Chapter Twelve #2
Time stretches as I lay there stunned. My lungs burn, and my body desperately tries to gasp in a breath, fighting for oxygen, but it doesn’t come. My pulse pounds in my ears until I choke in a breath as my paralyzed diaphragm finally relaxes.
My arms are locked around my head, my body twisted at an awkward angle. My ribs ache with every ragged inhale. I try to move my legs. Nothing. I try to shift my arms. Nothing.
Oh, shit. I didn’t just fall, I triggered a damn avalanche and now—I’m buried alive.
My breath comes too fast, using up what little air I have left. My chest tightens as panic surges, but I can’t panic. My mind knows this, but oh, my poor body wants to react instinctually.
With renewed urgency, I try to maneuver my arm further, but the weight pressing down on me is relentless. I can’t move. I steady my breathing, fighting against the pounding of my heart and the growing sense of terror welling up inside me.
“C’mon, Dahlia,” I whisper to myself. “Fucking think. You’re smart. You can do this!”
The pep talk gives me the encouragement to continue to try to make some room around my face, but the small pocket won’t be enough air to last very long. I need to balance using up more oxygen with exertion versus trying to get free.
I want to yell for Sita, but I have no idea where she is and that will only waste more precious air. The only sounds I can hear are the frantic beat of my own heart and above that my shaky breathing. I continue wiggling my arm, hoping I can somehow thrust it up and out through the top.
Within minutes, my body becomes impossibly heavy, limbs weighed down by the crushing embrace of the snow. An icy tingling is creeping up my legs from my numb feet. If I don’t suffocate, it looks like I'll freeze to death instead. And I don’t know which is worse.
Deciding suffocation to be my bigger fear, I slow my breathing, each shallow inhale scraping icy claws against my lungs.
The cold feels sharper with every breath, but it’s a gamble I’m willing to take.
Maybe, just maybe, slowing down will preserve what little oxygen remains in this icy tomb until help arrives.
It’s a long shot, but it’s all I’ve got.
The silence presses in, a weight of its own. No sound penetrates the thick layers of snow—not the howl of the wind, not the faintest echo of life.
It’s as if the world above has ceased to exist. I could be inches from the surface or buried under an endless white void. The stillness is maddening, disorienting.
I focus on the shallow rise and fall of my chest, counting breaths to keep the panic at bay. Time becomes meaningless here in the frozen dark. Minutes, hours—how long have I been trapped?
The snow clings to me, stealing the warmth from my body, and my thoughts start to slip. There’s no way to tell if rescue is coming or if the lonely beat of my heart will be the last thing I ever hear.
As the heaviness abates and instead, I float, my life doesn’t flash before my eyes.
Rather, I see a highlight reel of the highs and lows.
I watch as I grow up and head off to college where for the first time in my life, I thrive.
Instead of being a nerd, I’m celebrated for my intellect and curiosity.
I see myself, a promising young undergrad, falling in love with Ben. Putting him on a pedestal and thinking he is my soulmate. The friends and fun I had discovered slipping away as he eclipsed everything else in my life.
Stuck here in the snow on the other side of the world, I’m struck again by just how much he was the one riding my coattails. How all of his successes were mine boosting him up. I see with perfect clarity how he used me and took advantage of the love I offered freely.
“You were the smart one, the whole time. Be smart now,” I stammer out to myself, teeth chattering.
My mind is slow but drifts through what to do in an avalanche from some book I read long ago.
I realize, I don’t know what direction I am facing to get out.
I work up what little saliva is in my cold mouth, and I spit.
It falls straight down into the snow, and I realize I am face down. I never could have punched up.
With a small laugh, I realize I went ass over tin cups down the mountain. The thought triggers a memory, a song. Wildly inappropriate lyrics start coursing through my mind, telling me to back that ass up. I start nodding my head to the beat and try to wriggle my body, booty end first.
It’s the only plan I’ve got. All I can do is hope that it's crazy enough to work. Within minutes, crippling fatigue weighs me down, and with the lack of progress, I debate giving up. Maybe freezing to death won’t be that bad after all.
Just me and my off-key rendition of this song fading into oblivion.
The thought hits me with brutal clarity—I am going to die here.
I am going to freeze to death alone in this storm, buried beneath the weight of my own recklessness in pursuit of my cure. The ultimate ironic death.
A laugh bubbles up, half-hysterical, but I bite it back.
As the song plays on repeat in my mind, I dig down deep and tap into my survival instinct.
It is me and my will to live against the avalanche.
I channel the fear, the hysteria, the fucking irony into my movements, shaking more and more until I’m twerking my way, ass up, out of the damn snowy tomb.
Suddenly, I feel something shift, and an icy blast hits my rear.
“No, shit, the nineties for the win,” I chatter out, half frozen, half hysterical, but wholly grateful.