Survive

by Alex Morel

  I nod and I start to cry, his hand wiping each tear away.

  “I’m okay too, Daddy.”

  And I believe it, too. That’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way, dream or no dream, since the day my father killed himself. The blackness swirling through my mind begins to echo with the sound of the shot, my mother’s screams, and the noise of sirens and walkie-talkies, medics and policemen. My father died that night, but something inside of me started to grow, and at first, I tended it, helping it, but then I lost control and it grew into something that existed all on its own: a raging beast inside of me that almost devoured me from the inside out.

  “Goodbye,” I tell my father, and I touch his face once more and he leans into me, very close. I can feel the imprint of his kiss. Then his face turns mean and ugly and I can feel his breath on the top of my nose.

  I open my eyes, and for a split second I am looking up into the yellow eyes of the wolf. Then suddenly, snap! The icy wind hits my face and I awake.

  I’m frozen and panting from my dream.

  I stand up and grab my walking stick and look upriver and then down. There’s no sign of the wolf. It was just a dream, Jane. The wolf is only as real as your father. Let them go.

  I turn and head downriver with the wind at my back. Walking the riverbank is the easiest walk I’ve had since I started. That’s good, because my body is failing me now, and every hundred feet or so, I have to kneel down and gather my strength. Eventually, with the help of the wind pushing me forward, I feel some energy. I’m thinking about that last climb Paul made and how he came to life on that day, just before he took a turn for the worse.

  Is he still alive? How could he be? He just has to be. Don’t give up on him. My thoughts turn to the people who never gave up on me. My mother, Old Doctor, the nurses, some of the other Life Housers like Ben. I remember one day in the hospital; it was a low point perhaps a couple months into my stay. I was looking out at the courtyard filled with snow. I was thinking about how wonderful snow is to a child. Sledding, snowmen, snowball fights. And it must have made me sad, because tears were rolling down my face and Ben came up to me and sat down. He didn’t say much, but he offered me a cigarette. And even though I wasn’t a smoker, I joined him out in the courtyard. When we were done, he said, “Everything I look at has the potential to make me sad.”

  “I love the snow,” I said. “But it makes me sad.”

  “Yeah. It makes me sad too,” Ben said.

  “It makes me miss my father. We played in the snow—I still think about that a lot.”

  Then he did something that made my mouth drop but I now realize was perhaps the grandest gesture ever committed at Life House. He pulled down his pants and took a pee in the pristine white snow, spelling his name.

  “Now you’ll think of me.”

  I laughed. And it makes me smile even now.

  My pace steadies, and I move along the river until it takes a wide turn back toward the mountain range I left days before. It is so easy to walk along the river and follow its path mindlessly. But I feel the sun, and I know where that river is going. I can’t go back there. I stop and look across the river, considering my options. As far as I can see from here, there’s nothing but an open field of grass beyond the underbrush. Cross and take my chances of dying from exposure in the middle of the field? Or follow a river back toward a world I know holds certain death for me?

  My eyes focus deep into the vast expanse beyond the river and follow a clear dark line straight along the horizon. Is that a fence? A road? A power line? A logging road? It must be man-made, whatever it is. Nothing in nature could cut such a long, straight line across the horizon. It occurs to me that my eyes could be playing tricks on me.

  The first thing standing between the line on the horizon and me is a narrow piece of river. I step to the edge of the riverbank and look down to where the bend breaks. It is probably fifteen or twenty feet across at the narrowest point, maybe less. The river isn’t deep; I can tell because I can see it rippling off the rocks on the bottom.

  I take out all my dry clothes: a pair of pants, a shirt and sweater, two pairs of wool socks, and my jacket and shell, and I put them into a plastic bag and tie it. Then I put the bag in my sleeping bag, knowing I must keep my clothes dry if I am to survive crossing the river.

  I shimmy down the bank and slide into the water with both boots. The slow-moving current is more powerful than I anticipated, but it only goes up to my shins. I plant my full weight and hold the bank with my arms so as not to be swept away. I look up to the bank and know that scrambling back up isn’t an option. I take a deep breath. Let me cross. Let me cross.

  Chapter 34

  I stand still for a moment, taking in the strength of the current and the distance I have to cover. It is less than twenty feet, I tell myself. You can do this. I walk out and the current stays around knee level for the first two or three steps, then the water is up to my thighs and its chill is bracing.

  I jam my stick as far out as I can manage but am pushed a few feet downstream as I do it. I step and push against the stick like a pole vault jumper, and the current sweeps me up. I flutter kick as fast as I can and push hard against the stick and I’m able to move two or three yards across the river. Don’t fight it, Jane. Let the river move you. I try pulling my stick back toward me, but the force of the drag makes it impossible. I see it float away, rushing in the current, and I feel like I’m losing my best friend.

  I’m moving quickly and making progress, but the bend is closer than I expected. I don’t fight the current; it floats me directly toward the far bank. The cold of the water strangles my muscles, and I am struggling to stay afloat. Their tightness makes lifting my arm from the water nearly impossible. My body feels heavy and numb. For a moment, my head is swallowed by the heavy drag from below. I get my mouth just above the waterline and gasp, trying to inhale deeply. My lungs feel frozen.

  My legs are numb and weighted down by my waterlogged pants and heavy boots. My treading slows, then stops. I flail my arms, but the cold has numbed my shoulders. I look up, and I can see that I’m halfway across but stuck in the center sweep of the current. When the river breaks right, I need to be near the bank so I can stop my forward momentum. But I have nothing left. The fight in my legs is gone, and my arms offer no more force than a feather against the churning, moving beast.

  Just as I hit the bend, the river roils and my feet graze the rocky bottom. I immediately kick back and run through the mud, and the effort ignites my arms, which thrash into the water with ferocity. My body lurches toward the shoreline, and I slam into the riverbank just before it turns sharply and cups the excess roiling water.

  I drag myself up, drape myself over the lip of the bank, and hook my right leg over the top, rolling myself onto solid ground. I cough and heave water and bile into the snow. I am shaking and sobbing and my fingers and hands begin to burn with pain. After a while, I get on my knees to fling off my sleeping bag. I have no idea how much or how little time has passed. I push my frozen arms into the frozen bag and grab the ties with my teeth. I pull the knot free, and the bag unrolls.

  I put my knee on the lip of the sleeping bag, but I can’t hold the edge of the lining with my frozen fingers, so I bite the corner and pull it open with my teeth. I reach in and grab my clothes. My hands are about as useful as clubs, but I manage. The bag is damp, but my clothes are dry.

  I’m clumsy, but I get my clothes and jacket on and keep my frozen hands close to my heart underneath my clothes. They’ll never warm up under these conditions, but my hope is to stave off hypothermia as long as possible. I drape the wet sleeping bag over my body, propping the top shielded corner over my head. From a distance I must look like a sheik or nomad with a long, dark green cape, tromping over the snow.

  I can see the dark line in the distance. I look to the sky and suddenly, for the first time since the crash, the sun comes out in full force. It warms my face.

  I have to cross this field before the sun
falls. A night under the snow—under a wet sleeping bag with soaking pants—will find me gone by morning.

  My body shakes with chills. Early on, the exercise created warmth, and I could capture that heat to melt water or warm my hands or, with Paul, to heat our bodies at night. But I’m no longer able to generate heat. I may make the horizon, but if nobody is there to help me, I’ll be dead by dawn.

  Chapter 35

  I walk, and the sun sets around me. There’s a low ceiling of dark clouds circling me. Snow is falling—at first lightly, but then the heavier stuff moves in and the wind starts to pick up. Luckily the wind remains at my back. I focus my mind on one thing I know is true: behind the clouds, the sun was as bright today as it has ever been. Clouds come and go, so do storms and rain and wind, but the sun will rise every morning.

  I imagine it rising backward, breaking through the clouds, warming me and drying my clothes. I imagine its light pouring across the river, making it sparkle, and filtering over the valley and the mountains, making them glow. I imagine Paul standing up on the mountain, bathing himself in the warmth of the sun. I smile at the thought, and I imagine feeling the warmth of his body against mine and see us standing together in sun. He is whispering my name over and over, “Jane, Jane, Jane.”

  A tear wells up in my eye and I feel its warmth roll slowly down my face, and then another falls. I don’t why I’m crying, but I know somewhere inside I’m melting. The long path I’ve walked since crashing into that mountain has brought me to this moment. Old Doctor would say that I’ve been on this journey for a lot longer than my six days in this frozen apocalypse. A week ago, if I were in session with him or the group, I would have snickered, probably to myself, about what a load of crap it all was. But today, I can see the long arc on which I’ve been walking.

  Before I reach the thick black line against the horizon, I actually come to a barbed wire fence. I lay the sleeping bag over the wire and just flop over it. I have no strength or agility left to be cautious, and a sharp wire hooks into my left forearm, ripping a long gash from elbow to my thumb. The stuffing pours out of my jacket, and the material turns dark as it soaks up the blood. I try for a moment to untangle the sleeping bag from the wire, but it is completely enmeshed. With every tug, it tears.

  This is it, I think, no bag tonight. I’ve got to beat the dark. I trudge forward. The snow is in deep drifts and the ground is uneven. Each step is unsteady, and my mind swirls with memories and fantasies and the two become one. Suddenly, a future appears, and Paul is holding me beside a Christmas tree. There are stockings and gifts, and on the table behind us there are photos of the dead: my father; Paul’s brother, Will; and the photo of Old Doctor and his dad on the fishing boat. Old Doctor is there himself, talking with my mother, and I can see smiles on their faces. He just keeps nodding and grinning as my mother tells him something I can’t hear. Then he winks at me and mouths, “You’re okay, Jane.” I nod at him and put my hand around Paul’s back.

  I look up and there’s a light shining in the distance. It is so far away, but I can feel its warmth on my face, as if it were the sun itself. I stumble and fall and see a smear of blood against the snow. Get up, Jane.

  I stand, and a big gust of wind hits my back and the snow swirls before my eyes. I focus on the light before me. One step at a time, I think. Walk toward that light. I look up and it can’t be too far, no farther than a city block or two, but no matter how many steps I take, it still feels far away.

  I stumble again, and this time I fall face-first into the snow, and my head hits a patch of ice. The knock is hard enough to make my ears ring, but I don’t black out. My chest heaves up and down, trying to draw in oxygen. No matter how much I take in, I can’t seem to catch my breath.

  I can’t believe I’ve come this close, but my legs won’t move. I’m dizzy and buzzing with excitement. Just then, I feel somebody lift me from my right side, and I turn to find myself leaning into Paul, who is carrying me. He whispers into my ear, but I can’t understand him.

  I’m unable to speak, I’m so happy to see and feel him. He looks fine; he looks amazing. It doesn’t seem right, and yet it’s so perfect and I’m so grateful to see him that it doesn’t matter that I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m looking at him, not in front of me—which is how I find myself walking directly into a fence that separates me from the dark strip of road and the heavy, warm light on the opposite side. I fall to my knees and for a moment I think Paul’s gone, and I fear I can’t rise. I just can’t move anymore. I lie in the snow and listen to my shallow breathing.

  But then Paul is here again. He reaches down and picks me up under both shoulders. He whispers—a nothingness, but it is pure love in my mind.

  He keeps an arm around my shoulders, and I hold his waist as we trudge our way to the road. I hear voices, both familiar and far away. I touch his hair, his face, his lips. He stops walking.

  And then he disappears, leaving me on the side of the road. I hear nothing but the sound of my own labored breath. The clouds have cleared, and I can see stars shining at me in a clear night sky. I scan them dumbly and watch one star sparkle and glow, holding my eye until I lose it or it dissolves into the blackness, I’m not sure which.

  Epilogue

  6 Months Later

  I never returned to Life House Institute after I walked off the mountain.

  I remember waking up in a hospital room. It was as if I had never left Life House. Antiseptic air and dull light filled my room. Was it real? The crash, Paul, the long walk, the wolf, the light . . . I didn’t know. I searched my memory until my head hurt, literally. The plane and the pills and even my obsession with the Plan flooded back to me. Had I actually followed through with the Plan and swallowed the pills? Could this be heaven? Hell?

  And then I heard a familiar sound. It was the sound of a throat clearing, discreetly. I looked up to see Old Doctor sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, waiting for me. His sad eyes crinkled as he smiled at me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Jane. I’m so happy to hear your voice again.”

  I started to cry.

  “I’m happy too,” I whispered.

  “Your mother is on her way from New Jersey,” he said. He walked over and put his hand over mine, weighted with all the care in the world. His skin was soft and warm.

  “You’re okay, Jane. Your mother will be here soon.”

  I looked down at my left hand to find it bruised and swollen. My palms were raw and red. I examined the rest of my body and found it intact. I wiggled my feet and scrunched my toes. All there.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  He stood and moved closer to me. He studied my face, and I think he might have been holding back some emotion of his own.

  “It’s over now,” he told me. “You’re back in the world, Jane.”

  • • •

  I’ve spoken to so many people since I walked out of those mountains. Doctors, rangers, reporters, hikers, climbers, survivalists, my family, friends of my family. They all want to know how I survived. I wish I knew the answer, but I really don’t. I have developed a pat response, where I draw an analogy to having a gun pointed at my head: move or die. I moved and I chose living. Everyone likes this idea.

  The night I was found, a truck driver named William Roberts slowed his truck to a stop and hit the floodlight mounted on the roof of his truck. It was a cold and snowy night. He was seventeen miles from the main road but stopped because something weird caught his eye. He grabbed a pistol from his glove compartment and stepped out of his truck, walking slowly over to my nearly lifeless body. He said he didn’t know if maybe he might have to shoot an animal if it were suffering. Or he thought it might be some kind of strange trick. He looked around, wondering if maybe someone was hiding in the brush.

  He knelt down next to me and put his hand over my mouth. Faint, warm air moistened his fingers. Whoever she is, she’s still alive, he thought. And then he picked up my body and carried me to his truck
. He laid me down in the front seat, releasing the back of the passenger seat so it lay relatively flat. He turned his truck around and drove back toward town.

  He told the press that I never woke the whole time we drove. He took me past town, which was seventy-five miles from where he found me, and then straight to the hospital that was fifty miles farther south. If he hadn’t done it, I’d be dead right now. But he did it. And when they got me into the hospital, they pumped me full of drugs and warm water, slowly bringing my body temperature back up.

  Mr. Roberts waited to see if I would live. He sat in the hospital waiting room until a doctor returned to confirm that I was going to survive. He got in his truck and drove back home. Later that week, reporters tracked him down and asked why he didn’t wait for the reward. My mother had offered a small reward to anyone stupid enough to travel up into the mountains to find me during the storm, and there’d been no takers. He said he was just doing what anybody else would have done. It doesn’t amaze me anymore after what Paul and I did for each other, but it is still heartening to know that the world is filled with good souls.

  • • •

  The deep cold made it difficult for the doctors to determine the time of Paul’s death with any accuracy. The coroner’s report said he died a day or two after I left him on the mountain. I believe I know the exact timing of his death, but that is a secret I intend to keep to myself.

  A few months after I left the hospital, I received a small package posted from Cambridge, Mass. It was wrapped in brown paper, and the return address was marked in large block letters: FROM WILL HART SR. I felt the hairs rise on my neck. I picked up the package and carefully unsealed the edges and slid the box out of the paper. I wanted to preserve the package—to save anything with a connection to Paul.

  I opened the box. Inside, wrapped in a monogrammed handkerchief, was Will’s book. A note card was tucked inside, intentionally placed sideways with its edge sticking out, so as not to be missed.