Chapter 11
I wake. The room spins wildly, but I feel the force of gravity holding me down. I put my palm to the wall and steady myself. I breathe deeply. After a few moments, the whirling slows and only nausea remains. I gently touch my scalp with my other hand. There’s a lump the size of a lime above my forehead. I rub it with my fingertips and caked blood crumbles off.
It is dark, but my eyes adjust and the airplane bathroom comes into focus. I remember where I am, but I don’t know why I am here. Why was I left behind? I put one hand on the toilet and the other in the sink and push and pull and manage to lift myself up. The spinning accelerates and a slingshot of vomit launches from my mouth against the mirror.
My left hand finds the slotted door handle, and I pull it open. I lift myself up and then fall forward out the door. I hit the ground, but not too hard. There’s a pillow of white powder thirty inches deep. My arms and legs scramble to find footing, and after a moment I stand up.
An icy wind rips across my face and it feels like a thousand tiny needles piercing me. I cover my eyes with my forearm until the gust dies down.
A dull gray light hovers over the world. It must be morning, I think. We must have crashed. How long have I been out? Where am I?
Above me are several mountain peaks. Behind me, a short rocky wall that rises a hundred feet or so to a plateau that sits like a bed with four mountain peaks for bedposts.
I pull out my gloves and hat from pockets and put them on, wincing at the pain in my head. I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to pee. I pull down my pants and semi-squat over the snow. I start to laugh out loud. I’m alone on top of a mountain in the middle of a fierce blizzard. Peeing!
I look around and take it all in. Where is everyone? Did they leave me behind? I try to remember the events of last night, but everything is fuzzy. I take a deep breath to try and clear my head.
I must try to find others. If I survived, then others must have as well.
I turn into the wind and hard, pellet-like snow hits my face. I can see only a few feet in front of me. I walk slowly, with my hands inside my coat for warmth. Scattered wreckage is everywhere. Twisted metal, ripped fabric, and mangled seats, and in the distance, what I believe is the main cabin.
The air stinks of jet fuel and smoke, and my nose burns from the fumes.
I move toward the cabin. The snow is thigh high and even waist deep in some places. My gloves are thin and my hands sting, so I put them in my pockets. What would I do without my hands? Note to self: Must find better gloves to survive.
Each step is hard work, pulling one leg up through several feet of snow and then lifting my foot out over the drift, praying that it lands on solid ground. The snow protects my legs from the sharp wind, but now I feel the cold moisture soaking through my jeans.
How much time do I have out here? A couple of hours? Maybe a day? I’ve read that when you crash into the ocean, the cold water rips the air from your lungs and your body goes into hypothermia in a matter of minutes. What I wouldn’t give to be back in that cold sterile room at Life House right now.
I think of my window and my father’s watch and the endless hours I spent staring out onto the empty courtyard. I slide my hand into my pocket, expecting to cradle the watch, but it’s gone. I check the other pocket too, but it’s empty. I panic, padding down my entire jacket and pants pockets several times. Nothing. For a split second, I look all around, but I know it is useless. Nausea swells inside of me, like I’ve lost a piece of him again. My lip trembles, and a feeling of emptiness overwhelms me.
I look back toward the tail of the plane, but it has disappeared behind a swirling veil of white. Then I look ahead toward what I thought a few minutes ago might be the main cabin of the plane, but I can’t see beyond the blinding ice darting at my eyes. My heart sinks. I turn back and forth a few times hoping to see either tail or cabin, but they’ve disappeared behind the storm.
I’m lost. I’m going to die. On this godforsaken mountain, I’m going to die. Well, isn’t that what I wanted?
There’s no easy answer on my lips or in my mind.
Is it what I wanted? Is it?
Chapter 12
A lump rises in my throat. Tears well up and freeze on my face. I feel dizzy again and my legs buckle. I fall to my knees. Snow swishes around me, burying me, like a heartless killer shoveling dirt on top of a still-breathing victim. I’m alive, but as good as dead. I look up to where I believe the sun is, but all I see are patterns of gray and white dancing before my eyes.
A huge sob heaves up, and I let out a primal scream that emerges from the darkest part of my heart. It is as if some part of me has been tied up and gagged since my father died, and now it has been let loose to be heard before it dies.
“Oh God, oh God!” I hear myself holler to the sky.
A river of uncontrollable sounds follows, cascading up through my chest and out of my mouth. My voice has no words for what is bursting forth now. It is wild and guttural. It is life sounding off against death, before death. As I kneel and gasp, inside my head I can hear that old angelic voice whispering: Let yourself go, Jane. Let it be. This is what you’ve wanted for so long. Let the clean white snow wash over you. Don’t fight it; let it be joyous; let it take you and bury your sad, black heart once and forever.
A big gust of icy air slaps my face. I tuck my head to my chest to protect myself and then, as if I have become two people, I hear my own voice dancing on the wind. And then I hear it again, but my mind knows it can’t be me. Distant, clear, familiar. It keeps coming, and more clearly now, as the wind momentarily dies down.
“Help! Is somebody there?”
I start to cry for a moment and then scream back, “I’m here! Help! Help me!”
“I’m down here! Down here! I’m stuck!” the voice calls back.
“Help me!” I scream again.
Then I realize that, as desperate as I am, I am not stuck. I can move; I can act. Old Doctor’s voice is echoing in my head: “It is a matter of stasis, Jane. You can wither away or help yourself. That’s the only path to wellness.”
I slowly lift myself out of the snow and try to steady myself. My legs wobble. My face is caked with snow and dried blood and old vomit, now beginning to freeze.
“Where are you?” I shout. “Where are you?!”
“Hello!? Hello!?” the voice shouts. And then, “Down here! Down here!”
I know that voice. I know that annoying, but now so incredibly beautiful, voice. It’s Paul Hart. I start moving through the deep snow. My legs pump like adrenaline-fueled pistons, slashing through the drifts with urgency and purpose. My head and heart fill with hope and my body takes flight. I feel like I’m almost running on top of the snow.
I look up and I see the sky opening up below my feet and I jam my heels hard into the snow. My feet skid and then I fall on my butt, sliding to the very edge of a crevice.
I nudge my head over the side, careful not to slip in the process. I look down, and it is black and bottomless. It must be hundreds of feet deep. My heart stops for a second, and then my stomach wrenches when I think how close I came to running right off the edge of the world.
I lean back and inhale deeply, then peer over the side again and see that Paul, a good twenty feet below me, is still strapped in his airplane seat, which is lodged into a tree that is growing out of the side of the mountain.
“Are you all right?” I shout.
He looks up at me from his perch and smiles.
“Just my fucking luck, they’ve sent a philosopher to save me!”
