by Jeremy Bates
I tried not to think about this by turning my thoughts to Dom and Laurence, the surprise and relief that would animate their faces when Smiley and I burst through the front door of the little wood cabin. How we would all laugh as Smiley and I recollected our misfortune. Sitting before a roaring fire. Bathing in heat. Cupping a mug of piping hot coffee between my hands. In fact, I could almost smell the smoke of the fire and the dense aroma of the coffee…
Smiley and I crested a small knoll, the other side of which proved to be deceptively steep.
We picked up speed.
“Slow down!” I said.
“Trying!” Smiley said.
We continued to accelerate. The skis beneath my boots vibrated dangerously. I knew I was going to wipe out.
Over Smiley’s shoulder, I glimpsed a snow-covered log.
“Stop!” I said.
“Can’t!” she said, jabbing her poles into the snow in a last-ditch effort to brake.
I could have leapt from the skis, but that would be like jumping ship with the captain still aboard. I gripped Smiley’s waist more tightly.
The tips of the skis struck the log. We both flew headfirst through the air. I landed hard on my shoulder and tumbled down the hill. I came to a rest on my back, dazed and frightened. The middle-of-the-night forest was eerily silent. All I could hear was my ragged breathing and the pounding of blood in my ears.
“Smiley?” I called up the slope. Scratchy snow had rushed down the throat of my jacket. The meltwater trickled down my sternum and spine in icy rivulets. “Smiley?” I repeated, feeling a flicker of disquiet at the lack of a reply.
Standing, I spotted her a dozen feet uphill from me, her powder-blue snowsuit blending like camouflage into the shadow-dappled snow.
I took a step—and cried out in pain as I sank to my knees. My right ankle felt as though it had been replaced with a bagful of crushed glass.
Keeping my weight off it, I limped through the snow until I slumped beside Smiley. She was lying facedown.
“Hey?” I said, my concern metastasizing into full-mounted panic. I tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey?”
She didn’t reply or move.
I rolled her over. The snow was red where her face had been. A three-inch gash ran across her forehead, just below her hairline. Her eyes were closed, her rime-flecked lips parted. I pressed my cheek to her mouth—and almost wept with relief when I detected small, shallow puffs of warm, moist air.
I looked left, right, then down the slope—as though the answers to our exigency would be waiting for me if only I could spot them.
I found no answers. Only the still forest, which almost seemed like a sinister, sentient being watching me to see what I would do next.
We could no longer ski to the bottom of the mountain. Smiley was unconscious. I had strained or broken my ankle. We could not go anywhere.
Which meant I only had one option.
Dig another burrow.
Using my hands—my ungloved one so numb it was immune to the bite of the cold snow—I dug frantically into a drift. Sweat dripped from beneath my wool hat down my forehead, stinging my eyes. My shoulders and arms blazed from the exertion. I kept digging until I had created a trench about six feet in length and three feet deep. Keeping weight off my bad ankle the best I could, I hooked my hands beneath Smiley’s armpits and dragged her into the trench. I folded her arms across her chest, laid down next to her, and pulled her tight against my body to keep her as warm as possible.
Lying there in the inhospitable black night, I had never before felt so alone or afraid. According to my watch, it was nearly midnight. Dawn was another five or six hours away. Would we survive that long? And if we did, would it bring salvation? Dom and Laurence would have alerted the ski patrol that we were missing. They would organize a search-and-rescue operation at first light. Yet they would be tasked with finding a needle in a haystack. It could take them hours to discover us, perhaps even days.
And by then it would be too late.
Despite my weariness and sluggish thinking, the epochal stupidity of the situation was not lost on me. I’d heard numerous stories of people getting lost in the wilderness and perishing from dehydration, injury, or the elements. I’d always wondered how they’d gotten themselves into such perilous positions in the first place. Now I knew from firsthand experience. It began with a single bad decision—such as deciding to ski off-piste in unknown terrain—and it escalated due to a combination of mistakes and more bad decisions.
Suddenly and with great conviction, a stray thought informed me that I was going to die this night. This embarrassed me as much as it terrified me. After all the daring activities I had embarked on in my life (such as climbing to the summit of Mount Blanc in France and white-water rafting in Austria), and after all the dangerous situations I’d escaped (such as being accosted by a maniac with a knife in a German hostel and getting the bends while scuba-diving in the Mediterranean Sea), it seemed both comical and anticlimactic that I would meet my demise on what was supposed to be a relaxing ski trip with friends in the Pyrenees Mountains.
I hugged Smiley a little tighter, hating myself for getting her into this mess. It had been my recklessness that had caused us to collide while skiing downhill, knocking us both off our skis. It had been my decision to allow her to stick with me instead of doing the smart thing and going for help. It had been my insistence to dig the first burrow, and later, to ski tandem down the mountain in the dark. Everything had been my fault.
“I am sorry,” I mumbled through lips that I could barely move. I squeezed my eyes tight, although tears still managed to leak free…freezing instantaneously on my cheeks.
∆∆∆
When I felt myself losing any real urgency or desire to live, I summoned all my willpower to climb out of the trench.
∆∆∆
I crawled through the snow for what felt like hours, though I couldn’t be sure as the numbers on my wristwatch no longer made sense. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet, as whatever blood had once warmed them had retreated to my core to protect my vital organs.
At some point I spotted a light in the distance. A cabin? Our cabin? Yes, I heard the familiar jingle of the bell that hung above the front door. Someone had come outside. Did they see me? Did they know I was here? I wanted to shout Dom’s name, but I couldn’t find my voice. In fact, I could no longer move at all…
∆∆∆
I was curled in front of a woodstove, fighting a powerful urge to urinate. Had I crawled here? Or had someone carried me? It didn’t matter. I was warm, so warm, exercised. No, not warm—hot. Why was I so hot? Was I too close to the stove? Oh God, I wasn’t merely hot; I was burning. I was on fire!
Sitting upright, I yanked off my jacket and my sweater and the long-sleeved shirt beneath, throwing the garments away into the…
…night?
I blinked torpidly. What was I doing outside? I had just been inside. I had been—
In a flash of cruel clarity, I realized there was no cabin and no stove; there never had been.
I swiveled my frozen—and nude—torso to look behind me. There was the trench I had dug, only a few feet away. I hadn’t crawled anywhere.
Moving with glacial slowness, my blood as sludgy as crankcase oil in a cold engine, I dragged myself back into the trench-turned-grave and collapsed on top of Smiley so we could die together.
Chapter 21
I woke to the aseptic smell of disinfectants and bleach and the beep-beep sound of a vital signs monitor confirming I was alive. For a moment I thought I was in the hospital where I’d been taken after the search-and-rescue team had found me, barely alive, on the mountainside. But then the fog cleared from my head, and I realized that was impossible.
Propping myself up on my elbows, I discovered sensors attached to my chest and an intravenous drip feeding fluid and perhaps medication into my left arm. Muzzy, I looked around the institutional room. The walls were cream, the floor gray. A TV hung from a ceiling moun
t. Beneath it were two plastic chairs, bright green, the color of springtime and hope.
The confusion of why I’d been hospitalized lasted for only a moment before the memories came flooding back—the drill sergeant in my face, the prison guards rushing me, one of them choking me—and I thought with a bright species of amazement: It worked! I’m out of the prison! And almost immediately following this revelation: But at what cost?
I rubbed my throat, relieved to find no discomfort or bruising. I swallowed experimentally—and sharp pain exploded in my left ear. It felt as though someone had suddenly and gleefully shoved an icepick into my eardrum. I touched my ear gingerly, winced, and decided to leave it alone.
A little more exploring with my fingers revealed that the tissue around my right eye was sore and tender.
I didn’t remember any of the prison guards striking me in the head, which led me to believe the trauma had been caused after I’d already passed out.
I glanced at the door. There was a little window in it—not unlike the one that had been in my cell door—through which I glimpsed hospital staff and visitors.
Removing the sensors from my chest and the IV catheter from my vein, I swung my legs to the floor. When I attempted to stand, a wave of dizziness dropped me back to the bed. I waited, hoping the nausea in my gut would pass. It didn’t. I shuffled to the bathroom, where I knelt in front of the toilet for a full minute before finally emptying my stomach into the porcelain bowl. Afterward, I still felt somehow…fuzzy…but at least not so squishy inside. I checked my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The skin around my right eye was swollen and red.
Back in the room, I went to the window, which appeared to open only from the top. Looking out, I discovered I was on the hospital’s fifth or sixth floor. Uninspired concrete buildings, traditional Japanese houses with tiled roofs, and grid-like roads alive with traffic stretched to the hazy horizon.
I heard the door open behind me. I turned quickly and saw a female nurse dressed in a pink top and beige pants. She was in her mid-fifties and kind-looking with a stethoscope and identity card on a red lanyard dangling around her neck.
“You are awake,” she said in English.
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you feeling better?”
“So-so,” I said.
“I will get the doctor.”
She left. I went to the door and peeked out the little window. I couldn’t see the police officer who would be guarding the room. I suspected he was sitting either to the left or the right of the door, out of my field of vision.
I returned to the bed and waited for the doctor to arrive.
A few minutes later a man roughly my age in navy scrubs entered the room. He wore thick black-rimmed eyeglasses and one of those ubiquitous surgical masks. The tips of a half dozen pens poked out of his left breast pocket.
He tugged down the mask. “Gaston Green,” he said, reading my name from a form attached to a clipboard he carried. “I am Doctor Shigeaki Kobayashi. Have you been awake for long?”
“Only a few minutes,” I told him.
“How does your ear feel?” he said, stopping before me. I caught a whiff of the leathery smell of carbolic soap.
“It hurts. I can feel the pain all the way along my jaw.”
“May I have a look?” He peered into my ear canal. “It hasn’t recommenced bleeding, which is good. But you will most likely experience some drainage over the next few days, blood and maybe pus as well.” He stepped back. “Unfortunately, you have a perforated eardrum. You’ll need to remain on antibiotics for the next seven days to prevent an infection. I can prescribe a painkiller as well, if you wish.”
“What about my eye?”
“The swelling and discoloration should decrease within a few days. It should be back to normal within a week or two.”
“I am being held at the Tokyo Detention House,” I told him. “Guards attacked me. One choked me. That is why I was unconscious. I do not remember them striking me in the head. Did anyone explain to you what happened?”
“From what I understand,” he said, “you attacked a guard in the prison’s exercise yard. The other guards restrained you. But I do not know the specific details, no.”
“How long will I remain here for?”
“I will recommend you stay overnight for observation, but I’m afraid you will most likely be returned to the prison tomorrow morning.”
I didn’t let my alarm show. Tomorrow morning. So soon! “What time is it now?”
Dr. Kobayashi checked his silver wristwatch. “Two thirty. You were unconscious for a little over one hour. Please rest now. I will come back to check on you later this afternoon.”
When I dared to poke my head into the hospital hallway, I discovered not one but two police officers sitting watch outside the room, one on either side of the door.
I closed the door and despaired.
Had there only been one cop on duty, as Ugo Ndukwe had said there had been during his hospital stay, my plan had been to lure him into the room and incapacitate him in some manner.
But two cops? That was a game-changer. I could not take them both out. Which meant escape would be impossible and everything had been for naught—
The face of one of the police officers appeared in the window in the door. Glowering—he’d likely seen my reconnaissance of the hallway—he wagged a finger reproachfully.
I returned to the bed.
∆∆∆
Half an hour later the kind-looking nurse returned with a lunch tray bearing a bento box that contained vegetables, meat, fish, and tempura. There were also two tablets.
“They are for your pain,” she said, indicating the pills. “You can take them after you have finished eating.”
“Thank you,” I said, accepting the tray and setting it on the bedside table. “Dr. Kobayashi mentioned he would check on me later this afternoon, but I have been feeling very ill. Would it be possible to see him now?”
“What do you mean by ill?”
“Lightheaded, dizzy. Sometimes I feel like I am spinning, like I might simply fall over, or pass out.”
Concern flickered in her eyes, even as she offered a reassuring smile. “I’ll go see if I can find him.”
∆∆∆
Waiting in the darkened bathroom, watching the hospital room through the narrow crack between the door and doorframe, my heart pounded painfully in my chest as I second-guessed what I was about to attempt. Was it reckless? Yes. Would it succeed? Maybe not. But I had no better option. If I didn’t escape the hospital today, I would be installed back in the prison tomorrow morning. I’d likely be sent to solitary confinement for striking the drill sergeant. I’d waste away there until eventually, inevitably, Jaws indicted me on his bullshit charges. I would be tried, convicted, and sentenced to years behind bars in an official prison. This was all worst-case scenario, certainly, but nothing had gone my way since landing in Japan, and I saw no reason to suspect that would change any time soon.
Unless, that is, I took matters into my own hands.
The door to the hospital room opened and Dr. Kobayashi entered. Every muscle in my body received a boost of adrenaline. I barely dared to breathe.
The doctor crossed the room to the bed. “Mr. Green?” he said, speaking to the lumpy form beneath the sheets I’d arranged with a combination of pillows, folded towels, and my balled-up green jumpsuit.
This would not fool him for long. I pushed open the bathroom door and stole toward him. Mumbling something to himself, he tore the sheet back with a flourish. In almost the same instant, he turned to look behind him.
Snagging his shirt below the collar, I shoved him backward off balance and jerked him forward again in a whiplash motion, lowering my head, driving the crown of my skull into his nose.
Cartilage crunched. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, showing the whites. His clipboard hit the floor with a loud clatter.
I eased his sagging body to the gray tiles and dragged the doctor into
the bathroom. I stripped him to his briefs and dressed in his blue scrubs and black loafers. I snapped his surgical mask over my mouth and slid on his black-framed eyeglasses. My reflection in the mirror was a blur due to the prescription lenses. I pushed the glasses down my nose and looked over them.
It was a pretty good disguise, I thought, as Dr. Kobayashi and I shared similar builds and skin tones. The problem was my hair. I had none, while the doctor did. Would the police officers notice?
I hoped not. I prayed not.
But there was only one way to find out.
I returned to the room proper and collected the clipboard from the floor. Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves, I pushed the eyeglasses up my nose and opened the door. Stepping into the hallway felt like stepping onto a stage in front of thousands of spectators with every set of eyes trained directly on me.
Staring fixedly at the clipboard, I went left, passing the seated police officer, keeping an unhurried pace. I was certain he would say something or leap to his feet and restrain me.
He did neither. Elation surged within me.
It was working!
Nevertheless, I knew I wasn’t in the clear yet. A doctor could stop me, or a nurse. Suspicious of my Western eyes, or wanting to ask me an innocuous question. Either way, I would be busted. They’d see my fright. They’d know I was an impostor. They’d alert the cops…
The hallway ended at a T-junction. I glanced up from the clipboard for the first time. Both directions looked identical. I was wondering frantically where the damned elevators were located when I spotted a little green exit sign depicting a running man.