“I won’t,” I say. “I’m right beside you.
After she closes her eyes, I lean my face down so that my lips are beside her ear.
“You’re safe,” I say. “I won’t let you die.”
She pushes the back of her hand against my leg. I tenderly take it into my grasp and hold it until she falls asleep. After her hand goes limp, I lay it on the ground.
After crawling to one side of the cavern, I lean my back against the wall. For several hours, I sit and watch Tela sleep. Every half hour, I check to make sure that her breathing and heartbeat are still there. Each time I find they are, my mind is put a little more at ease.
Although I fight to stay awake as long as I can, complete exhaustion finally sets in. Unable to avoid the inevitable any longer, I close my eyes.
Chapter 18
I’m disoriented when I wake up and have no idea how long I slept. The gloomy purple light is an instant reminder of where I am and the desperate situation we’re in. After scooting over to Tela, I lay one hand on the center of her chest. It’s hard to tell with her sleeping, but her breathing seems to be a little stronger than it was the last time I checked.
My body aches as I stand to my feet, just one sign of how depleted I feel. I peek into the tunnel to make sure no one has come inside and then sit back down beside Tela. Looking at the full canister resting beside her head, I decide not to drink any wild sap until I know more about how she’s doing.
“Tela,” I say in a hushed voice. “Wake up.”
When she doesn’t immediately respond, I repeat her name several times and lightly run my fingers over her cheek. Her skin is crusty with a mixture of dried blood and sap. She finally blinks her eyes open, but they’re glassy and distant.
“Where are we?” she asks in a weak, raspy voice
“Try to drink some sap before you talk.”
I pick up the full canister, twist off the top, and slip a hand under her neck. As I tilt her head a few inches forward, she gnashes her teeth. When she opens her mouth, I drip a little sap onto her tongue. She chokes at first while trying to swallow, but soon forces it down. Over and over, she agonizingly gulps the small amounts that I trickle into her mouth. Her cheeks flush from the fresh energy in her blood.
“No more,” she whispers after about a quarter of the canister is gone.
I lower her head to the pillow. “I can’t believe you’re alive.”
“What happened?” she groggily asks.
“When we tried to get away from the Murkovin, you went over a cliff and crashed into a canyon wall.”
She shudders and closes her eyes, probably from the memory of going over the cliff returning to her. “I hit my blend before I saw the cliff. I couldn’t stop in time.”
“I barely stopped or we’d both be dead.”
“Where are we?” she asks, reopening her eyes.
“I found a hidden cavern,” I answer. “I didn’t think you’d live through the trip back to the Delta.”
“How bad am I?”
Not wanting her to panic, I try to keep my voice even and calm. “One of your legs has a compound fracture. The other ankle is broken. I set them both while you were passed out. Your neck is broken. I did as much as I could to fix it. I think your right shoulder is dislocated, but I didn’t want to work on it until you were stronger. Tell me if there’s anything else that feels injured.”
Her eyes wander around the cavern while she inhales a few shallow breaths. “I think my left ribs are cracked.”
“Do you feel like they punctured your lungs?” I ask.
“No. They’re just sore.”
“Then we can deal with that when we fix your shoulder. I don’t know if I should have, but I’ve been using wild sap on you. I didn’t have any other choice.”
“Where did you get it?” she asks.
“I stole the transport we saw,” I answer. “I tricked the Murkovin into thinking I was on the other side of the hill from them. When they went to look for me, I took it.”
“You’re very resourceful,” she murmurs.
“Thanks,” I say. “Right now, let’s just worry about getting you better.”
Like she did before she went to sleep, she rubs the back of her hand against my leg. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“You don’t need to thank me, but you’re welcome. Besides, you saved my life at the tree.”
“It was stupid of me to stop,” she says.
“Don’t blame yourself. I would have stopped if I saw what you did.”
“Thanks,” she whispers.
I sympathetically smile at her. “I want to do some more work on you while you’re awake. How does your neck feel?”
As soon as she starts to lift her head from the pillow, her body tenses and her eyes water. “I can’t move my head.”
“Don’t worry about trying now,” I say. “The inflammation needs to go down first. Just stay still, try to relax, and let me know if anything I do hurts too much.”
I stand up and cross the cavern to the small spill of water. Bringing handful after handful of water back to Tela, I wash the bloodstains off her face, arms, and legs. Using the tip of the spear to rip the fabric, I cut her pants leg off above the knee on the leg with the broken ankle.
After rubbing sap on both her legs and checking that the bones seem to be straight, I find two football-sized stones on the side of the cavern. With the fabric I just cut from her pants and the strip I tore off the other leg when we first arrived here, I cover the two rocks. I place them under her knees to prop up her legs
