Alex Ryan, Stop That!

by Claudia Mills

  He looked at Dave and shook his head slightly. He hoped Dave had the sense not to say anything about the true identity of the rattlesnake.

  Then he looked back at Marcia. Her ankle certainly looked bad. It was twisted in such a strange way. Alex had never seen a normal ankle twisted like that.

  First aid. He couldn’t believe he was actually going to use his first-aid training, after all. What had he learned in first aid? Something about ripping up your underwear to make bandages … Alex forced himself to focus. He was a good student, even if he was also a smart-aleck. He could handle this.

  “Okay,” Alex said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “There’s no bleeding anywhere, right?”

  “Her knees and hands are skinned, but they’re not really bleeding,” Lizzie reported. She looked relieved to have someone else taking charge.

  “Okay,” Alex said again. “Shock. We need to prevent shock. She’s lying down. That’s good.” Of course, she probably couldn’t stand up. “We need to—um—loosen any tight clothing.”

  Lizzie checked and said, “I don’t think she’s wearing anything tight.”

  “We need to cover her with something.” From his pack he pulled out a sweatshirt and spread it over Marcia’s shoulders and chest, like a blanket. So far Marcia hadn’t reacted to anything he had said or done. He was sure she wasn’t still giving him the silent treatment, so he knew she was really in pain.

  He knelt down to examine Marcia’s ankle. He was a bit vague on how you were supposed to know if it was broken or not. What you weren’t supposed to do was jerk it first this way, then that, and see if the person screamed, or if any of her bones suddenly popped through the skin. When in doubt, you were supposed to leave it alone.

  A phrase came back to him from their first-aid class. “Immobilize the joint. We should immobilize the joint.”

  “That’s right,” Lizzie said. “What should we use for a splint and a bandage?”

  Alex turned to Dave, to see if he agreed with their plan for treatment. Dave, staring down at Marcia’s twisted ankle, was starting to turn as pale as the girls had been before. Great. Dave was going to be one of those big, hulking guys who keel over at a drop of blood or an oddly positioned ankle.

  “You’re not looking so hot yourself,” Alex said to Dave. “You’d better sit down.”

  Dave dropped onto the ground. “Her ankle looks bad,” he said hoarsely.

  Thank you, Dr. Barnett! “Yeah, that’s why we’re going to bandage it.”

  But were they supposed to bandage it all crooked like that? Or try to stretch it out first? Alex was pretty sure they were supposed to bandage it exactly the way it was.

  Since Lizzie was still holding Marcia’s head, and Dave was turning out to be utterly useless, Alex looked around for a splint. He found a couple of broken tree branches that would have to do. They were fairly straight and smooth, and about the right length.

  “Now we need a bandage,” he said to Lizzie.

  “The bandanna?” Lizzie carefully slipped it off Marcia’s hair and handed it to Alex. “I have one in my pack, too.” She gestured toward where it was lying by the side of the trail.

  Alex opened Lizzie’s neatly organized backpack and found her bandanna. He did the best he could, wrapping both bandannas around the injured ankle. Afraid of getting them too tight, he probably wasn’t getting them tight enough.

  “Does that feel okay?” he asked.

  For answer, Marcia gave a low moan of pain. Alex didn’t think she was moaning because of the bandage, though. The bandage looked pretty good.

  “We’re almost done, madam,” Alex said gently, hoping she might smile. She didn’t.

  “Now what?” Lizzie asked when Alex stood up to survey his handiwork.

  Alex tried to think. “When you guys were screaming before, no one came running. I think they’re way ahead now. Someone might notice we’re missing at some point and come back for us, but that could be a long time from now. It could be practically dark by then. I think maybe we—Dave and I—should try to carry her.”

  “How?”

  “We could make kind of a chair thing with our hands.”

  “It’s still a long way to the cabins,” Lizzie said.

  Marcia was a small, slim girl, not all that much bigger than Lizzie, but Alex knew it would be a long haul, lugging her up the rest of the trail. And they ran the risk of jostling her broken bone—Alex was sure now that it was broken—in trying to pick her up for carrying. But what else could they do? The rain clouds were gathering again. And the sooner they got her to a doctor, the better. He was strong, and Dave—if he didn’t faint dead away—was strong, too.

  “Dave?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we have to try to carry her.”

  “All the way?”

  “All the way.”

  Alex squatted down next to Marcia. “Marcia? Are you awake? Marcia?”

  She was looking a little better now, less white and clammy, but her eyes were still closed. She opened them, for an instant, then closed them again.

  “Marcia, listen, Dave and I are going to try to carry you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  How to get her into the “chair” was going to be another problem. Slowly, Alex eased her into a sitting position.

  “You’ll have to take her pack, Lizzie,” he said. They’d have enough to manage without it.

  “Keep your weight on your other leg,” he said. With Dave and Lizzie both supporting Marcia, one on each side, Alex helped her to stand. Marcia leaned on Lizzie, who bore her weight steadfastly, as the boys crossed hands and locked them into place.

  “Okay. Sit down. Come on. We’re ready for you. Come on.”

  Marcia lowered herself into the seat. She was pretty heavy for a skinny girl, and they hadn’t even started moving yet.

  “Good job. Good.” Alex was becoming hypnotized by his own soothing, calming voice. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. Ready, Dave?”

  “I guess so,” Dave said uncertainly. Alex shot him a warning glance. “I mean, yeah, I’m ready.”

  Conscious of Marcia’s arm around his shoulder, her hand clutching the fabric of his shirt for dear life, Alex started back up the trail.

  An hour or so later, as Alex was deciding that it had been a big mistake to try to lug Marcia’s ever-heavier weight all the way up the trail, the first flash of lightning came, ripping the dark sky in half with a jagged explosion of brightness. A deafening clap of thunder followed immediately afterward. There couldn’t have been more than a full second between the two.

  “It’s close,” Alex said, motioning to Dave to put Marcia down.

  She was fully conscious now, but still silent and subdued, clearly in a great deal of pain. “What should we do?” It was the first time she had spoken since they had begun their ascent to the cabins. She spoke so softly Alex could hardly hear what she said.

  “Seek shelter,” Lizzie said, quoting from their first-aid instructions.

  “There isn’t any shelter,” Alex pointed out. His tone wasn’t mean, just matter-of-fact. One cold hard raindrop struck him on his bare arm. Another struck him on the side of his nose.

  “Don’t stand under trees,” Lizzie went on.

  Dave, who had already taken shelter under the overhanging branches of a large fir tree, reluctantly returned to the trail.

  “Don’t lie down flat on the ground. Just crouch in place, preferably on your backpack, minimizing the area of your contact with the ground.”

  Alex was impressed. There was a reason why Lizzie was called “the Brain.” How could she remember every word of her notes like that, verbatim? But remembering the instructions was one thing; carrying them out was another. How was Marcia supposed to crouch in place with a broken ankle? She’d just have to sit there, where the boys had placed her.

  Lizzie and Dave were already pulling their rain ponchos out of their packs and then crouching as they were supposed
to. Alex thought he had better try to find Marcia’s lime green poncho: she was starting to shiver. He took it out of her pack and, as gently as he could, pulled it over Marcia’s unprotesting head. He took his own poncho and spread it over her legs, like a blanket.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be all right. I’m tough.”

  He grinned at her. Shakily, she smiled back.

  Another flash of lightning, the brightest Alex had ever seen, rocked the sky. This time the thunder came simultaneously. So did the rain. The pelting raindrops were icy. They struck Alex’s exposed arms like tiny bullets.

  Alex felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. The next bolt of lightning struck. The thunder was so loud it was like being trapped inside a bass drum during the loudest, crashingest part of a symphony.

  “Do you think we’re going to die?” Lizzie asked in between lightning bolts. Her voice was small and strangled.

  The same question had occurred to Alex.

  Marcia sobbed. “If we die, it’s all my fault. None of you would be out here now if it wasn’t for me.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Alex snapped harshly. He knew all too well whose fault it was. “Lightning can strike you anywhere. It can strike you when you’re at home sleeping in your own bed.” Was that true? He didn’t think it was. “It could be striking the rest of our group right now.”

  He thought for a second of his father. He couldn’t imagine his father being struck by lightning, or letting him, Alex, be struck by lightning if he was with him. He wondered if his father was worried about him now, or if he was just making sarcastic comments to the others about his fool son who didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain. Alex would have gotten out of the rain if there had been anyplace to go. His shirt was soaking, wringing wet. He cradled his head in his hands.

  “My hair,” Marcia moaned. “I felt it in my hair.”

  Alex reached out and took hold of her hand. She held his so tightly that it would have hurt if it hadn’t felt so good.

  Then the rain started to ease up. The next lightning flash was farther away, the thunder delayed, more distant.

  “It missed us,” Alex said.

  He was cold. He had never been colder in his life. The only part of him that wasn’t frozen was the hand that Marcia was holding.

  Dave touched his shoulder. “Do you have any other clothes? You’d better put on something dry.”

  He didn’t want to let go of Marcia’s hand, but he did. He peeled off his shirt and pulled on a sweatshirt. The dry, warm fabric felt good against his icy skin.

  “Do you feel as if we had died, and now we’re alive again, only more so, more alive than ever before?” Lizzie asked. She had helped Marcia take off her poncho and was stuffing it, and Alex’s poncho, back into the two packs.

  It was odd how Lizzie could put into words feelings that Alex hadn’t even realized that he had. “Yeah,” Alex said. “That’s a good way of putting it. Ready, Barnett?”

  Dave nodded.

  “Madam, your chair awaits.”

  The three of them managed to get Marcia settled again.

  “It can’t be too much farther now,” Alex said hopefully. “We’re almost there.”

  Alex didn’t know how much farther they had walked—far—or how much more time had gone by—lots—when finally—finally—he heard footsteps on the trail, coming toward them.

  “Alex!” he heard someone calling. “Alex!”

  The voice was his dad’s.

  Alex tried to yell back, but no sound came out. Dave shouted, and Lizzie joined in.

  He was too tired to stop, too tired to think, too tired to do anything but continue putting one foot in front of the other, counting every step as he went.

  Just twenty more steps.

  Twenty more.

  Twenty.

  His dad came into sight, with one of the ranch guides beside him. “What the—” his dad began.

  “She broke her ankle,” Alex said wearily.

  Then the ranch guide was there, lifting Marcia out of the boys’ chair, setting her down on the trail, examining her bandaged ankle.

  And for the first time in as long as he could remember, Alex was in his dad’s arms, holding on tight to him, sobbing with exhaustion and relief.

  12

  LIZZIE WAS DOING ALL THE TALKING. Marcia lay on a couch in the cabin, waiting for the ranch truck to come to take her to the hospital. Alex and Dave were too tired to talk, too tired to do anything but sprawl on the floor and bask in everyone’s admiration.

  “So Marcia and I were resting, when we heard it, this dry rattle that sounded like it was about six feet away from us. I heard it first, but then Marcia heard it, too, and we knew it had to be a rattlesnake. What else could it be? What else is there in nature that rattles?”

  This wasn’t Alex’s favorite part of the story. The rattle that had caused all the trouble was still in his pocket. He made a mental note to himself to chuck it into the bushes the next time he was outside with no one around.

  “And then we heard this rustling kind of sound, or maybe it was a slithering kind of sound. So: first the rattle, then the slither.”

  “And I screamed,” Marcia put in. She looked pale, but the ranch guide had rebandaged her ankle and given her some ibuprofen to help with the pain and swelling. Alex thought that in a way she was enjoying herself, lying in state like an injured queen, all eyes upon her.

  “And Marcia screamed, and I guess I screamed, too, and we started to run, the wrong way down the trail, but we wanted to get as far away from the rattlesnake as we could. Then there was a rock in the trail, and we didn’t see it, and Marcia tripped and fell really hard. At first I thought—she lay there so quiet and still that I thought she was—but when I knelt down beside her I could see that she was still breathing. But then I saw her ankle, and it just looked terrible. I knew it had to be broken.”

  “I knew it was broken,” Marcia said. “It hurt worse than anything ever hurt in my life. I think I even fainted for a while, you know, because of the pain.”

  Marcia was definitely looking pleased with herself now. Alex gathered that it was a high-status thing, for the girls, to faint.

  “And then,” Lizzie said, “Alex came.” Her voice took on a new, warmer tone.

  Across the room, Alex’s dad flashed him a thumbsup sign. His father then blew on an imaginary medal and shined it on his shirt. Alex knew that his father was pleased with him, genuinely, thoroughly pleased. This was the kind of story about his son that his dad liked people to hear.

  “Alex came, with Dave, and he was wonderful. Right away he remembered all these things we had learned in first aid, about preventing shock, and everything.”

  Ms. Van Winkle interrupted the story. She, too, looked proud. “Didn’t I tell you those first-aid skills could come in handy this week?” She beamed at Alex as if he had been her star student all along.

  “So Alex found a splint,” Lizzie went on. “He just searched until he found some sticks that would do. And he bandaged Marcia’s ankle with a couple of bandannas.”

  The ranch guide had used official gauze bandages when he attended to Marcia’s ankle. Alex saw that Marcia was clutching the bandanna in her right hand, like a comfort object. All alleged cracks about it were forgiven and forgotten now.

  “We didn’t know if we should try to walk on to the cabins, or if we should wait for help, but Alex didn’t think help would come soon enough, so he and Dave carried Marcia—carried her every step of the way.”

  Well, not every step. The last half mile or so, the ranch guide and Alex’s dad had taken turns carrying her. But Alex and Dave had carried her far enough that Alex knew his muscles would ache from it tomorrow.

  “Son,” the ranch guide said, turning toward Alex as he spoke, “all I can say is that it was a lucky thing for this young lady that you happened to be so close at hand when the accident happened. Boys and girls, teachers, parents, I think this young man
deserves a round of applause.”

  Then they were all clapping, the boys whistling and stamping for good measure.

  “Dave carried her, too,” Alex added, uncomfortable for once at all the attention directed his way.

  “Let’s hear another round of applause for Dave, and for you too, miss.” The ranch guide nodded toward Lizzie. “I’m sure you were a big comfort to your friend along the way. And you, our little wounded gal. You were plenty brave. Folks, let’s give ’em all a hand.”

  More applause.

  “And now,” Ms. Van Winkle called out, “if we’re going to have any chow tonight, I need sixth-period family living in the kitchen to get things started.”

  Ms. Van Winkle had organized the menu so that each class would help with one stage of the food preparation. Alex was in the sixth-period class, so he hoisted himself off the floor and got ready to follow the others into the kitchen.

  “You’ve done enough, Alex,” Ms. Van Winkle told him. “Just take it easy for a while.”

  Alex gladly reclined on one of the couches vacated by some of the sixth-period family living chefs. It was the couch right next to Marcia’s. He wondered if she would speak to him, now that the chaos had subsided and most of the other kids had gone. Alex’s dad had drifted out to the front porch with some of the other parents.

  Alex, I don’t know how I can ever thank you.

  Aw, it was nothing.

  She didn’t say a word.

  Maybe he needed to feed her a cue. “You doing okay?” he asked. “The truck’ll be here any minute, I think, to take you to the hospital.” Marcia’s parents had been called, and they were on their way from West Creek, too.

  “I wish it were all over.”

  “It will be.”

  “I’ll have to have a cast all summer long, and I won’t be able to go swimming at the pool. And I’m on the West Creek tennis team, too. Or I was.”

  Alex didn’t blame her for moping. He felt another pang of guilt as he thought of how differently the day would have turned out if he had left his snake rattle at home. But if he had, Marcia wouldn’t be chatting with him, either. Not that he would ever have hurt her deliberately just to get her to talk to him.