unzipped her pocket angrily and removed from it a rectangular yellow box. It was a CalorieMate Block, a flavored energy-supplement snack you could find in any Japanese convenience store. I’d tried one years ago solely because they were featured in the Metal Gear Solid video game series. The main character, Snake, eats them to keep his stamina up. Made almost entirely of sugar and fat, they likely do boost your stamina, though they taste like dry shortbread.
“Where did you get that?” My tone wasn’t accusing…but almost.
“It was in one of the small pockets in my backpack.”
“How long have you had it for?”
“I bought it at the Mini Stop.”
That wasn’t what I meant. “Why didn’t you share it with everyone at breakfast?”
“I didn’t know I had it then.”
“So how long have you known about it?”
“What does it matter, Ethan?”
“It matters because the rest of us have been starving, Mel, that’s why.”
“No one’s been starving. People can go weeks without food.”
Maybe it was her insolent tone, or her refusal to fess up to what she’d done, but I snapped. “Neil’s dying, Mel,” I said. “He’s thrown up or shit out everything inside him. He doesn’t have the strength to stand on his own. Weeks without food? He’s not going to last another night. And you’ve had food the entire time?”
She accomplished the feat of paling and blushing at the same time, her face draining of color except for rosy patches on her cheeks. “I—I just found it this morning, after breakfast.”
I took the box from her and shook out the contents. Two of four bar-shaped cookies emerged.
“Were they good?” I asked.
“You can’t judge me, Ethan,” she said quietly. “You have no right to judge me.”
“I’m not judging you,” I lied.
“I was so hungry,” she said. “I found it this morning, and I was so hungry. I just took a little bit. I was going to share it with everyone, but it tasted so good. And—and I put it back. I was saving it in case someone really needed it.”
“Neil needed it,” I said.
“Will you stop with Neil! Look at him—he can’t eat anything. He’ll throw it up again. Then it goes to waste. Like you said, he might not even…he might not even survive.”
I stared openly at her. Was I really hearing this? This wasn’t the Mel I knew. She had a heart of gold. She always put others first. And now she was hoarding a vital resource and willing to throw Neil to the wolves to appease her hunger?
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, and her voice warbled, as if she was on the verge of tears. “Don’t do that. It’s not my fault. I was hungry. And it was mine.”
“Enjoy the rest,” I said.
“Fuck you, Ethan! You can’t judge me. You have no right.”
The tears began to spill. “You would have done the same thing. If it was yours, you would have done the same thing.”
I didn’t say anything. I wanted her to go.
“I’m the smallest,” she went on. “Everyone’s bigger than me. You have more fat reserves—”
“Shut up, Mel. Okay? Just shut up.”
She glared at me, biting her lower lip.
“Do you want some?” she asked.
I looked away from her.
“I’ll divvy it up now.”
“Do what you want.”
She took the remaining two cookies from my hand and broke them into four even pieces. “Look—for you, Nina, John Scott, and Neil. I won’t have any more.”
I stared at the brown chocolate-flavored pieces in her hand.
I said, “Give mine to Neil.”
“Don’t be—”
“You heard me.”
“Right—because you’re Mr. Noble.” She shoved away from me. “Fuck you, Ethan. Fuck you. I hope you starve.”
I watched Mel return to the others and dole out the CalorieMate. I couldn’t hear what she was saying—I was a good fifty feet away—but I imagined she was telling them where she’d gotten it from. Then she went to Neil and tried to feed him. Despite what I’d told her about Neil needing food, I didn’t think the cookie would do him any good. It would dry his mouth out more than it already was. And even if he somehow swallowed it, he would, as Mel pointed out, likely vomit it up again. Nevertheless, I had been angry at her deception. I had wanted to hurt her.
I rubbed my eyes. What was happening to me? It was just a goddamn cookie. We had much more important things to deal with.
I went back to contemplating our next move, and the dilemma that we now had more bodies to evacuate than capable hands to transport them. Because even if we left Ben and Tomo behind, Mel, Nina, and me couldn’t carry both John Scott and Neil. Which meant we remained where we were for yet another night, or we left one of them behind. Staying put, I believed, was out of the question. It had been nearly thirty-six hours since any of us had anything apart from whiskey to drink. Neil, if he survived the night, would be in critical condition. The rest of us would be weak and sluggish. So we had to act, and we had to act now rather than later, while we still had our energy and were thinking clearly. That meant leaving here. But who did we take? Neil or John Scott? Both needed medical attention immediately, so the question became, who needed it more?