Chapter Thirty-Four
CHAPTER
34
A cut beneath Kit’s right eyebrow, only a few millimetres long but deep, bleeds into his eye. He swipes the blood away but the cut bleeds again. I bunch my cuff and hold it firmly against his brow. His left eye is closed. He opens it a crack before closing it again.
‘What’s the matter with your other eye?’
‘I’ll flush it when we get to the hut.’
My fingers are frozen, but I finally get Astrid on the phone. ‘Where are you?’
‘A landslide blocked the road,’ she says. ‘We had to turn back.’
‘What?’
‘It’ll be cleared by morning.’
‘Is Daniel at the hut?’
‘He set up the bedding and food, but the hail brought down the drone. He went searching for it and couldn’t get back to the hut. We’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Kit’s right eye is cut and he has something in his left eye. He needs help.’
Kit fumbles but then takes the phone. ‘Astrid.’
‘Is this a complication?’ she snaps. ‘What’s going on?’
Kit gives Astrid a sketchy outline, finishing with, ‘See you tomorrow.’
After failed attempts to clip the safety harness to his own belt, Kit allows me to lead for the rest of the climb. What should have taken ten minutes takes thirty, but we finally reach the top of the escarpment and a clearing. Ten metres on, he unfastens his pack and drops it on the ground with his helmet, then sits and puts his head between his knees.
‘Five minutes.’
I crouch next to him. ‘It’s getting dark.’
‘Two.’
‘Where is the cabin?’
He thinks about that, then takes out his compass. ‘I have coordinates.’
The shadows are long and the track is non-existent but, checking our direction every few minutes, we make our way through the scrub. When Kit stumbles over a tree root and falls to his knees, I help him to stand and give him the torch.
‘Hold this out so I can see for both of us.’
The cabin has roughly cut timber walls, floorboards and a corrugated roof and is basic but blissfully dry. And, besides clouds of cobwebs that hang from the ceiling, it’s also clean. Beds, solid timber platforms, are attached to the walls—two sets of bunks and two single beds, all with a mat and sleeping bag on top. Daniel has placed five large containers on one of the bunks. I open lids. Sandwiches, wraps and fruit, lamps, torches and chargers, a medical kit.
After sitting on one of the single beds, Kit opens his pack. ‘I have your clothes.’
‘We’ll look at you first.’
As I set out lamps and open the medical kit, Kit hands me his phone. ‘Can you reverse the camera? I want to see.’
The cut above his right eye isn’t bleeding as profusely as it was, but his eyelid is swollen and sticky.
‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ he says.
‘You won’t make me stitch it, will you?’
A brief smile. ‘No.’
‘What about your left eye?’
Holding up the phone, he prises open his left eye. ‘This is more difficult.’
After we clean our hands with antiseptic wipes and pull on gloves, he instructs me to look for a pack of small ampoules filled with saline. Then he lies on the bed, lifts his left eyelid and turns his head to the side. He opens the ampoule, shoots a stream of water into his eye before doing it again. The water runs down the side of his face.
He blinks. And winces. ‘Fuck.’
When I perch next to him on the bed, he shifts over. ‘Should I look?’
‘Use the torch.’
I position the torch between my knees as I open his eye, much more gently than he did. ‘It’s hard to see because your eye is so red, but there could be something there.’
‘I’ll hold it open.’
‘I squirt the saline?’
‘Get a new ampoule.’
As the saline runs from his eye to puddle on the bed, he sucks breaths through tight lips. I lift his lid and look closely again.
‘I think it’s gone.’
This time when he blinks, he only winces a little. My phone rings.
‘They’ll start work on the road as soon as it’s light,’ Astrid says. ‘We’ll get up there as soon as we can.’ A brief conversation. Then, ‘Put your phone on speaker.’
A paramedic who introduces himself as Micky comes on the line. ‘How’re you doing?’
I explain that I can no longer see anything in Kit’s eye but it’s painful and bloodshot and it waters when he opens it.
‘Put the anaesthetic drops in again.’
‘Again? We didn’t use them last time.’
After I explain to an increasingly cranky Kit that now someone has gone to the trouble of telling me there’s such a thing as anaesthetic drops I want to use them, he lies down again. Following the paramedic’s instructions, I apply the drops then flush his eye.
‘I can’t see anything in it.’
‘How does it feel, Kit?’ the paramedic asks.
‘Same,’ Kit replies. ‘Corneal abrasion.’
I put my hand on his arm. ‘What is that?’
‘His eyeball is scratched,’ Micky explains.
When Kit tries to sit, I push him down. ‘What do we do?’
‘Have you got an eye ointment?’
I scrabble in the box again and find a tiny tube. ‘Yes.’ I tell him the brand.
‘That’ll lubricate the lens and guard against infection,’ Micky says. ‘Kit? Keep your eye shut, mate, till you get it checked out.’
When I pass Kit the tube, he squeezes the ointment onto his finger, pulls down his bottom lid and smears. He blinks a few times, creating an opaque barrier over his eye.
‘What about the cut?’ I ask Micky.
‘Is his lid swollen?’
‘More and more.’
‘A bruise.’ Kit touches his brow. ‘Steri-strips.’
The paramedic laughs. ‘Astrid warned me you’d self-diagnose. Any signs of concussion?’
‘No,’ Kit says.
‘You couldn’t walk straight,’ I say.
Kit grumbles, ‘I couldn’t see.’
When I squirt sterile water then antiseptic lotion on the cut, Kit winces. But he stays perfectly still as I apply narrow strips across the cut to hold it together and put a plaster over the top to keep it clean. I sit back to admire my handiwork.
‘That’s better.’
‘Keep him still,’ Micky says. ‘Give him two anti-inflammatories, two paracetamol. Get in touch if anything changes.’
After the call ends, Kit, left eye fully closed and vision from his right eye compromised by the swelling and strips, reaches into his bag and pulls out the bundle of clothes he took from my backpack last night. His face is pale beneath his tan.
‘Get changed.’
‘After I’ve—’
‘Your hands are cold. You’re shivering.’
‘I’m not in pain. You are.’
He takes another bundle of clothes from his pack. ‘Go, Mackenzie.’
I crouch at his feet. ‘I’ll help you first.’
My hands are cold, just like he said, and the double bow on his boot is wet and tight. I tug at his lace, tug again. He’s arrogant and cranky but deep down he must be scared. Another tug.
‘Leave it.’
‘You think I can’t undo a lace?’
His mouth is firm. ‘I don’t need your help.’
‘Shut up.’ When a sob works its way up my throat, I hiccup and swallow, but then I go back to his lace.
‘Mackenzie—’
‘I told you to shut up!’
‘I didn’t—’
‘You’re the most arrogant bastard I’ve ever met!’ I swallow, shake my head. ‘No wonder I hate you.’
He mutters unintelligible words. Then, ‘Do I tell you how I feel?’
I turn away, press my palms against my eyes. ‘No.’
‘Jeg elsker deg.’
I return to the laces, finally unravelling the double knots and bows before pulling the laces free of the eyelets and yanking them through the holes. I sit back on my heels as he kicks off the boots. He unzips his jacket and peels it off before pulling the arms through the right way. His long-sleeved shirt is fixed with press-studs. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. When he takes off his shirt, his T-shirt pulls tight across his chest. He grasps the hem and—
Heart pounding with a crazy combination of fear, anger and something else I don’t want to think about, I jump to my feet. On the far side of the cabin, as far away from Kit as I can get, I put a foot on the other single bed, snagging a nail as I yank at my laces.