Authors: Warren Dalzell
“Debbie,” Jack shouted, “can you get Spence to at least stand somewhere for a minute or two? He’s getting heavy.”
“Hold on a moment, Jack. I’m coming to help.”
Spencer’s feet were fewer than twenty feet above where she stood. She knew it was too high for her to safely boulder to where he was. ‘Bouldering’ is rock climbing parlance for practicing one’s skills on a cliff or a wall while staying close enough to the ground such that a safety rope isn’t needed. But in this instance, with a deep fissure to provide support and fall protection, and with her climbing shoes on, Debbie figured her chances of falling were almost non-existent.
Marcie and Jocelyn watched with a mixture of awe and apprehension as Debbie quickly and effortlessly scrambled to a point immediately below Spencer’s right foot. “Okay, Spence, let’s climb down together.” She took his left foot in one hand. “Relax and let me guide your foot to a stable hold.” Spencer complied, and soon he supported most of his weight on the rock. “Excellent,” Debbie remarked, “Now, let’s do the same thing with your other leg.” She grasped his other foot and pulled it down towards a nice wide shelf within the large fissure. That action, however, caused Spencer to turn his body and lose his balance. He reacted by kicking down with the foot, crushing Debbie’s fingers against the rock. Instinctively she pulled her hand free, but in doing so her weight shifted away from the cliff.
Debbie Holloway let out a brief cry as she fell nearly twenty feet to the ledge where Marcie and Joselyn looked on in horror.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Jocelyn shrieked as Debbie, hands flailing wildly, plummeted towards the ground. She hit with a thud accompanied by a loud crack, and lay where she fell, crumpled and motionless.
For a split second no one moved. Jack’s vantage point didn’t permit him a view of events, but Jocelyn’s screams left no doubt that something horrific had transpired. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Debbie’s hurt,” Marcie yelled in reply.
Jack was overcome by the urge to help, but he had the presence of mind to remain calm and tend to Spencer who, once again, had become little more than dead weight. “Spencer,” he said with authority, “get the hell off the rope. Climb down…NOW.”
At the sight of Debbie lying motionless below, Spencer’s fear disappeared. Adrenaline took control and he nimbly maneuvered down to the ledge. After struggling out of his harness, he moved well off to one side, far away from where Debbie lay, and began to cry. An overwhelming feeling of culpability welled up within him; he was frightened, embarrassed and ashamed because of the predicament he felt he had caused.
When Jack arrived he beheld a sobering scene. Debbie lay where she’d fallen, barely conscious and moaning softly. Marcie knelt beside her, intent in the study of the older woman’s injuries. Jocelyn had disappeared, but at the sight of Jack, she stumbled over to where he stood. Her face was ashen. She looked to be in shock, and at the moment was wiping flecks of vomit from around her mouth—part of the lunch she’d lost after having caught sight of Debbie’s injuries. Jack patted her shoulder in a gesture of reassurance before walking over to check on Debbie. Marcie saw him coming and stood, motioning him to a place where they could talk and not be overheard by Debbie.
“Is she hurt badly?”
“Yes and no,” Marcie replied. The young girl was shaking and scared, but she was fighting to maintain control of her emotions and succeeding admirably well. “When I asked her to move her fingers and toes she did so easily. Her pupils are responsive and both are dilated to the same degree, that’s the good news—it appears she isn’t suffering from acute brain or spinal injury.”
“But?”
“But I can’t be sure. She’s in an awful lot of pain, Jack. Normally, in a case like this we’d just call the paramedics and be done with it. They would sedate her and splint her for transport to a hospital.”
Marcie bit her lip in concentration. As far as she was concerned, Jocelyn and Spencer were out of it. They’d be of little help. She and Jack had to assume the responsibility for Debbie’s care. “Her lower right leg is badly broken just above the ankle. The fracture isn’t compound, but the ends of the bones are severely displaced.” She motioned for him to follow and the two of them returned to Debbie’s side.
“Debbie?” Marcie asked. The injured woman looked up at her. The initial trauma of the fall was wearing off; she was in agony, but was lucid, comprehending. “Debbie, we have to get you out of here. Can you move at all?”
“It hurts too much. There’s no way I can climb. My leg…” She raised her head slightly and regarded her injured appendage. It was swollen; her foot was canted inward at an unnatural angle, and the end of the tibia pushed outward above the break producing a prominent bulge. She settled back down and murmured, “Oh, God; I’m so stupid. Why did I do that? It was too high…Just get Morgan here. Please. The emergency communicator—it’s in my pack. All you have to do is turn it on, push the red button and hit ‘send.’ Morgan will receive a pre-recorded text stating that we have an emergency situation and it will display our exact GPS coordinates.”
Jack nodded, “I’m on it.” He began to make his way towards the rope.
“Wait,” said Marcie. “Before you go can you help us move Debbie to that level place over there?” Enlisting the others to help, they prepared a “bed” near the base of the cliff where she’d be out of the wind. They cleared a spot by brushing away small rocks and pebbles. They then extracted wind-blown sand out of rock crevasses, spreading it around to act as cushioning for their patient. When all was ready they placed jackets under Debbie’s torso and legs to act as litters. Then, with two people on either side grasping the coats firmly, they awkwardly, but successfully, transferred Debbie, teeth gritted against the pain, to her new bed. As they set her down, Jocelyn’s knee accidentally bumped Debbie’s right shoulder. The woman uttered a sharp cry of pain.
Jocelyn recoiled defensively, “What did I do? I didn’t mean to hurt you. I swear!”
Debbie’s reaction puzzled Marcie. Earlier she’d done a thorough accounting of Debbie’s injuries. The woman had a laceration of the scalp which had bled profusely but didn’t appear to be too serious; as far as she could tell it wasn’t associated with a concussion. She also had either sprained or broken her left wrist and had several bruised ribs. But by far the main concern was her lower right leg. The latter was potentially life threatening if she didn’t get proper care soon.
Now, however, there appeared to be something she’d missed, an injury to the
right
arm. Marcie carefully poked and prodded Debbie’s arm starting at the wrist and moving upward. All was fine until she reached the shoulder, at which point Debbie winced in agony. Carefully pulling Debbie’s shirt sleeve aside, Marcie saw the end of the clavicle jutting out.
“The fall dislocated your shoulder,” Marcie observed. She studied the arm closely, feeling all around the joint. “It’s not that bad. In fact, it’s something I can fix. Do you feel up to it?”
The older woman nodded and looked at Marcie pleadingly. “Will it hurt much?” She had resigned herself completely to the care of this fourteen-year-old girl, a child really, whom she’d known only for a few days. There was something about her, an air of confidence, that was reassuring not just to Debbie but to the others as well. Marcie Van Wormer was incredibly well versed in first aid, a godsend given their perilous situation.
“It won’t be painful if you force the arm to relax. That’s the key.” Without waiting for a reply, Marcie began to massage Debbie’s neck and shoulder muscles helping to relieve tension. “Just relax,” she repeated softly as she held the upper arm firmly against the woman’s side. Then, with the elbow bent at ninety degrees, she carefully rotated the lower arm away from Debbie’s torso while pulling gently downward. The ball of the humorous slid neatly back into place. The other students gawked in amazement.
Debbie smiled for the first time since the fall. “That was awesome, Marcie. The pain’s almost completely gone. Where the heck did you learn to do that?”
The girl blushed. She was elated at what she’d just done, even more so than her patient and the others around her. “I was playing in a soccer game last year and one of the girls on the other team fell and dislocated her shoulder. My dad was watching in the stands.” She shrugged as though it were no big deal. “I watched him pop it back in.”
“So, your dad’s what? A paramedic? A physician?
“He’s an orthopod, you know, an orthopedic surgeon—a bone doctor.”
Debbie sighed, “We could sure use him right now.” She then tried to smile, “but having his daughter here is almost as good.”
VIII.
“I’m afraid it has to be done, Jack.” Marcie and Jack stood just out of earshot of the others. He’d just returned with the day packs they’d left at the top of the cliff.
Jack was frowning. “Can’t it wait until her husband gets here? They have real medical facilities at the dig site, you know, an x-ray unit, prescription drugs for the pain…someone with a medical degree.” The last comment stung Marcie somewhat but she knew what he meant. The kinds of decisions she was making could get her into messy legal trouble. Only trained health professionals are permitted to practice serious medicine, and even they are professionally and legally bound to follow rules for standard care. But she also knew that “good Samaritan” exceptions existed for emergency situations, and their present predicament certainly qualified as such. Besides, she was right, dammit! Debbie’s leg was in bad shape. Further damage would assuredly result if they didn’t do something.
Tears welled in her eyes, “I don’t want to do it any more than you do, but she’s going to lose her lower leg if we don’t at least try.” The conviction in her tone was enough to persuade her colleague. They assembled the other students at Debbie’s bedside.
“Debbie,” Marcie began in a soft voice, “we’re going to have to set your leg.”
Surprisingly, her patient nodded grimly. She knew enough first aid to know that Marcie’s diagnosis was probably right.
“It’s gonna hurt like a sunofabitch, but afterwards, I mean, if things go well, then you’ll feel better.” She attempted to sound upbeat and confident, but underneath that façade, Marcie was scared to death. She had watched her father set bones in the emergency room at Albany Medical Center. Because of his stature as a senior physician, he’d secured special permission for her to attend. All of those patients were trauma cases, like Debbie, but those people had been stable and sedated, and x-ray facilities in the same wing of the hospital were available to verify that the broken ends of bone had been set into proper alignment. What they were about to attempt, here in this extremely remote place, was risky, and could potentially do more harm than good. That knowledge weighed heavily on Marcie. She also knew that the procedure would probably require more physical strength than she possessed. Jack had reluctantly agreed to help.
Like most parents, Steven Van Wormer doted on his daughter. Years earlier, when , at the tender age of only ten or eleven she had exhibited interest in what he did for a living, he had begun to provide opportunities for her to learn, first hand, the intricacies of the discipline of orthopedics. He’d provided her with a lab coat, replete with an embroidered nametag, to wear whenever she assisted him in his office. Her tasks ranged from the mundane, such as handing clipboards laden with forms to patients for gathering medical histories, to more advanced jobs like mixing-up resin or plaster preparations for making casts. Steven’s rationale for doing this transcended his desire just to spend quality time with her. It wouldn’t be long before she attended college and began contemplating career paths. If in fact she still wanted to pursue work in either this or any other medical specialty, he wanted her to go forth with eyes wide open, knowing full well what lay ahead of her. He felt he owed her that much, but he had never considered that the simple training and experience he’d given her so far might mean the difference between life and death for either Marcie or someone else.
The setting of Debbie’s shoulder had inspired an extraordinary change in attitude in both Spencer and Jocelyn. Both were now offering to provide assistance wherever they might be needed. The initial shock of viewing Debbie’s injuries had worn off, to be replaced by a determined resolve to get through their current predicament. In short, all four students were rising to the occasion; they were imbued with a professional resolve to conquer circumstance and to help one another to survive. They had become a team.
Jack had taken his pocket knife and cut out the metal stays of the large internal-frame pack that contained their climbing gear. Due to the absence of timber in their present locale, these were the only structural materials that could serve as splints for Debbie’s leg. Marcie placed an extra T-shirt and a length of parachute cord from her own pack beside the metal braces, and nodded to the others when all was ready.
Spencer had hold of Debbie’s left leg and Jocelyn supported her under her left shoulder. Debbie bit down on an extra pair of socks as Marcie took charge.
“On my count: Ready? One…Two…”
On ‘three’ Jack began to pull steadily on Debbie’s foot. Debbie unleashed an unholy scream that was, thankfully, muffled by the sock. “That’s it, Jack, steady pressure,” Marcie said. She had one hand on Debbie’s foot and the other around her lower leg, monitoring the positions of the bones as they moved. Once Jack had pulled the ankle free, Marcie turned the foot to bring the bones into alignment. “Okay, I think that’s got it,” she said with excitement, “hold it right there, Jack.” She quickly wrapped the shirt around the leg as padding, then applied the splints, winding para-cord around everything to hold it all in place. After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually less than three minutes, Marcie relaxed and sat back to review her handiwork. The leg looked straight and reasonably normal. There was the inevitable swelling, of course, but, most importantly, the bulging end of the tibia was no longer visible. Based upon appearance and the way the limb felt, Marcie had successfully set her first displaced fracture.
It was then that she shed her first tears of relief.
Marcie couldn’t stop crying. Collapsing into a heap, the poor girl just let it all out, her slight figure trembling uncontrollably. The release of tension was so overwhelming that she had just lost it. The boys sat still, dumbfounded at the sight of this remarkable young individual who had only moments earlier been so composed and stoic. But Jocelyn understood. She held Marcie and spoke quietly to her, calming her down until her cries became little more than whimpers. Soon the shaking ceased entirely. “That had to be the bravest, most courageous act I’ve ever seen, Marcie. You were great, really great!”
* * *
“The unit seems to be working well; it displays our GPS coordinates but it keeps giving me the message ‘satellite unavailable.’ I guess we just have to keep trying,” Jack said. He’d again turned on the satellite communicator to try to send for help. He shrugged, “Debbie said this thing uses the GPS constellation to derive our location, but it uses the Iridium satellites to send the message. Apparently the Iridium guys are finicky. They fly in low orbits and coverage can sometimes be sporadic.” He replaced the device into Debbie’s pack and sat with the others.
“I overheard Debbie telling Morgan we’d be gone for several days,” Jocelyn offered. “Today’s Tuesday, right? Unless they get a call for help, they won’t come looking for us until Friday at the earliest.” She turned to Marcie, “If it comes to that, waiting for three more days, well…what will happen to Debbie?”
The question had been on everyone’s mind since Jack had announced his inability to get a message through. It was certain they’d have to spend at least one night where they were, and possibly more. None of the students harbored much concern for their own comfort; Debbie’s health was foremost in everyone’s mind. They were currently conferring far enough away from her to allow them to speak bluntly about her condition.
“It all depends upon the extent of any internal injuries she may have," Marcie said. "Of course she’s in a lot of pain as well, but we can control that to some extent. I brought a full range of analgesics in my first aid kit. I got her started on ibuprophen a few minutes ago and she’s resting as well as can be expected. To answer your question, Jocelyn, I think her chances of survival are good, but she’s going to be awfully uncomfortable, and I’m still really concerned about that leg.”
The air was noticeably cooler now that late afternoon had arrived. The Sun would soon set behind the ridge that marked the caldera rim. Jack stood and held out his fist at arm’s length. Pointing it in the direction of the Sun, he moved his arm slowly downward and then looked at his watch. Satisfied with what he’d done he began to put on one of the climbing harnesses.
Jocelyn gave him a questioning look. “I give up. What are you doing?”
“Someone has to retrieve our camping supplies from the boat.”
“Let me go with you.” It was Spencer, of all people, who had stepped forward. “You’re gonna need help carrying all that gear.”
“With all due respect, Spence, I have to go alone. Climbing without a belay is tricky—it takes practice. We can’t afford to have any more casualties. I’m only going to bring back what we need to spend the night. It should take me about three hours if I leave right now; there won’t be enough light after that.”
Nods of agreement passed among the group. All knew that Jack was right.
“That scene where you stuck your fist in the air,” Jocelyn repeated, “what was that all about? Some sort of Sun worshipping ritual?”
Jack smiled, “That’s how I know how much time we have before the Sun passes behind that mountain.” He pointed to the large spire off to the northwest. “One’s fist, extended at arm’s length, subtends an angle of about ten degrees, give or take. I was just measuring the angular distance along the Sun’s path between it and that mountain.” When he received questioning looks, he elaborated. “It’s easy really, crude but effective. Because of the Earth’s rotation, the Sun appears to move fifteen degrees every hour—that’s easy to get, you simply divide 360 degrees by twenty-four hours to get fifteen. Fifteen degrees corresponds to one-and-a-half fist widths per hour. The distance from the Sun to the hill is four-and-a-half fist widths—three hours.” He shrugged. “I gotta go.”
“Prove to me you’ll be safe,” Jocelyn said. “How can we be sure you won’t fall like Debbie did?”
Jack displayed a strange device that was attached to his harness. “I’ll be roped up through this. It’s a self-arresting cam; it acts like a one way valve. As I climb, I’ll pull the rope through this way, but if I fall…” He yanked the rope the other way and the jaw on the device clamped down.
Within seconds, Jack seemed to be attached to the rock face. He ascended with almost no effort. Marcie and Jocelyn were particularly impressed with what they saw, in more ways than one. Strong hands locked into the smallest of cracks in the rock as powerful muscles in his legs and back propelled him upwards. He reminded them of Spiderman, except this wasn’t a movie, it was 100% real. The young man’s strength to body-weight ratio was enormous and his climbing technique flawless. No wonder Debbie had wanted to go climbing with this guy, Marcie thought. And, she reminded herself, allowing a slight smile to cross her lips, this was definitely a sport she would be really good at someday.
Jack returned as darkness fell. He was bone tired. The second hike from the beach up to the ridge, heavily laden with supplies, had totally gassed him. He’d left the tents behind, they were just too heavy, but he’d brought a rain fly so that they could at least construct a waterproof canopy. Three bulky sleeping bags and a heavy pack full of food rounded out his haul. Into the stuff sack of each bag he’d thought to include various items of warm clothing scavenged from the individual packs they’d left in the boat.
Jocelyn and Spencer engineered a clever shelter by tying one edge of the rain fly to protuberances on the cliff face and then weighing down the opposite side with rocks from the ledge. They packed one sleeping bag around Debbie and lay the others out onto the ground for the rest of the party to lie on. After a dinner of cold, canned beans they donned all the clothing they had and then huddled together for the night.
No one got much sleep. Cold, humid air with temperatures in the low forties settled in when the Sun went down, sucking heat from their bodies. A campfire would have taken away much of the chill. Marcie had brought waterproof matches, but there was no fuel nearby: no timber, no straw, not even dried moss, nothing but rock—everywhere. In the early hours of the morning it rained, a slow but steady drizzle that gave new meaning to the word “clammy.” Long before Mr. Sun made his reappearance over the peaks to the northeast, all of the students were up, shivering, waiting and hoping for warmth and daylight.
“Lord, what I wouldn’t give for a cup of hot coffee,” sighed Jocelyn.
“More like hot chocolate,” Spencer retorted, “’an some scrambled eggs wit’ bacon, buttered toast ‘n jam.”
“Don’t forget the grits.”
“What’s a grit?” Spencer asked with a grin.
Jocelyn mockingly rolled her eyes, “You mean your cousin Vinnie didn’t tell you? Goodness me, you have a lot to learn about good old-fashioned southern cookin’, young feller.”
A moan from Debbie brought all levity to a halt. Concern for her predicament roared back into the minds of the others. Jack arose, pulled the satellite communicator from Debbie’s pack and went outside the shelter to attempt another rescue request. The rain had abated and a soft yellow glow to his left heralded the arrival of morning and an end to their miserable night. He returned moments later shaking his head. “Same message…’satellite unavailable.’ I’ve been thinking…”
“Uh oh,” Jocelyn laughed.
“Even if Morgan brings a rescue crew, it won’t be easy lifting Debbie up that cliff. They won’t have the equipment needed for an alpine-type extraction. As soon as it’s light enough, I’m going to reconnoiter to the southeast.” He pointed towards fog-shrouded hills nearly concealed from view. “When I brought the boat around to head in to the beach, I looked further down the coast. The hills there didn’t seem to be as high. If there’s another sheltered cove or beach down that way, maybe we can find a route to get there, one where we can carry Debbie without resorting to ropes and tackle.”