Chapter 4 #2
It’s treacherous, but I can’t help the thought as I watch this couple descend.
What would it be like to share a loved hobby with another person?
They move like a unit, checking in with each other with glances and small touches as they navigate.
It’s subtle, and with the downpour, hard to see, but that kind of connection.
That kind of knowing. I shake it off and focus forward.
I don’t make another call on my radio due to my arms being occupied, but I instruct the couple to call in on their cell phones while we traipse through the hazardous conditions.
I watch each step, gripping her freezing body close to mine.
I calculate the decision I made to move her over the next mile, praying I didn’t choose wrong.
The rain continues to lash at my face and sting my eyes, but I grit my teeth and progress slowly, carefully.
My arms burn with the strain of holding her as steady as possible, each of my breaths coming in shallower.
Each time a rock shifts under my boots, slipping in the mud, my heart leaps in my throat.
I refuse to succumb to the fear. To the exhaustion. Instead, I hold her tighter.
“Just hang on,” I mutter. “I don’t know you, but I have a feeling you’re too stubborn not to make it.” My eyes flick down to her—those blue lips, ashy skin, and the weeping gash on her temple. I don’t know if she can hear me, if anything’s getting through, but I talk anyway.
Lightning flashes above, startling me and lighting up the trail ahead. It rattles my bones, thrown back by the cliffs magnifying the intensity. I keep moving, even though my legs are trembling with the effort, with the agonizing steps putting fatigue on my muscles.
The couple ahead rushes forward as the trail levels out. Shouts morph through the hiss of rain, and distant flashing emergency lights fracture and blur through it.
Relief grips me so hard my knees threaten to buckle, but I grind out an “Ahhh” to keep upright. Blood pounds in my ears, louder than the surrounding storm, when four other rangers rush out to meet me.
“Sullivan, what the hell, man?”
“I had to move her!”
It would be a different picture. A rescue on the side of a cliff face, or worse, the three of us watching her succumb to her injuries because we couldn’t get help on the radio or cells.
The EMTs rush forward with a stretcher, and as they reach me, there’s a moment I clutch her tighter before I hand her over.
I’ve carried her this far, felt her unresponsive.
It hits me hard, and it isn’t subtle—the need to shield her.
I lower her onto the stretcher. Rain slicks her wet hair to her skin and streaks over her blood-smeared face, but she doesn’t stir when I shift her weight onto the gurney.
As the EMTs rush her to the ambulance, I gulp down air, never taking my eyes off her.
Several of my fellow rangers speak to me, pat me on the back, or squeeze my shoulder, acknowledging that the risk of moving her paid off.
That’s not to say my supervisor won’t have words for me, seeing as technically I went against protocol.
However, most of what is said is muffled as she’s rolled to the ambulance and secured in the back of the truck. The siren wails, sending a chill through me. I glance down at my rain-drenched uniform, at a bloodstain where her head rested against me.
I’ve done this before. Handed people off to emergency services for them to do their job. There’s a satisfaction that follows, a sense of closure. Job done. Move on.
But something is missing.
It doesn’t feel like that.
She’s safe and in well-equipped hands. I should be relieved, but as they tear out of the parking lot, something unsettling shifts inside me. A faint tug of incompletion.
Where’s the closure?
“It’s adrenaline,” I whisper to myself. It’s the hike. The fatigue. I’m not coming down off the high like normal. But it’s more than that. The weight of how she looked crumpled in my arms—it drags up an ambiguous restlessness I don’t like.
The need to follow her takes over, and I run to my truck.
Since my mother’s diagnosis, hospitals have been something of a trigger for me. The first year, she fought intensely. The lung cancer had progressed beyond the allowable stages for surgery. Normally, they would remove the cancerous section of the lung, but it wasn’t an option for her.
We spent months in and out of radiation therapy and chemotherapy.
It was devastating to watch her waste away only to find out the chemo wasn’t working.
The cancer was too advanced, and the cells were resisting the treatment.
About nine months ago, her oncologist recommended immunotherapy, and she’s been continuing with that.
However, along with that recommendation came the words palliative care, and her doctors have since focused on medicine to help her quality of life.
She still undergoes treatments from time to time, hoping the cancer will respond—but so far, it hasn’t.
It makes walking through these heavy hospital doors difficult, and my chest tightens with a familiar anxiety.
I shake off the lingering dampness from the storm that passed hours ago—the chill clinging to my clothes. With Max at the cabin, I drove straight here, answering the quiet pull in my gut.
My boots squeak along the sterile hallway, a stark contrast to the mucky woods I’m used to, and the scent of sharp disinfectant hangs in the air.
Why am I here?
I hadn’t planned on coming, but something about the girl sunk deep into my mind.
The way she looked so fragile, unconscious on that soggy trail, when just days ago she’d been snarky with attitude.
Perhaps I just need to know she’s okay. I’ve checked in on other rescues before.
Granted, most of them sought me out, but still.
I just need to know she’s okay, I repeat to myself. To make sure there isn’t something about that spot on the trail I need to be aware of for future hikers … maybe part of me wants to make sure her being near the edge twice now isn’t a cry for help.
As I approach the nurse’s station, I clear my throat. “I’m here to check on a patient, the girl from the Four Mile Trail accident,” I say, my voice low. “She was brought in this afternoon.”
The nurse, dressed in purple scrubs with black hair pulled back, glances up from her chart. “One second.”
I turn, studying the near-empty hallway. A few other nurses mill about with charts in hand while another nurse wheels a flirtatious older man down the hall in a wheelchair.
“Noah? Noah Sullivan? Well, I’ll be damned. Haven’t seen you in ages.”
A tall, familiar looking man with perfect bleached teeth walks by me in an equally white lab coat.
Clark?
“Hey,” I say, reconciling the disheveled jock from high school to the now polished and pristine doctor. His sun-faded hair is tousled past the point of unnatural, and the golden hue of his skin screams stereotypical Californian.
“What’s up, man? Heard you were with the National Park Service.” He gestures toward my uniform, and I nod. “Anyway, some of the old gang hangs out Saturdays. We grab a beer, play a pickup game of basketball. Jenson tries to get us on the golf course—you should come.”
“Yeah, that’d be fun.”
“You still talk to Brent?” he asks. “Maybe he’d like to come, too.”
My molars grind as I clench my jaw. “Yeah, sure, I’ll ask him.”
He grins and slaps me on the shoulder. “Good man. I’ll catch up with ya later.” He spins and takes off down the hall at the same time the nurse behind the station counter speaks up.
“She’s in room two fifteen, but unconscious. Dr. Young will be in there in just a moment. You can head in if you’d like.”
I hesitate for a moment before crossing the hall. The raw memories make me uneasy, yet there’s a draw I can’t shake. An odd curiosity. Who is this girl?
When I find the door, it’s already wedged open, and like an idiot I knock before pushing in. The room is bland, with a single window pinched into the corner of the room.
The girl is in bed, her head wrapped in a bandage and looking younger than I remember.
Her hair is tangled around her face from where they pulled out her ponytail.
The steady beep of the heart monitor ticks in rhythmic bursts as her chest rises and falls beneath the thin hospital blanket. She still looks cold.
Someone clears their throat, and it’s then I realize I’m not alone.
Ranger Dan is in the corner, combing through her tattered backpack.
He pulls out a wallet. “Doctor said she’d wake soon.
I’ve been assigned to notify family and take a statement.
” He studies me and I divert my eyes, now wondering if I’m breaking some sort of protocol by being here.
“It’s normal. Wanting to check on your first save.
Pretty impressive you marched down the speed you did considering the conditions. ”
First save. I pinch my lips together, but don’t correct him.
She isn’t my first. That was a nine-year-old boy on a hike with his father.
He’d forgotten his inhaler and had an asthma attack.
I was the closest to respond with the paramedics still a couple minutes out.
I’ll never forget his wide, frantic eyes as his chest heaved, desperate for a gulp of air.
His father was hysterical, understandably so, but the boy in the moment needed to remain calm as we waited for the paramedics.
I talked him through breathing slowly, instructing him to concentrate on fighting for each breath.
I supported him, keeping him upright and as collected as possible until the paramedics arrived and administered oxygen along with a rescue inhaler.
His name is Ethan, and his tenth birthday invitation hangs on my refrigerator, the party three weeks away. So, yes, it’s normal to want to check on your first save, but if the tightness in my chest is any indication, it doesn’t stop with your first.
The IV line snaking into her arm draws my attention, and I follow it to where it burrows under her pale skin.
“Lily Parker.”
My head snaps in Ranger Dan’s direction once again. He’s peering down at what looks like her driver’s license. Even from here, I can make out it’s not a California license. So, she must be traveling? At least not interested in California long term if she hasn’t changed her ID.
He continues, and I move closer. “Well, look at that. Birthday’s today. Must’ve decided to celebrate with a hike. Twenty-two years old with a home address from Ruin, Mississippi—wherever that is. The town, not the state.” He chuckles at himself.
No wonder why she looks so young—the girl is eight years younger than I am and spending her birthday alone in the rain on a hike. Sounds depressing, but perhaps she’s celebrating with a trip and hiking as much as possible before she leaves.
“Well, I’m going to go do some research and call the local sheriff in Ruin to try and connect with some of her family. I’ll be right back.”
As he exits, Dr. Young, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, shimmies past him in the doorway. “You must be the ranger who helped her off the trail.”
“Yeah,” I reply, nodding as he steps farther into the room. “How is she?”
“Stable now. She has a mild concussion, and a gnarly gash on her head, but nothing too serious. She should come out of it any moment now. She’s lucky—another inch or a different rock with a sharper point—well, let’s just say it could’ve been a lot worse.” His gaze softens as he glances at the girl.
I follow his movement and linger on her peaceful face. It’s funny, the storm that raged all around her hours ago feels like a distant memory, even now.
“I know Ranger Dan has been assigned to figure out who we need to contact, but hopefully when she comes to, she’ll be able to give us more answers. She’s lucky to have had someone like you out there.”
I swallow hard, then force a smile. “I just did my job.”
“And is it your job to come check up on her in the hospital?”
I raise my eyebrows at him, and he smiles before he speaks again. “I’ll be back in a bit. Feel free to sit with her. I’m sure she’d appreciate not waking up in a strange hospital alone.”
After he leaves, I stand there for a moment, considering the small chair in the corner of the room. I’m not sure why I care so much. Maybe it’s the storm, the rescue, or the idea that after spending her birthday alone and having an accident, she’d wake up alone again—that doesn’t sit right with me.
As I approach the chair with her gear on it, I move to pick it up and set it on the small counter next to the sink.
When I do, a small notebook plops to the floor.
With a quick glance around, I pick it up to return it, but the front cover flips open.
I don’t mean to, but the large print words, do I wish I were dead? on the inside cover startles me.
I stare at the chaotic feminine handwriting.
Dead? I wonder about the answer to her own proposed question.
There’s a rustle from somewhere in the room. “Is reading other people’s shit part of your job?”