Chapter 20 Caro
CARO
THEY SPILL OUT OF the helicopter, surrounded by the SAR team, who are helping Caro along.
Thanks to the gash on her leg, she’s moving slower than Ash.
“Our friend is missing,” Caro’s telling everyone, anyone who will listen.
“She’s still in the canyon.” She knows they’ve radioed it in; she and Ash talked about Hope and the men and Ed and Jean, the college students and the high school kids, for the entire helicopter ride.
The SAR team has promised they’re relaying the information.
But it feels like she and Ash have to keep talking about Hope until they actually see her back, in front of them, safe and sound.
Caro knows how unlikely this is. She saw the fall. Hope probably drowned in the river or broke on the rocks below. But until they have proof of her death, Caro is going to assume that Hope is alive.
“She’s injured,” one of the SAR team tells the EMT who’s ready to help Caro to the ambulance, but Caro waves it off.
“I’m a doctor,” she says. “It’s largely superficial.
” Once onboard the helicopter, she’d used their equipment to disinfect and wrap her leg.
As she climbs inside the ambulance, Caro takes one last glance back at the body she and Ash found in the debris, now zipped up into one of the SAR team’s bags.
What was her name? How long had she been in the canyon?
Because Caro’s pretty sure it’s a woman.
She could tell from the way they handled the body and from her own knowledge and experience that those weather-worn bones would be both light as driftwood and heavier than you’d think.
Caro’s no forensic pathologist, but she gave Ash her best guesses about the body as they waited to be rescued.
I think whoever it is must have fallen, a long time ago. The skull had been cracked…
Hope.
Once Caro’s inside the ambulance, the EMTs begin to close the doors.
As they do, Caro catches a glimpse of one of the young women who works at the resort.
She’s running toward their ambulance, someone shouting at and chasing after her.
“Wait,” Caro says. She stops the door before it can shut entirely, and one of the EMTs mutters at her.
She’s annoyed at herself on their behalf—she’s being the absolute worst patient.
“Page?” she asks, hoping she has the right name, and the girl nods.
“Our friend is missing, in the Underground,” Caro says.
“She disappeared. We saw her fall in the canyon.”
“There’s a group of guys who were staying at Sonnet who were in the Underground, too,” Ash says, appearing over Caro’s shoulder. “Have you heard anything about them?”
Page shakes her head.
“We have to go,” the EMT says, attempting to pull the doors closed. The driver turns on the siren, and Page shouts, trying to be heard. “Wait,” she calls out. “Wait. I heard they brought in a body with you?”
Caro nods.
“Who is it?” Page asks.
“We don’t know,” Caro begins, but before she can add, It’s not recent, it’s okay, the EMT has pulled the doors shut, Page’s face vanishing behind them.
Caro submits to the vitals check, the examination of her leg and its dressing.
She asks, “Are we going to the regional hospital?” After the EMT nods, she tips her head back and closes her eyes, but not to rest. Who does she still know at the St. John Regional Hospital from when her dad worked there?
And does she know anyone in search and rescue anywhere? How can she help Hope?
This wasn’t how they were supposed to disappear.
“I’m fine,” Ash keeps saying, over and over, to the EMT checking on her.
She’s sitting on the bench across from Caro, and Caro feels a surge of love and relief that Ash is okay.
The EMTs hand them both the fuzzy hospital socks Caro is so familiar with from work.
She’s been in many an operating room where the patients are wearing those blue and yellow slippers with their white plastic tread.
Before long, the EMTs have finished with their vital checks and have determined that they are, by and large, in good shape.
Caro will definitely need stitches in her leg; Ash might need sutures on her face; they both have bruising.
“We’ve got to call our families,” Ash says, her long blond hair wild. Nearly all of it has escaped from its braid. “We have to let them know we’re okay.”
But, Caro realizes—and she wonders if Ash does, too—our families aren’t worried. If they’ve followed Hope’s rules, their families don’t know they’re anywhere near this disaster.
“They’ll help you get in touch with them at the hospital,” says one of the EMTs, a weathered woman who looks to be in her fifties with short gray hair. “Don’t worry one bit.”
“What about the people missing?” Ash asks. “We have a friend—” Her voice breaks.
“You can ask about them at the hospital, too,” the woman says. “Hopefully they’ve already been rescued, or they’ll be there soon.” Her voice is even, and she pats Ash’s knee. “You two are lucky. You’re going to be fine.”
Fine, fine, fine. The word echoes in Caro’s exhausted brain.
It makes her think of the fine, slender bones in the canyon, of the empty eye sockets looking back at her.
She feels as if something began stirring the moment they came near the bones, as if there’s the slightest presence haunting her now.
Which means she’s exhausted. Caro doesn’t believe in ghosts.
But still, the question hovers over her.
Who did we find?