Authors: Kim Baldwin
“Our meals won’t be quite as elaborate as I planned,” Pasha said. “The other group got a lot of the supplies, and we need to conserve what we have until we know when help is coming.”
“Sounds like you guys have it all handled. Sorry I’m not in shape to help.”
“Just get better. That’s your assignment. How’s your head?” Pasha asked.
“Hurts like hell.” Emery looked up at Karla. “I have some Percocet. All right if I take some?”
“No. I’m sorry. Percocet would mask any signs of altered consciousness, and the acetaminophen in it can cause bleeding in the brain. You shouldn’t have any painkillers until doctors can run tests.” Karla put her mouth near Emery’s ear so the others wouldn’t overhear. “Do you have any medical conditions I should be aware of?”
“No. I just have the pills because sometimes old injuries come back to haunt me when I overdo it.”
Karla kept her voice low. “I’m not presuming or judging anything, Emery, but I know Percocet is addictive. Please resist any urge to take some right now, no matter what the pain. Tell me if it gets unbearable. Promise?”
“You have my word.”
“I won’t even ask for pain pills if you let me have a cigarette,” Skeeter called from the other side of the fire.
Karla stood and gave him a disapproving look. “I’d rather you didn’t, Mike, for obvious reasons. The blow to your chest may have compromised your lungs, and smoking also decreases the ability of wounds to heal.”
“I’m breathing okay,” Skeeter said. “Yeah, I probably have a couple of broken ribs ’cause it hurts if I suck in too deep. But just a few drags, huh? Come on, I’m a big boy.”
“A
few
. Against my better judgment.”
Skeeter smiled like he’d just won the lottery. “Someone please get my pack for me? It’s in the side pocket of my door.”
Toni volunteered. “I’ll go. I need another sweater, anyway. Feels like it’s getting colder.”
“The wind is picking up.” Pasha glanced at her watch. “It’s already seven. Once the rest of the fire burns down, we should get everyone into the plane and seal it as tight as we can.”
Emery tugged the cuff of Pasha’s jeans. “Got any more soup?”
“You bet.”
Pasha picked up the pot with a makeshift towel-potholder and refilled Emery’s can. After topping off everyone else’s with the remaining soup, she refilled the pot with clean snow and set it back by the fire. “Make sure you all stay plenty hydrated. I’ll make a big pot of herbal tea to have in the plane, if everybody agrees.”
Emery would rather have coffee, but a diuretic probably wasn’t the best choice given their situation and her loss of blood. “Sounds good,” she replied with the others.
An hour later, all six lay shoulder to shoulder in their sleeping bags in the plane, lined up like sardines in a tin. To lie as flat as possible with the cabin’s weird tilt, they rested their heads on duffel bags on the floor and propped their feet up along the left side of the plane. They had based their precise sleeping arrangement on several factors. Karla was farthest in the back so she wouldn’t have anyone on the side with her broken arm. Skeeter, and then Emery, came next, so she could keep an eye on them both. As Emery hoped, Pasha slipped in beside her, then came Ruth, and finally Toni, who needed the widest portion of the plane. Unfortunately, she was nearest the hole, but Pasha had effectively sealed out the bitter wind with a raft and some duct tape from Skeeter’s toolbox. And because she had the most vulnerable position, Toni used the wool blanket Skeeter carried to supplement her sleeping bag.
Under protest, Emery had convinced Karla her neck was fine and she didn’t need the stiff brace. Removing it had made her a lot more comfortable. The padding beneath her insulated her pretty well from the cold metal, and Pasha had helped her change from her ripped and bloody turtleneck into fleece and a heavy sweater, so she was relatively warm despite temperatures near freezing. The hot soup and the tea they were all drinking had put everyone in an optimistic mood, although they still hadn’t gotten anything on the satellite phone but static.
The situation wouldn’t be so bad except for the pounding in her head, which had worsened when they moved her.
“Anything we can do to shorten our stay here?” Ruth asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Pasha replied. “I plan to walk farther up the ridge tomorrow to see if I can get a signal there. It’ll also give me a different perspective so maybe I can discover a way down to the valley. Not that I’m advocating we do anything but stick with the plane. I just want to consider every option if this eruption continues and we start running out of resources. I’d like to have more wood than we have, for starters.”
“Could burn the tires,” Skeeter said. “Smoke’s pretty toxic but they make a good signal fire. They’re buried, though, aren’t they?”
“Looks like it,” Pasha said. “Unless they snapped off and are hidden in that big trench somewhere.”
“I can look tomorrow,” Toni offered. “I’d like to help some way.”
Ruth chimed in. “I would, too. Not much good at bending, though, with my knee like this.”
They told stories and played word games to keep themselves occupied until all but Pasha and Emery began to drift off. One by one, they retreated deep into their fluffy, mummy sleeping bags, closing the hoods around their faces until only their mouths and noses were exposed. Emery doubted anyone could overhear their conversation, but they still spoke in low whispers.
“It scared the hell out of me when I came to, saw the hole, and you gone,” Pasha said.
“Probably about how I felt when I woke up and you weren’t there.” Emery shifted position to try to get more comfortable. They all had to lie very close together to fit into the cleared space, and it was the best way to keep warm, but she tended to move around a lot in bed and found the arrangement uncomfortably confining. “You know, you might want to reconsider spending a lot of time with me, since I seem fated to have one brush with death after another.”
“I’d say just the opposite. You seem to have an inordinate amount of good luck, to keep escaping like you do. Maybe it rubbed off on us all, and that’s why everyone survived.”
Emery chuckled. “I guess that’s one way to look at it. In other words, you’re a half-full-glass kind of woman, and I’m a half-empty?”
“There are always two ways to look at things,” Pasha said. “And I do usually try to stay optimistic and hope for the best, instead of worrying about the worst-case scenario.”
“They do say opposites attract.”
“Emery, if I felt any more attracted to you, we’d be in a lot of trouble.”
Despite her raging headache, she welcomed their flirtatious banter as a pleasant distraction. “Oh? That so? What kind of trouble?”
“Give me a few hours alone with you once you’ve mended and I’ll elaborate.”
“Definite rain check, okay?” Emery shifted again, snuggling closer to Pasha. “I’m happy that seeing some of my worst scars hasn’t turned you off.” She’d been concerned, but Pasha had seen her tracheotomy scar and the ones on her upper torso when she’d helped her change clothes and hadn’t flinched.
“Hardly,” Pasha whispered. “We all have scars, Emery. Some visible, some not. Yours testify to all you’ve endured.”
“I wouldn’t have survived this one without you and Karla. I’m very grateful.”
“I’m pretty sure you’d have done the same for either of us. How’s your head?”
Emery rubbed her temple. “Horrible, honestly. Got a lot worse when you moved me in here. I don’t know how I’ll be able to sleep.”
“What can I do?”
“How about you tell me a story? Something I don’t know about you. And maybe you can cuddle up a little closer?”
“Come here.” Pasha opened her arm and Emery inched nearer, until she lay on her good side with her head nestled into the crook of Pasha’s shoulder. Pasha slowly caressed her back, and though she could barely detect her hand with all their layers, their proximity alone made her feel better. The sense of serenity and happiness that sprang from their touch and connection began to ease her headache almost immediately, as well as any pain meds might have.
“How about if I tell you about the first time I had a premonition?” Pasha whispered.
“Yes, please.” Emery closed her eyes and melted into Pasha’s embrace.
Pasha put her mouth next to Emery’s ear. “I was six, riding in the car with my mother. She kept going on and on about something, I don’t even remember what, but all of a sudden her voice began to fade. Weird, like someone had turned down the volume, you know? I could see her talking like usual, but I could barely hear her. I should have been worried, but I wasn’t.” Pasha’s dulcet low voice soothed Emery nearly as much as her touch. “It just made my other senses more acute, and I knew instinctively I needed to pay closer attention to what I was seeing and feeling. Ahead of us a few blocks was a big intersection, and when I looked at it, I got this strange but very powerful sick feeling in my stomach. I just knew danger was there, so I hollered, ‘Stop, Mommy! Stop!’ She pulled over to the curb and started to ask me why I’d yelled, but I just pointed to the intersection. We both watched as a big propane truck collided with a taxi. The explosion melted everything around, and we were just out of range.”
The story fascinated Emery, but their embrace and Pasha’s lulling whispered tone made for a potent sleeping pill. She drifted off, cozy and content, her headache completely gone.
Next day, June 11
Pasha awoke to find Emery still nestled against her side. Everyone else was asleep as well, despite Skeeter’s buzz-saw snoring and temperatures so cold she could see her breath. She didn’t have a reason to get up yet. They had little to do but wait until help arrived, and it made no sense to start breakfast before everyone started moving because they needed to conserve what little fuel they had. So she lay there searching for ways to improve their situation and maximize their resources. Every now and then, however, despite her best intentions, her mind drifted to Emery and their growing connection.
She’d accepted the undeniability of their attraction days ago, and the impossibility of a long-term commitment. But not until the accident and her terror at the prospect of losing her had the depth of how much she had fallen for Emery really hit her.
The thought of Emery’s departure devastated her. Pasha already couldn’t imagine how she could deal with it, and once they had sex the pain of their separation would be even more acute, yet she wanted as much intimacy as possible once Emery healed and they were safe.
In that sense, she began to understand Emery’s current adrenaline-rush lifestyle, her desire to walk the razor’s edge. When a consuming need drove you, risks became afterthoughts.
Emery stirred.
“You awake?” Pasha whispered.
“Mmm. Sorta. I really need to pee but can’t stand to get out of this sleeping bag.”
“How’s your headache?”
“Gone. Completely. I actually feel pretty good, a lot better than last night.”
“That’s wonderful. But you should rest as much as you can today.”
“Exactly right.” Karla’s voice drifted over as she sat up. “It’s a very good sign that your headache’s gone, Emery, but I don’t want you to move around too much.”
“I can see I’m outnumbered,” she replied.
The others began to rouse, so Pasha kissed Emery’s forehead then gently extricated herself from their embrace to slip from her sleeping bag. “I’ll start some coffee and rustle up some breakfast. Be a lot warmer for you all to stay put.”
“No arguments here. I never get breakfast in bed,” Ruth joked.
Pasha set up the stove on a piece of metal just outside the plane, which acted as an effective windbreak. As the water boiled for coffee, she stared at the sky. The haze seemed as thick as when they’d gone to bed, and during the hours they’d slept, the fine brown-gray dust from the plume had further muted the landscape’s colors. The vivid green of the valley below had turned to a pasty olive. She tried the satellite phone again and wasn’t surprised to hear only static.
The improvised raft-door that covered the opening in the plane drew back and Emery emerged, Toni right behind her.
“Me first. I’ll be quick,” Toni announced before ducking around the plane to their designated latrine area with a roll of toilet paper.
“I can’t believe how much better I feel than last night.” Emery gazed over the valley below.
The difference amazed Pasha. Emery didn’t look so pale, she seemed to move around without pain, and her eyes shone, alert. “I’m so glad. But don’t do anything today except come out here for pit stops. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Emery grinned. “Long as you keep me company as much as possible.”
“I’ll do my best.”
After she’d served them all coffee and wild-blueberry pancakes they ate with their hands, Pasha caught Karla outside the plane when she went for her own bathroom break. “I’m going to hike up the ridge a ways and try the satellite phone again. Get a look at what’s around us. I should be back within three or four hours. How’s Skeeter?”
“He’s holding his own, so far,” Karla replied. “I’m worried about infection developing in his leg wound, though. I’d like to get him out of here before that has a chance to happen.”