Authors: Kelly Martin
Hospital?
“You’ve been here a few days. Can you open your eyes for me?”
That was a good question. Could she open her eyes? Nothing felt real. Her body felt heavy, as if it belonged to someone else. She was too weak to control it.
She took a few deep breaths to steady her breathing and for the first time, heard the beeping of machines. So she actually was in a hospital. Not dead.
“Come on, baby. Open those eyes for me.”
She felt like a child, and that was okay with her. After five days on that mountain, she wanted more than anything to crawl into her mother’s arms and be safe.
Focusing as hard as she could, she opened her eyes a little then slammed them shut. The brightness above her hurt them too much.
“Try again,” her mother encouraged.
She focused and opened them again and, this time, forced them to stay open. Everything was out of focus, but she could make out the silhouette of her mother to her left holding her hand.
Rachel opened her mouth to talk, but her tongue felt thick and cottony. She licked the roof of her mouth, trying to get the cotton balls out.
“It’s normal, Rachel,” another female voice said. Rachel didn’t recognize the voice, but a distorted figure moved on her right side. “It’s the effects of the medicine, the cold from the mountain, and… other factors. Keep working at it. I promise the words will come.”
So that’s what Rachel did. She worked as hard as she could to get the words to come out. “Mama,” she whispered after a few unsuccessful tries.
“Yeah. I’m right here.” Her mom sounded happy.
“Hospital?”
“The forest rangers found you and the Jenkins boy a little before sunrise five days ago. You were lucky they did. They said…” she paused. “They said you wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”
“Asher?” she asked, her eyes lolling to the side. Why was it so difficult to keep them open?
“He’s here, too. In a room down the hall. He had the beginnings of hypothermia but is doing much better now. I think his aunt said he would be released today. I bet he’ll be glad to see you awake. He’s been worried.”
Rachel felt her mother caressing her hair. The gentle way her mom’s fingers moved soothed her. It was the most peaceful she remembered being for a very long time, and she wished she could stay that way forever.
After a few minutes, she noticed something strange. The comforting feeling faded away, and something new filled its place.
“Mama—”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Why can’t I move?”
Even through unfocused eyes, Rachel sensed her mom tense. It was like a thick cloud engulfed the room. “Um… the doctor did a lot of x-rays. Your back isn’t broken as they feared, thank God. Asher said you slammed your back into a rock pretty hard when the current took you. It’s bruised pretty bad and swollen, but not broken. You can’t move because you are so weak. You went a long time without food. But you’ll be fine when we get a few burgers in you.”
“Sounds good.” She smiled, leaning her head back over for her mother to rub. “Not paralyzed?”
“Oh no.” Her mother took her hand and gently kissed her fingers. “No, you aren’t paralyzed. But you do have some injuries I need to tell you about.”
Rachel heard the increased beeping of the monitors. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know how bad she was or live in blissful denial.
“Mrs. Harker, be careful with her please,” the nurse warned, doing something beside her. Whatever the nurse was messing with, Rachel wished she would leave her alone. Couldn’t this lady see she wanted to have a private conversation with her mother?
“No, I wanna know.” Rachel said, more determined than ever to overcome her distorted vision. She tried as hard as she could to focus on her mother.
Her mom looked rough. Her curly, chocolate brown hair was thrown up in a messy ponytail with hair falling all around her face. Her green eyes had purple and black bags under them. Normally her mom wore professional clothes at her accounting job, but there she sat in navy blue jogging pants and a white long-sleeved shirt. She knew it had to be bad for her mom to allow herself to look so unkempt.
“Okay.” Her mom bit her lip, one of her nervous habits. She rubbed little circles with her thumb over the chapped skin. “Being paralyzed was one of our main concerns, but not the only one. You had a pretty nasty cut on your head and lost a lot of blood. Asher did what he could for you in the woods, but there were still a lot of concerns when you arrived. You have a touch of pneumonia from being out in the cold for so long. You broke your leg, three ribs…”
“My foot?” she asked, wanting to get to the elephant in the room. She wondered if it had been sprained or broken.
“They couldn’t save your toes,” her mom blurted out.
Rachel froze. Her mind wouldn’t process that. “Wha— what? Save my toes?” What did she mean they couldn’t save her toes? Her ankle had just been sprained not diseased.
“Rachel, listen to me. It’s all gonna be okay.”
“Okay? Okay? What happened?” She found strength she didn’t know she had and sat up in the bed, taking her oxygen tubes and blood pressure cuff with her. Sure enough, under the covers, she could see the outline of a large cast going all the way up her leg, and a large ball of gauze at the end.
“Oh no!” she gasped.
“Rachel…”
“What happened?” she asked. “What happened?”
“I will tell you, but you have got to stop freaking out. When you and the boys went missing, David organized an immediate search party. They looked for you for days and couldn’t find you. Additional people were brought in, then it rained and the road up the mountain was blocked by a landslide. It took a few days to clean it up. It was like God kept you out there for a reason.”
“I don’t want to talk about God right now, Mama. What happened to my foot?”
“You broke your knee in several places when you fell into the water. Asher said it looked like you hit every rock in the water.”
Rachel vaguely remembered crossing a creek, but she didn’t remember falling in. “My foot,” she reminded her mom.
“And your ankle,” her mother continued, “You walked a long time on it broken.”
“Broken? I thought it was just sprained! And what does that have to do with my toes?”
“Asher said you didn’t know how bad it was hurt, but… Look, walking on your broken ankle wearing just a sock and bandage in those freezing temperatures, your toes got frostbite. Then that frostbite turned to gangrene. That’s why they were the color they were.”
Were…
Rachel wanted to crawl into a hole.
“But it’s all right. You’re going to be fine. The doctors took care of it.”
“By cutting off my toes?”
“Not all of them.”
“How many?”
“The first two. Your big toe and the one beside it. You broke your leg so bad that you had to have surgery to fix it. They amputated then.”
Amputated.
“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for the past few days.”
Rachel shook her head, making the room spin. “I don’t— I don’t remember any of it.”
Her mom rubbed her forehead with tears streaming down her cheeks. “I know, baby. It’s fine that you don’t. I’m just happy that you're here with me. The doctors called you a miracle. They said that, medically speaking, you shouldn’t have survived that long in the woods, especially with your injuries.”
Rachel knew what she was getting at: God. God had saved her and brought her through. She knew she was a miracle but didn’t feel like one.
Her mother kept talking. “The doctor also said that after your leg heals, you can start physical therapy, so you can learn to walk again.”
Whoa! Not being able to walk hadn’t even crossed her mind yet.
“Walk?”
“Your balance will be off because of your missing toes, so you’ll have to learn to adjust.”
Adjust. All she ever did was adjust. Adjust to her dad being dead; adjust to life without her toes. It was all too much for her fragile mind to take in. She didn’t know what to say or even what to think.
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but…”
“I wanna sleep,” Rachel said. She didn’t want to hear any more.
“I don’t think—”
“I wanna sleep, Mama.” She looked up at her hard, and then her eyes softened. Her mom had been through enough. “Please, I’m tired.”
“I gave her some medicine in her IV for the pain, Mrs. Harker. It might be making her sleepy,” the nurse said, patting Rachel on the shoulder. Rachel knew it was supposed to be reassuring; it was anything but.
“Okay, I’ll be right here if you need me.”
“I want to be alone if you don’t mind. Please. I just— I need to be alone.”
“I understand.” Her mom kissed her head and handed her the nurse call button. “You push this if you need anything. Someone will come running. I won’t be far away.”
Her mom grabbed some money from her purse and headed to the door.
“Mama,” Rachel called.
“Yeah?” She turned around at the door.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetie. Get some rest. I’ll be back soon.”
Rachel watched the fuzzy image of her mother walk out of the door. She waited for the door to shut before she let the tears flow.
****
Starving, Asher rounded the corner and made his way into the hospital cafeteria for the second time that day. He hadn’t completely filled up from his days without food. Doctor Gleason had told him to take it easy on the food and wait for his body to adjust. Asher had just laughed. After all he’d been through, he didn’t care if he made it to four hundred pounds. He refused to ever go hungry again.
The doctor had also said he might be released that day, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On one hand, he’d love to get out of that place and back home. But on the other, home wasn’t that great, and he’d miss Rachel.
There hadn’t been a day when he skipped visiting her room since he woke up at the hospital on Thursday. He would talk to her, hold her hand, and pray that she’d wake up. She never did while he was there, though her mom said she had a few times for her. More than anything, he wanted to talk to her. He needed to tell her what had happened to him on the mountain — he needed to tell someone.
The cafeteria was small compared to others he’d seen. It had around twenty wooden tables scattered around the plain beige-colored room. Pictures of different scenes of the Smokies were hung up in dark wood frames, two to a wall. One whole side consisted of nothing but snack and drink machines. They always reminded him of his first real conversation with Rachel.
Asher got his tray filled with baked chicken and mashed potatoes and sat down at an empty table. The nurses had encouraged him to eat in his room so he could rest in his bed. He hadn’t listened to them, either. After five days, he was tired of his room, plus the walk to the cafeteria took him past Rachel’s room, where he could stop to listen to the beeps of her heart monitors from the hall, reassuring him.
Even though the hospital was kept relatively warm, Asher wore a long-sleeved black shirt and red fleece pajama bottoms. He had on two pairs of socks and thick house shoes that didn’t look manly, but boy, were they warm. Fashion could kiss his butt. He was all about food and warmth now.
Before he’d taken his first bite, he saw Rachel’s mom walk in. “Mrs. Harker,” he called, motioning her over.
“Asher, I was looking for you.” She smiled, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Rachel’s awake,” she said before he could say anything. “The nurse thinks it’s for good this time.”
He blinked twice. “What? Really? I have to see her.” He jumped up, but Mrs. Harker stood and placed her hands on his arms to stop him.
“You can’t. Not yet, anyway. There’s a lot she has to take in and has asked to be alone.”
“She knows about her toes then?” Asher sank back into his seat. He had hoped for her to be more lucid before having that talk with her mother.
Mrs. Harker sighed. “Yeah. It wasn’t a fun conversation. I felt so bad for her.”
“Yeah, but she knows she’s lucky to be alive, right? We both are. We were goners if those rangers hadn’t found us when they did. I don’t even remember it, and I know Rachel doesn’t. She knows we don’t think anything less of her because she’s missing a few toes, right?”
“She will, but it’s new to her. It’s scary waking up in a strange place with part of yourself missing. Give her time.”
“I know. But I need to see her. I need to talk to her.”
“You will.” She smiled and patted Asher on the hand. “You saved my little girl, you know that right?”
“I nearly killed your little girl,” Asher said, his voice hard. “I never should have made her cross that creek. I made her walk on her broken foot and hurt it worse than it already was. Or maybe if I hadn’t been so adamant about taking her boot off in the first place, it wouldn’t have gotten frost bite and gangrene…”
“Don’t,” she said, stopping him. “Don’t do that. You kept her alive. You kept her going. I will be forever grateful for that.”
“I didn’t get her back,” he said, and he hadn’t. His body had given up before he made it to the trail. He had learned later that they had been found just twenty feet from Harrison’s Trail.
“But you got her far enough. Don’t beat yourself up, Asher. You’re only human.”
“Yeah.” He laughed bitterly. “Only human.” He tossed his fork on his tray and leaned back. He had no business in the cafeteria when he was needed somewhere else. “Mrs. Harker, you can have anything you want on my plate. I find I’m not hungry anymore.”
He stood, and Rachel’s mom blocked him from leaving. “She needs her rest, Asher. I know you’re worried about her, but she needs time alone to process things. She’s been through a lot.”
“I know. I was there,” Asher said, hoping it didn’t sound harsh. “Look, it’s been a horrible week. I just want to see her. I need to see her for myself.”
“Maybe later. Just let her be for now,” Mrs. Harker pleaded, squeezing his arm tighter to make her point.
He wished he could do what she asked, but he couldn’t. “I won’t be long. I promise.”
Asher didn’t wait for her reply. His mind was already made up.
Chapter Nineteen