Chapter 52 #3
I laugh a little, but my stomach's doing backflips.
Once I reach the four-mile marker—just a weathered wooden post with peeling red paint—I stare down into the ravine.
The beam from my headlamp disappears into blackness.
Fuck it. I start down just as Roman instructed, legs spread wide like I'm straddling a horse.
The loose dirt and pebbles shift under my boots, sending miniature avalanches tumbling ahead of me.
The grade steepens until I'm practically skiing on my heels, grabbing at saplings to slow my descent.
My thighs burn. Seventy percent grade is basically a cliff with trees.
Jagged rocks jut out like teeth, waiting to shred me if I slip.
Even with years of hiking under my belt, this descent makes my heart hammer against my ribs.
It takes me about an hour of a careful and slow descent, my headlamp cutting a weak yellow cone through the midnight darkness.
Loose stones skitter away under my boots, threatening to send me tumbling after them.
When I finally reach the bottom of the ravine, my light catches something pale against the black earth.
Tally. She's curled on her side beneath a thin emergency blanket that shivers with her trembling.
The silver material crinkles as I drop to my knees beside her.
My heart slams against my ribs like it's trying to escape.
She's alive. Her skin is waxy, lips cracked and bloodless, but she's breathing.
I slide my arms under her, cradling her against my chest. Her head lolls against my shoulder, dark hair matted with sweat and dirt. Her eyelids flutter but don't open.
"Cameron," she rasps, voice like sandpaper. "Cameron. Cameron."
My name on her lips is a knife twisting in my gut. Her breath comes in shallow puffs against my neck. When I peel back the blanket, her right leg lies at a sickening angle, the denim of her jeans torn and stained dark.
"Tally," I whisper, my lips brushing her temple. "I'm here."
She doesn't wake, just keeps shaking her head against my chest, my name a broken record on her tongue. I press my forehead to hers, breathing in the scent of her—earth and sweat and something uniquely Tally beneath it all.
"Oh, Tally, I wonder if you can hear me.
If you can, know this. I won't leave you again.
Never again. Maybe we'll be together for the rest of our lives, or maybe you'll only ever have me as a friend.
I don't care. We will be together one way or another.
I love you, Tally. You're the only one for me. "
Thank God, her breathing's steady. I press my fingers to her wrist—pulse is there, but faint. Her skin chills my fingertips. Hypothermia. She'll likely remain unconscious until we get her to the medevac and the team can slowly warm her core temperature.
I kiss her forehead and radio Roman. "Rome," I say. "I found her. Send search and rescue at first dawn. She needs a medevac and a spinal board. Spine appears intact, thank God, but I won't risk movement. And have her flown to UCLA."
My pulse quickens as I imagine her recovery.
UCLA is where my fellowship is—where I practically live.
If she's there, I can check on her between rounds, bring her decent coffee instead of the hospital sludge.
I could even stay overnight in her room; staff privileges have to be good for something.
The rescue team will push for the closest ER, but UCLA's only an hour by chopper.
I'll make my case. I need to be there for her, and I can't do that if she's across the city or in the Mammoth hospital while I'm pulling 70-hour weeks.
It's so cold my breath crystallizes in front of me like tiny diamonds.
I shrug out of my down coat, the nylon shell crackling in the silence, and drape it over her pale form.
My cable-knit sweater is thick but useless against the biting wind that cuts through the wool like knives.
My fingers have gone numb, and my ears burn.
But she needs this coat—her lips had turned the color of plums, her skin like porcelain against the dark earth of the ravine floor.
I'd considered bringing her another coat when I spotted her from above, but the treacherous descent down loose shale and gnarled roots was challenging enough without extra baggage.
I pull her against my chest and close my eyes, trying to ignore how violently my body trembles in the cold.
Her weight in my arms is both burden and comfort.
The shivering that wracked her frame earlier has subsided—a good sign that the down insulation is working.
Sleep tugs at me, but I jerk awake repeatedly, pressing two fingers to the delicate skin of her neck, counting the slow, steady beats.
Her breaths come shallow but regular against my collarbone.
Not once do her eyelids flutter—her stillness confirming what my medical training already knows: moderate hypothermia still has her in its dangerous embrace.
I stay awake all night, monitoring her vitals with bloodshot eyes, counting each shallow breath, waiting for dawn so I could hear that Medevac helicopter slicing through the towering pines.
It finally arrives with a thunderous whump-whump-whump that shakes the ground beneath us, thanks to Roman radioing the guy.
Thank God. The medic—a burly man with calloused hands and kind eyes—immediately wraps her in a silver heated blanket that crinkles like Christmas paper.
Her head, framed by tangled raven hair, bobs from side to side as if she's trying to wake up, but her eyes, bruised with purple shadows underneath, don't open.
But she does make a face—her full lips curving slightly upward, her forehead smoothing out—as if she can feel the blessed warmth of the Ready Heat blanket seeping into her ice-cold skin.
"Take her to UCLA," I say, my voice hoarse from the night's worry. "I'm a doctor there, and I can ensure she gets the best care possible from our trauma team and I can also facilitate her immediate admission."
The medic nods, sweat beading on his temple despite the morning chill. "That can be arranged."
"I'll meet you there." My fingers tremble as I brush a strand of hair from her pale face.
Then Tally's loaded onto a bright orange backboard and she's hoisted into the chopper, which hovers twenty feet above us, blades churning the air into a deafening cyclone that whips my hair across my face and flattens the surrounding grass.
My heart pounds against my ribs like it's trying to escape as I watch her in the rescue basket being lifted into the Medevac, her body looking impossibly small and fragile against the vast morning sky.
She'll be okay. She has to be. I give a little wave to the medic guy who returns it with a thumbs-up as the two of them disappear into the belly of the helicopter, its red-and-white hull gleaming in the first rays of sunlight.
I watch the helicopter lift off with Tally inside, wrapped in a thermal blanket with an IV drip in her arm and medics monitoring her every breath.
Only then does the reality of my situation hit me.
I'm at the bottom of this godforsaken ravine with no climbing gear and no poles.
Getting down here was pure adrenaline and luck. Going back up? That's another story.
No way am I calling for a second rescue.
I eye the steep slope, searching for a path.
Each handhold becomes a victory—fingers gripping exposed roots, boots finding purchase on jutting rocks.
My muscles scream as I haul myself upward, inch by excruciating inch, until I finally drag my body over the edge onto the trail.
Roman and Lilith rush toward me, Roman's arm coming around my shoulders. "You did good, Cam," he says. "If you hadn't bailed on your wedding to come looking, she wouldn't have made it."
He's right. Another night out here with dehydration and hypothermia setting in—she was already unconscious when I found her. I saved her life today.
Fair exchange, I suppose.
After all, she saved mine first.