Right from the Gecko (25 page)

“I think so,” I gasped. By that point, I was back to breathing and speaking, and my ability to feel pain seemed to be increasing every second. “Ouch! My ankle is killing me, but otherwise I'm fine.”

With Nick grasping me by the wrist and dragging me upward, I managed to climb back up to the path by putting all my weight on my good foot. The other one, meanwhile, was so badly twisted I couldn't put any weight on it at all. I had to hold my leg in the air like a wounded animal.

When I finally got to the top, which returned me to the same spot I'd been in when I fell, I felt as if I'd achieved something really worthwhile. But my feeling of triumph only lasted about two and a half seconds. My ankle was absolutely throbbing with pain. In fact, I recognized that if I'd been the type who cried easily, this would have been a good time to do so.

However, being practical by nature, I realized it wouldn't do me any good to lose even more moisture than I already had. Now, more than ever, I would need every drop of water I possessed, even tears, to get through this ordeal.

Aside from still being horribly thirsty, I would have traded my clinic-on-wheels for a hose to wash off the fine red dirt that now covered most of my body. I had rust-colored dust in my hair, in my eyelashes, even under my fingernails.

I swept the dust off my right foot and studied my ankle.

“How bad is it?” Nick asked anxiously. “Do you think it's broken?”

“Let's just say that my tap-dancing career may well be over,” I muttered.

“Jessie, I can't believe you're joking around!”

“Sorry.” I examined the injured spots, wincing whenever I touched it. From the way it looked and felt, I suspected it was just a bad sprain. Good news, I supposed, even though I was still going to find it close to impossible to walk.

Now we'll never get out of here, I thought, blinking hard in a last-ditch effort at holding on to those tears.

I glanced up at Nick, feeling truly sorry that I'd gotten him into this situation. If I hadn't been so nosy our first day here, barging into the ballroom at the Royal Banyan to see what all the singing and cheering was about, right now I'd be sitting by the pool or snorkeling instead of languishing in a hot, dry canyon with a useless foot that felt as if someone had just tried to snap it off.

I would have forgiven him for anything he might have said to me at that moment, no matter how terrible his accusations. Instead, he looked around and said, “I don't suppose you saw that other bagel down there, did you?”

I actually laughed. It felt good, as well as very strange.

Unfortunately, our moment of levity lasted exactly that long: one moment. “What do you think we should do now?” I asked Nick. My own decisions had turned out to be such bad ones that I no longer felt I deserved to take on a leadership role.

“I don't think we have much choice,” he replied. “If you can't walk on that ankle, we'll just have to wait for someone to find us.”

I nodded. My eyes were burning and my throat was so thick I didn't think I could speak. As if I hadn't done enough by getting us into this awful situation in the first place, now I had made it even worse by getting hurt. If we'd ever had a chance of getting out of here on our own, it was pretty much gone.

And even though I felt horribly selfish for even thinking it, I was glad that in one of the worst hours of my life, at least I had Nick at my side.

Darkness came early, just as I knew it would. By that point, thirst and exhaustion had become old news. In fact, they both paled beside the hunger that now gnawed at my stomach. Nick and I sat huddled together on a large ledge we'd found three or four feet below the path, not far from the place in which I'd taken that fateful step. While it wasn't exactly cold now that the sun was gone, the air felt uncomfortably cool and damp, especially given my sweat-soaked, red-dust-covered clothes.

We'd tired of talking about our situation long before. In fact, I was pretty sure we'd entirely run out of things to say to each other, not to mention the energy with which to say them, when Nick suddenly said, “You know, Jess, you and I never really talked about what happened the last time we came to Hawaii.”

And this is a good time? I thought irritably. We're stranded in a canyon in Kauai without water, food, sunblock, flashlights, Ace bandages, maps, or any chance of ever getting out of here, and you decide it's time for a heart-to-heart we've put off having for nearly a year and a half?

“I'm talking about the time I surprised you when I asked you—”

“I remember what you asked me,” I replied, surprised by the way he'd been on the verge of breaking our unwritten rule of never directly addressing the actual event. As a result, my words came out a lot sharper than I'd intended. But it wasn't only Nick's timing—or even the subject itself—that was responsible. The incessant pain in my ankle was also to blame for turning me into the person most likely to get voted off the island on one of those reality shows.

Nick was silent for a long time before he said, “You really hurt me, Jess.”

The rawness of his confession instantly rendered the pain in my ankle irrelevant. “I know I did,” I said in a much softer voice. “And I'm sorry, Nick. Really sorry. I know it's kind of late to be saying this, but—”

“You don't have to apologize,” he insisted. “I understand that what happened was simply the result of where you were at that point. Besides, I probably shouldn't have surprised you like that. I had this idea in my mind that you'd fall into my arms, like we were in some movie or something, and the two of us would go off hand in hand into the sunset….”

I had to admit, the guy really was quite a romantic. I supposed it was a good thing that at least one of us was.

“But I think we've both come a long way since then,” he continued. “Don't you?”

“Definitely,” I agreed, not sure where he was going with this. But I'd read
Lord of the Flies
and seen the movie about those poor people who were stranded in the Andes and had no choice but to resort to cannibalism, so I figured I'd better do everything I could to stay on his good side, just in case. After all, we were talking dire straits here.

“I've really enjoyed these last three months,” Nick went on in a strained voice. “The two of us living together, I mean. I really love you, Jessie.”

“I love you too, Nick,” I said sincerely.

“You know, you might not want to admit it, but just by agreeing to give that a try, you were making a commitment.”

The C word. I should have known it would pop up sooner or later. The only good thing was that just hearing it sent enough adrenaline rushing through my entire body to seriously ease the pain in my ankle.

Nick continued, “Do you think—if we ever get out of here, that is—that maybe you and I should get married?”

“Is that an actual proposal?” I asked lightly.

“Yes,” he replied. He pulled away just enough to turn and face me. His voice sounded anything
but
light. In fact, even in the dark canyon, I could see that his eyes were filled with a startling intensity. “That's exactly what it is. Jessie, I love you. Will you marry me?”

This time around, he didn't blush or stutter. Instead, Nick was asking me this all-important question from a place of complete confidence, sincerity, and love.

In fact, this entire scenario was a far cry from his fumbling attempt at cementing our relationship the last time we were in Hawaii. And it had nothing to do with the two of us being stranded in a canyon that we'd probably never manage to get out of alive.

It wasn't only Nick who was different. I realized I was different too.

The main thing that struck me was that I wasn't suddenly overwhelmed by a surge of panic. Then again, I couldn't ignore the fact that, at the moment, the chances that I'd ever see the inside of a wedding dress seemed slim indeed.

I don't know what was responsible for the way I felt. But I really did mean it when I said, “Yes, Nick. I'll marry you.”

And then, as we sat halfway up from the bottom of a huge hole in the earth, miles from civilization, with my ankle throbbing and my clothes smelling and my pores clogged with red dust, he leaned over and gave me the longest, sweetest kiss of our entire life together.

When he finally pulled away, his eyes were glassy. “Hey, Jess?”

“Yes?”

“Now that that's settled, you do think we'll get out of here, don't you?”

I didn't answer. In fact, I held up my hand in a silencing gesture.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, blinking. I was almost afraid to say the words, figuring the sound I'd just noticed was merely the result of sun poisoning or red-dust poisoning or some other dreadful syndrome that was about to finish me off.

“No,” Nick replied thoughtfully. “I mean, I don't hear anything. What does it sound like to you?”

“It's a rushing sound. Far away. It sounds like…like water.”

He listened for a few seconds, cocking his head in the same way I was cocking mine. It was something I'd learned from my dogs, who were true hearing experts. “Hey, wait. I do. At least, I think I do.” He scrambled across the rocks, ducking out of sight and disappearing somewhere below.

A few seconds later, he reappeared, poking his head over the edge of the flat rock that had become our home away from home. This time, he was wearing a huge grin.

“A stream!” he announced. “It's about fifty feet below us. And running alongside it is a bona fide hiking path. I can help you down, and we can follow it and maybe get out of here! Or at least I can, and I can get help.”

“Thank you!” I cried, although exactly who I was thanking wasn't clear to me. It could have been Nick, it could have been some higher power—heck, it could even have been Pele, although I found it hard to believe a female deity would ever put two ordinary people like us through such an ordeal.

I crawled across the rock, telling myself the excruciating pain would soon be over. Sure enough—on the other side, down at the bottom of a hill, was a stream with a path next to it. Nick helped me make my way down along the rocks, which didn't seem nearly as treacherous now that I knew we'd actually stumbled across a way of getting out of this canyon.

As soon as I reached the rushing water, I stuck my ankle into it. It was surprisingly cold, instantly making my ankle feel a hundred times better.

“Hey, check this out!” Nick pointed to what, to me, looked like nothing more than an unsightly mess that someone had left behind. Then I realized the implications of what I was looking at.

“Campers!” I exclaimed.

“Even better: really sloppy, inconsiderate campers.” Gleefully, he held up a bottle of water that was still half full. “Look! They even left some of their gear behind!”

Either that or they were eaten by giant lizards that no one knows inhabit this canyon, I thought. But I didn't care what had happened to the last group of adventurers who'd come this way. I was too giddy over the sight of that bottle of water.

Nick tossed it over to me, then continued taking inventory. “Granola bars!” he cried. “And beef jerky! Take your pick!”

He could have been offering me filet mignon and a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I grabbed a granola bar and wolfed it down in about six seconds flat.

“Early tomorrow morning,” Nick said, “as soon as the sun comes up, we can follow this path and find our way out of here.”

“We could also follow the trail of granola bar wrappers,” I added, giddy with my newfound sense of hope.

By this point, the cold water from the stream had melted away most of the pain in my ankle. I glanced around, trying to find something I could bind it up with. Nature's version of an Ace bandage. I didn't see anything that looked suitable, especially since ideally I needed something with some elasticity. I racked my brain, trying to imagine something that was lightweight and stretchy, yet still strong….

Got it, I suddenly thought. Necessity really is the mother of invention.

I began taking off my T-shirt. Nick, meanwhile, stared at me as if I'd gotten delirious from weather exposure.

“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding alarmed. As I pulled my sports bra off over my head, he added, “You're not going skinny-dipping, are you?”

I wriggled back into my T-shirt, this time braless. Grinning, I dangled my bra in front of him. “I found a way to wrap up my ankle so I can walk on it. Now that the swelling is going down, I think I'll be able to manage.”

“You're a genius,” he returned. “Then again, I've always said you were somebody who plays your cards close to your chest. Or plays your chest close to your feet. Or something like that.”

“Ha-ha,” I said. I was amazed that we were actually joking around. Funny how access to a few basics like food, water, and a way out of the Canyon of Death could make things look so much brighter.