Finding It

by Leah Marie Brown

  The rain is picking up again, so I take a last look at the stunning landscape before I begin the interminable climb down, when my boot slips over the slick rocky top and I find myself tumbling backwards over the edge.

  Chapter 25

  Hands on the Stick

  Oh, Lawd, Sweet Jesus! Plunging to my death has long been one of my biggest fears, and now it is happening. It is really happening—in sickening slow motion. I freefall for what feels like an hour before landing with bone-shattering force and rolling, banging my head, scraping my knee, and finally landing flat on my back on a narrow ledge.

  I stare up at the Heavens and perform a mental scan of my battered, aching body. I can wiggle my toes, move my legs, and lift my head. Amazingly, I appear to have escaped a wheelchair-bound future. It’s just the crushing pain in my head I have to worry about now—that, and plunging to my death.

  I sit up slowly, gingerly, and scoot far from the edge, pressing my back against the side of the mountain. Screwing up my courage, I lean to the right and look over the slide of the mountain.

  Sweet Baby Jesus! It is a straight drop down. I am not good with calculating distances, but I would say it is at least four, maybe five, thousand feet.

  You’ve heard the saying, “My blood ran cold?’ Well, mine hardens to resemble arctic rivers.

  I am going to die on this stupid mountain—all because of some misguided self-challenge. I remember what Calder said about well-trained border collies fending off attacking coyotes. What if coyotes attack me in the night?

  Wait! Coyotes only live in North America—aren’t they just the weaker cousin of wolves?

  Wolves! There must be wolves in Scotland. There are wolves in England—I saw An American Werewolf in London.

  And hounds! Demonic blood-thirsty hounds. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about the Baskerville Hounds. I try to remember how Sherlock defeated the homicidal hounds, but can’t think over the thump-thumping pain in my skull.

  I wish Luc were here. He would know exactly what to do. He would whip out one of those thin metallic blankets he keeps in his pack when we go riding and camping and fashion us a parachute or a tent.

  Luc.

  I unzip my inside pocket, feel something sharp slice across my finger, and pull my iPhone out to discover the fall shattered the screen.

  I push the power button and—miraculously—it turns on. I push the button again and say, “Siri, call Luc.”

  “Just to confirm—do you want me to call Luc de Caumont?”

  “Yes!”

  The line crackles, but it connects the call.

  One ring.

  And then silence. An all-engulfing silence. I don’t need an operable screen to tell me what I already know: dropped call.

  I try it again, but get no response.

  “Damn you, Siri.”

  My head is pounding and it hurts to keep my eyes open. I wipe my hands on my wet jeans and run them over my skull, checking for bone shards or brain matter. Nothing sharp and nothing squishy. I look at my hands and a burble of bile rises in my throat. A salmon-pink color now stains them that I know didn’t come from the dye in my pink woolly cap.

  I am bleeding! I probably split my melon on my way down the mountain and the only thing keeping my brains from oozing out is my woolly cap.

  Well, if that is the case, I will die with my boots and my hat on. Let the unfortunate hiker who stumbles upon my bloated corpse deal with that mess. I can’t deal with the site of blood. Brain matter?

  Uck! I shudder.

  I bring my knees up to a sitting fetal sitting position and pull my hood down low. Someone will come for me soon. Fanny will realize I am lost, organize a search party, and lead the Chick Trippers on a rescue mission.

  The wind shifts, driving the rain to fall at a sharp angle. I rest my head on my knees and wrap my arms around myself.

  Of all of my mishaps, this is the most embarrassing. Certainly it is the most ignorant self-induced mishap. Hiking up a mountain in the rain. What am I, an idiot?

  I can’t even say I was doing something epic, like rescuing a lost sheep or taking part in an archeological exploration in search of Noah’s Ark.

  Damn Donna D’Errico! The former Baywatch actress fell off a mountain during an expedition to find Noah’s Ark in Turkey. She totally jacked my excuse. Who’s going to believe the old “I fell off a cliff looking for Noah’s Ark” excuse now?

  I shift and Poppy’s cold, heavy flashlight bangs against my bruised side. I pull it out of my hip pocket, say a prayer it still works, and push the button. The warm golden glow comforts me, especially now that it’s dark, but since I might need to use it to flag down rescuers, I click it off again.

  The rain stops, but the pounding in my head does not. The dark moonless night and my heavy lids make keeping my eyes open difficult.

  What was that?

  I swear I just heard someone call my name, but when I click on the flashlight and aim it into the yawning abyss, there is nothing but empty, lonely blackness.

  I want to close my eyes against the pounding in my head—the flashing pulse of light I keep seeing when I move my eyes too fast—but I think people with concussions are supposed to stay awake. And I am pretty sure I concussed my noggin.

  The darkness isn’t helping. It’s like an indigo velvet curtain pulled before my eyes. It makes me sleepy just looking at it.

  Hours pass before I finally click on Poppy’s flashlight and put it on the ground between my booted feet, pointing the beam toward my face. Get me, I’m a prisoner in a gulag.

  “We vill break you. You vill sleep. Sleep, damn you, sleep.”

  I am chuckling at my own perverse sense of humor when the distant whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of an approaching helicopter drowns out my laughter.

  I should be jumping up and down, waving my arms in the air, like people who have been snatched from roaring rivers or lifted from burning building, but the bones in my legs have suddenly turned to jelly. Wibbly wobbly doesn’t cover it.

  And then the Coast Guard Search and Rescue helicopter is hovering over me and a disembodied voice is telling me not to move, that help is coming.

  A man wearing a neon yellow hardhat takes a backward step out of the helicopter and descends on a cable to my ledge. He unhooks from the cable and comes to me.

  “Can you stand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He bends down, puts his hands under my arms, and helps me stand. I am trembling like a newborn colt, my legs shaking beneath me.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  I look up into his face for the first time. He has a stern jaw and an intense gaze. He’s wearing an earpiece.

  “You don’t look anything like Ashton Kutcher, but I still want to give you a big kiss. Thank you for rescuing me from this ledge and the pack of wolves waiting out there to gnaw on my bones.”

  His earpiece crackles.

  “Ma’am, we don’t have time to talk right now.”

  The crew lowers a basket. My rescuer grabs the cable to steady the basket and turns back to me.

  “What is that for?”

  “You need to get into the basket, ma’am.”

  I look at the basket attached to the slender cable. “Are you crazy? I am not getting into that basket. No way.”

  I don’t tell the not-quite-Ashton-Kutcher-but-still-very-handsome-hero that if he makes me ride in that basket, I am afraid I might soil myself. I am not going down like that—flat as a pancake and covered in my own piss. No way. Uh-uh.

  “Ma’am, I ken ye are a wee bit frightened, but you have to get into the basket.”

  “I am not a wee bit frightened; I am full-on freaking terrified. And stop calling me ma’am. You’re making me feel old. I might feel like pissing myself right now, but I am hardly geriatric.”

  Great. And there it is. I just admitted I wanted to piss myself. To a man who rappels out of helicopters.

  “My name
is Collum,” he says in a low, steady voice, keeping his hands on my waist and his gaze on my face. “Vivia, right?”

  “Y-Yyes.”

  “Vivia, I need you to get into the basket so we can hoist you to safety. You’ve got a pretty bad bump on your head, and we need to get you to hospital.”

  “Please don’t make me. I will wait until morning and walk back down the mountain.”

  “This is serious, Vivia. You can trust me. I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Besides, there’s someone in that helicopter who would probably throw me off this ledge if I let anything bad happen to you.”

  Luc! Maybe Fanny called Luc and told him I was missing. Maybe he caught a direct flight to the local airport, joined the rescue crew, and is up there with them now.

  “Vivia, please get in the basket.”

  This man is risking his life to save me. The longer we stay on this ledge, the longer the pilot must fight to keep the helicopter steady, fighting against winds and rain, and the greater the chance something could go tragically wrong.

  “Fine”—I say, inching closer to the basket—“but if I piss myself, you have to promise not to tell a soul. Ever.”

  “I promise.”

  I lie down in the basket, cross my arms over my chest, and take deep breaths while Collum secures the slender straps that will hopefully prevent me from rolling out of this flying coffin and plunging to my death.

  Collum steps back, gives the thumbs up, and the basket lifts. I feel myself spinning and spinning, and then someone pulls me into the helicopter. I look around for Luc, but when I realize he is not one of the men strapped into the blue jump seats I want to ask them to put me back on the ledge.

  They hoist Collum back into the helicopter and we are off, blades whooshing, flying blind into the stormy night.

  Collum fusses over me, pointing a slender flashlight at my eyes, checking my pulse, securing blankets around my trembling limbs.

  “Ye’re safe now, Vivia. The best pilot in Her Majesty’s Coast Guard is at the controls of this copter.”

  The pilot looks over his shoulder at me and…

  …and it’s Calder MacFarlane.

  My vision narrows like the picture screen on an old-school television set, until the world appears to be a tiny dot and finally fades to black.

  Chapter 26

  Pack a Tight Chute

  I wake up in a strange hospital room to the muted sounds of beeping machines and distant conversations. Poppy, Fiona, and Fanny are standing around my bed, all anxious expressions. They look fuzzy. If fact, the whole scene looks slightly out of focus, like an old-school soap opera.

  I expect a plasticky-looking doctor to diagnose me with a brain tumor and tell me I only have three weeks left to live, unless I can track down my previously unknown twin and convince her to agree to a brain transplant.

  Fiona’s lips begin moving, but there’s this five-second delay thing going on in my brain where the words don’t match up with my comprehension. It takes me a few seconds to understand she’s going to let the nurse know I am awake.

  My eyelids feel heavy and my mouth full of cotton. I am wearing an ugly mint green gown and an IV is jammed into my right arm.

  This is really happening.

  Fanny gently sits on the side of my bed.

  “How are you feeling, Vivian?”

  “I am warm all over and totally chill.” I close my eyes. “Am I stoned or something?”

  “Non, ma cherié. You had an accident, remember?”

  My skull feels tight, like my woolly cap shrank in the rain and is now too tight for my head. I reach up to pull off my cap and feel thick gauze.

  “Why is my head bandaged?” I open my eyes and struggle to sit up. “Did they shave my head? Am I bald?”

  Fanny half laughs, half cries.

  “No, you daft cow.” Poppy wipes a stray tear from her cheek. “Your hair is fine, it’s your brain that needs some fixing. You really scared us.”

  Poppy’s use of the word brain triggers a hazy flashback of being on the ledge and staring at my bloodstained hands.

  “I was taking a selfie and I fell down the side of the mountain.”

  “Why were you on the mountain in the first place?”

  “It had something to do with Luc and Spartan warrior training and—” I shake my head and wince as a pain shoots from my temples to my toes.

  Fanny darts a worried look at Poppy.

  “It sounds crazy now, but it made sense at the time.”

  Fanny chuckles softly. “I’ll bet it did.”

  “So when are they bringing the discharge paperwork? I want to get out of here.”

  Fiona returns with a plump grandmotherly nurse carrying a needle and small glass bottles.

  “Ye’re not going anywhere, lass.” The nurse sticks the needle into one of the bottles and pulls the plunger. “Ye’ve suffered a traumatic head injury.”

  I throw the cover back and try to swing my legs out of bed. “I can’t stay. I have to go.”

  I have to see Luc. I have to tell him about my near-death experience and the epiphany I had as I was clinging to the side of a mountain, to life. Without him in my life, the world is a monochromatic place, devoid of color and depth.

  “I talked to your boss and told her what happened,” Fanny says, misreading the cause of my anxiety. “She is very worried about you. She said to take all of the time you need to heal and not to worry about Glasgow. They’ll be filming the movie for the next few months and the interviews can be rescheduled when you are well.”

  Glasgow? I don’t care about going to Glasgow or interviewing a pampered over-preening actor about his role in some big-budget hack job of a classic. I don’t care that I spent hours researching David Tennant and memorizing Dr. Who quotes just in case he turns out to be the lead actor in the movie. I care about getting to Luc.

  “You don’t understand.” I try to sit up again. “I have to get out of here.”

  The nurse jabs the needle into my IV line and pushes the plunger. I suddenly feel flush all over.

  “What is that you put in my IV?”

  The nurse pushes me back against the pillow and adjusts my blankets. “The doctor ordered an antibiotic, an anticonvulsant, and pain medication. This is phenobarbital. It helps to reduce swelling of the brain, but it might make you sleepy.”

  “Now, lassies”—she turns to my friends and makes shooing motions with her hands—“visiting time is over.”

  “Wait!” I grab Fanny’s arm. “Can I just have one minute to talk to my best friend, please?”

  “One minute.” The nurse holds her finger up. “I’ll be back.”

  Okay, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Don’t shoot!

  Fiona and Poppy give me hugs and hurry out of the room before Nurse Terminator returns.

  “I’m sorry, Fanny.” I grab my best friend’s hand and give it a squeeze. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “Well, you did worry me.” Her voice cracks, and tears fill her eyes. “When you didn’t come back to the cottage—and then when you posted that photo of the top of a mountain—I imagined all sorts of horrible things.”

  I’ve never seen Fanny cry. She’s normally so self-contained and unflappable. I’m usually the over-emotional Henny Penny, dashing about and crying, “The sky is falling!”

  The phenobarbital must be working its magic because it’s becoming an effort to keep my eyes open.

  “I love you, Fanny, and I know I’ve probably called in all of my chips with this latest stunt, but I need you to do me a favor.”

  “If you’re going to ask me to make a ladder out of sheets and help you climb out the window so you can go interview David Who, you’re crazy.”

  We don’t have much time left. Nurse Terminator will be back any second, so I quickly tell Fanny about my mountaintop epiphany, my determination to win back my man, and my decision to travel to France to ask him to marry me.

  “
You want to propose to Luc?”

  “Yes, but it has to be epic. I am talking violins and flowers and white doves and fireworks.”

  “Please tell me you don’t want me to release the doves; you know birds freak me out.”

  As promised, Nurse Terminator returns. She stands in the doorway and repeatedly taps her wrist with her finger, even though she isn’t wearing a watch.

  “Ten more seconds,” I say, slurring my words. “I promish.”

  “Ten…nine…”

  “Fanny, I need a ticket to Montpellier, a new iPhone, and a new pair of pink Wellies. My credit card is in my wallet.”

  “Why—“

  “…five…”

  “I’ll explain later.” I squeeze her hand. “Will you help me?”

  “…three…”

  “Leave everything to me.”

  * * * *

  Nurse Terminator adjusts my IV, closes the blinds, and turns down the lights. I am asleep before she even leaves the room.

  I wake up sometime in the afternoon and sense I am not alone in the room.

  Calder is sitting beside my bed, long arms resting on his knees, intense gaze focused on my face. He’s wearing a flight suit, and his close-cropped hair is flat against his head from having worn a helmet. He looks impossibly handsome…and impossibly exhausted.

  “Ye worried me something fierce, Boots.”

  “So it was you piloting the rescue helicopter. I thought I dreamt it.”

  “First ye call me Master and now ye admit ye dream aboot me.” He laughs. “It wilnae be long before ye have me picking out China patterns.”

  I don’t know how to say what I need to say to Calder, so I just smile. Is there an easy way to tell the man who just saved your life that you don’t love him and never will? The thing is, I like Calder…a lot. He’s just not the man for me. He’s exhaustingly, ostentatiously flirty and charming. With his constant winking and grinning, he’s like the attention-seeking middle child. Luc, on the other hand, possesses the easy, confident manner of a first child.