No Service (6 page)

He pulled the material back again and took a look at the gash running down her leg from under her knee to her ankle. Her sneaker had probably prevented the ripping from continuing to her foot. He silently thanked anyone who was listening that it had only broken the first few layers of skin in most places. Any deeper and she’d have been split open, revealing deep tissue muscle and making it impossible to do anything for her out here. It looked like her jeans had mostly protected her from the worst of the damage. The deepest was the puncture at her ankle where he guessed the tree snagged her shoe and whipped her around.

“Jess,” he said retaining his Buddhist calm. “Honey, you okay?”

She swallowed loudly and let out a pathetic whimper. The cut was filthy with dirt and bits of pine needle. Neither of them were particularly clean. He didn’t see her water bottle anywhere.

“Jess, sweetie,” Chris said putting a hand on her cheek. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Where’s your phone? We need to call for help.”

“Back pocket,” she muttered saying the words as carefully as she could. Her eyes quavered as much as her voice. Her wound continued to trickle blood with a frequency that concerned Chris. He’d have to wrap it. They’d clean it at the hospital and bandage her up nicely.

“I have to lift you. Just for a second,” he said caressing her forehead with his thumb. It left a muddy print, but he doubted she cared at this point.

She nodded her consent and he lifted her long enough to feel each back pocket and find her phone. The screen was cracked with the damage spider-webbing from a lower corner, but it still worked when he clicked the home button. The rugged case had protected it from the worst of her backside slamming down on it.

The bars at the top weren’t visible. In their place, the screen read “No service.”

“Shit. No. No. No. No,” Chris said holding the phone up hoping against all hope that it would work. He took his own out and found an equally dismal circle with a slash over his blanked out signal bars accompanied by the word “Searching.”

Jess reached out and grabbed his wrist. Her head lolled aimlessly and he wondered if she’d hit her head. He was surprised that he hadn’t cracked his skull during his own landing.

“Babe,” he said putting down both phones. “I have to wrap it.” She moaned and he repeated himself. He pulled off what he could of her shredded pant leg and then tore off a smaller piece to tie it around. It was a poor solution, but the best he could do.

Chris pressed the folded fabric against the cut and then knotted the second piece around. It wasn’t an ideal bandage, but he felt that there wasn’t much choice. Jess lay still even as he tightened the knot.

“You okay?” he asked when the task was completed.

She threw an arm over her face and nodded. She was pale, but he was certain it was from pain and fear, not blood loss.

He laid down on the ground next to her and placed his hand in hers. “We’re going to be okay,” he assured her. He wanted so deeply to believe it.

“I know we will,” she said very quietly. It was a heavily uncertain statement.

Jess’s eyes fluttered open. The sky above was dark and overcast. A glance at her watch showed it was only afternoon. Her leg throbbed and she could feel her heartbeat in her fingers and under the wrapping Chris had created.

She turned her head toward him and saw him staring into the sky. “Chris?” she asked.

He turned his head toward her. “Are you okay?”

She tried to give her most genuine smile. “Mostly. Did I fall asleep?”

Chris rolled toward her until he was on his side. “I think you just completely blacked out. I said we’d be okay. You said we would, too, and then you were gone. You were just completely gone.”

Jess slowly sat up. She remembered falling and knew she’d cut her leg, but didn’t remember a lot after that. “Do I have a concussion?”

“It’s hard to say. We really need to get to a hospital. We’re both in really bad shape. Even worse, we don’t have any drinking water.”

As soon as he said that, she realized how irresistibly thirsty she was.

“What do we do?” she asked. She picked their phones up off the ground and checked each one again. She even restarted them, but the result was the same.

Chris shook his head. “Survival isn’t really my forte. You’re better at this than me.”

“You say to the person that can’t start a fire without lighter fluid and a hundred newspapers.”

Jess pulled her injured leg in toward her chest and inspected Chris’s handiwork. Her blood had soaked into the rolled up compress and the tie had managed to hold most of it in place, but it felt too restrictive.

The blood had dried dark and crusty everywhere including her hands. The cut was mostly closed with just a little bit of red wetness down the deepest parts. It felt right to give it air and expose it. It was gross and oozing, but she was glad it had stopped gushing.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking this off. It hurts.”

“It’s going to get dirty if you do that. I think it would be better to leave it on.”

Jess continued peeling the cloth away from her leg. “I don’t like the way it feels. I want it off.”

“Your ankle is pretty bad. It might still be bleeding.”

Jess removed the makeshift bandage and uncovered the whole scrape. Her ankle was still seeping, like Chris said it probably would. It didn’t hurt much, but the skin was torn up around that spot. She was absolutely repulsed to see the way her skin was folding and damaged, like torn vellum paper.

“Is it okay?”

“It’s bleeding, but I think it’ll stop. I mean, tons of people in medieval times could get whacked with an arrow and still walk around for days, right?”

Chris got to his feet and dusted himself off. His stature was a little hunched. “I guess, but I don’t think that would be my first option. I’d rather keep it covered.”

“Well,” Jess replied with a little edge in her voice, “I’m the one walking on it, and I think I’ll be fine for now.” She softened her tone. “Are you okay?”

“My back isn’t great, but there’s not really anything I can do about it now.”

“I guess we’re walking out?”

Chris grunted his agreement. “Or we need to get back to where we have a signal.”

“How will we tell the cops about where to find… her?” Jess’s eyes darted back toward the ledge they’d fallen from. She wasn’t particularly keen to head back up in that direction.

“I think if we just tell them that we found someone they’ll have to comb the woods again. Maybe they’ll do a better job this time. Now which way should we go?”

Jess pointed off in what seemed to Chris like a random direction. “I think north is that way,” she explained. “The sun is sort of toward west in the sky and we’re a little past noon, so it should be setting. I think.”

“Told you that you were the better survivalist,” Chris responded. He gave a grand hand gesture as if to suggest ladies first. “Would you like to lead?”

They began to head in the direction Jess had chosen. She hoped she could get them back to the lake. Following the shore to help would be easy.

Chris followed as close as he could to Jess as she limped along. “So who do you think put that girl there?”

“Can we not talk about that?”

A silence fell between them. The sun slowly dragged itself across the sky. The woods no longer felt welcoming and serene. Instead it felt like every patch of shadow was a spot someone could easily hide in. It felt like eyes were watching from everywhere. Every thick, luscious bush and group of old, wide trees could offer a surveillance spot.

“Do you still think we’re heading the right way?” Chris said as he flopped down onto a fallen log for a rest. He was certain their injuries had slowed them to maybe a mile an hour and he couldn’t even guess how far it was to the lake from where they were. If they’d picked the wrong direction, even by a few hundred feet, their walk could become hours longer.

Jess leaned back to look up at the position of the sun. “I think we must be. The sun is even lower toward west.” She took the wadded up jean wound covering out of her back pocket and then sat down next to him. She placed it in a small pile of leaves.

“Shit. Did you just set that on the ground? Now that’s going to be even dirtier.”

Jess gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m not putting it back on. It doesn’t matter. And you weren’t about to use it on yourself were you?”

Chris rested his elbow on his knee and then rested his forehead on his hand. “I don’t know. I didn’t really expect to be lost in the forest like this. I was going to use everything we had for whatever we needed.”

Jess shrugged her shoulders. “Well, too late now. So whatever. It’s not like we’re going to be in here much longer. We have to be getting close to the lake.”

“How’s your ankle?”

Jess tugged down the edge of her sneaker. Her shoe had been pooling blood for a while, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. It looked like despite the constant motion of walking there was a scabby cover forming. It hurt and still continued to throb, but it wasn’t so painful she couldn’t push herself to walk. “I’ll live.”

Chris lowered himself off the log onto the ground and put his back against the rough bark. “I need to sit a while. I need a break.”

“We need to find water,” Jess stated as she turned her bloody hands back and forth looking at the red-brown stains. “I want to clean my hands.”

“More important, we need to rehydrate.”

“Well, yeah,” Jess smiled. “That, too.”

“Remember when I said you were the better survivalist?” Chris laughed.

Jess began to laugh, too. It felt weird to laugh after they’d seen a dead girl and then nearly both died. It felt so weird she laughed harder. It felt like madness to find it so funny. After tears streamed from her eyes, she managed to calm herself.

“You’re such a jerk,” she said hitting him lightly on the shoulder.

He looked up at her, suddenly very somber. “Is it just me or do you feel cold?”

“No, I feel warm. Hot. It’s like eighty degrees here in the shade.”

“I don’t… I don’t feel real great,” he said laying his head back on the log. He blinked his eyes several times.

“Honey, what’s wrong. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m…”

“Chris! Tell me! Tell me what to do!”

“Maybe… shock.”

“Shock? What do I do for shock? What do you need me to do?” She’d heard him tell her before how people would come into the hospital hours after an accident suddenly going into shock. It didn’t surprise her with the heat and dehydration, but it made her no less terrified.

“Tired,” Chris groaned.

She prodded his shoulder hard and shouted, “Am I supposed to let you sleep? What do I do?”

“Mmm…”

Jess’s heart began to race. A medical emergency and the only person qualified to deal with it was blacking out. “Chris! Chris! Answer me!”

He didn’t say another word and she shook him just a little. His head flopped forward with his chin to his chest. She positioned it back against the log like a rock-hard pillow. Tears started to stream down her face as she lifted one of his eyelids, but his eye was rolled back.

“Chris! What do I do?” She clawed her fingers into her scalp as she screamed with frustration. “What do I do?”

Her body felt numb and she knew what was coming next. It was familiar and terrifying territory and once again the one person who could help ground her was propped up unconscious next to her. Her mind began to simultaneously shut out voluntary normal thought and instead her whole world collapsed around her. A darkness grasped her soul and instantly she felt herself dying from the inside, fearful and alone in her own dreadful place, despite the sweeping sunshine streaming through the trees.

Jess fell onto her side among fallen pine needles. Her sobbing was uncontrollable and took the breath straight out of her. She was having a panic attack. The second one of the trip, but this time she was alone and trapped. She clutched at her arms and felt the gravity of the whole universe rushing in to crush her to pieces. She felt her impending death and the deepest shades of despair. Her heart simultaneously raced and felt like it had stopped beating.

It took a long time, but she finally crawled her way up and out of her own personal hell. Her heart felt like it was irregular and fast and deadly, but she assumed it was the fading of her nerves screaming throughout her body. She lay still for a bit. She traced her fingertips over a particularly orange dried pine needle as she tried to regain herself.

Panic attacks weren’t just scary. They physically hurt and psychologically destroyed her a little more every time. As she came to her senses properly, she began to inhale and exhale rhythmically and regularly. Her heart and chest hurt, but her lungs were so happy to have oxygen in correct and comfortable amounts.

She wondered if she’d laid there for two minutes or two hours. A check of her watch told her it had probably been at least a half hour, but it had been a long time since she’d checked her watch so it was all speculation.

As far as she cared, it was late enough that the sun was beginning to truly set and her husband was still completely knocked out. She checked his breathing and his heartbeat. He was breathing more normal than hers, and his heartbeat seemed like it was probably fine as well though she wouldn’t have a clue if that was an accurate assumption.

She sat up next to him, uncertain of what action she should take, if any. No one would even think they were missing until their checkout in three more days. She doubted anyone walking by their campsite would notice their absence unless park security was trying to check back with them about anything.

As the daylight faded, the sky overhead exploded with a rainbow of beautiful natural colors. It was always gorgeous when this close to nature. It wasn’t blocked by a multitude of big tall ugly buildings and their glaring lights. It was like the city wanted your focus and damned if you wanted to appreciate what little nature there was in the urban landscape.

The sky was already violet receding into navy as Chris stirred. He didn’t wake up, but he grunted and twitched a hand. Jess stared at him, hoping that her enthusiastic feelings would telepathically make him wake up. Chris quieted again and Jess wondered if she should try to wake him. With the way he’d been complaining about his back, she wasn’t sure if she should move him to a horizontal position or if this was better because it left his spine in the same spot without a lot of jostling.

“Please be okay,” she whispered to him.

It was full dark by the time Chris woke up. Jess couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. She thought she knew what “dark” was, but she hadn’t really thought about how pitch black it really was because she had become so accustomed to streetlights and flashlights to guide her. She only reacted because she heard Chris mumble incoherently.

She pulled out one of the phones and turned on the flashlight option. The bright white light blinded Chris who put his hand up to shield his eyes.

“Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”

He recovered for a minute. “Why’s it so dark out here?”

“Oh, babe, it’s night. You passed out and I…” She bit the words back, afraid it would trigger her again. She shined the flashlight toward the ground, but it was nice to have some light after sitting alone in the dark waiting for him.

Chris rubbed the back of his head a moment. It was uncomfortable from laying against rough bark for hours. He leaned forward some and found that his back still hurt significantly, but it didn’t feel any worse. “I think we maybe both went into shock. I didn’t think you were hurt that bad, I thought it was just the situation was just too much at once for you, but I don’t know. Maybe you even have a concussion.”

He tried to stand, but felt stiff and spent time bending and straightening his legs instead. He continued, “We need to drink water. Clean water.”

“We can’t really walk around in the dark, can we?”

He pushed himself up off the ground and rested on top of the fallen tree again. He had pins and needles in his legs and feet and moved around to try and stop the fire he felt. He grimaced with the effort, but as feeling came back, he stretched his arms up and felt his back crack.              It wasn’t a bad sound or feeling and it seemed to relieve some tension and pressure. He was certain he shouldn’t be moving like that after an accident. It was the same kind of thing he’d yelled at patients in the past for, but now that he was in the moment, he realized just how satisfying it felt.