“Sierra, I need you to do something brave for Mommy,” I said to her.
She came over right away, with a generally stunned look on her face. She stood in front of me, patiently waiting for me to tell her about the next calamity.
“Sierra, I need you to press on Daddy’s head.”
She stood there for a moment, then said gravely, “But Daddy has a bad head.”
“Yes, and that’s why you have to press. Like this. See?”
I showed her. His plaid button-down shirt had enough fluff to absorb some wetness without getting soggy. I could tie it, but I didn’t want to move his head any more than necessary.
I made a map in my head and did some calculations, before turning to my husband. “Aaron, honey, listen to me if you can. I’m going to leave you for about three hours. Ninety minutes out. Ninety back. That gets me five miles. Sierra will be here. I need to find help and get a helicopter for you.”
I waited for a response from him. I got silence.
“Daddy wants a helicopter?” asked Sierra.
“I’m going to hike toward the junction at 89,” I said to my blank husband. “That gives us the best chance of seeing traffic. Because the road we were on was pretty dead.” Dead is a bad word. “I mean…I have hope…that I might see a few cars and flag one down. Maybe the SUV that hit us.”
He didn’t stir. Nothing.
“Aaron?” I put my hand on his shoulder.
He was still. Disturbingly still. I could barely detect any breath; he did have a pulse, but it was weak.
I took a deep breath. I turned to Sierra. I summoned my best Solemn Mom face, making sure not to enter Scary Mom face–zone, and said, “Okay, Sierra, I need you to do something very important.”
“Is Daddy sick?”
“Yes. He needs a doctor. I’m going to find one.” I was ready for her to freak out that I’d be leaving. She stayed still as I continued. “The important thing is Daddy will need to rest as much as possible, so even though—”
“I can watch him,” she said.
She stood there like a brave little soldier, perfectly at attention.
“You can?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she nodded slowly. “I can hold Daddy Koala’s paw.”
“He might wake up and say strange things but don’t worry, he’s being silly. Just tell him that Mommy went to get a doctor, and he needs to stay still.”
“Okay. Don’t worry, Mommy.”
“I love you, Sierra.” I kissed her on the forehead and grabbed the hiking pack.
We had one granola bar left. It was murder trying to think of how to divvy this measly thing up. Some for Sierra? Some for Aaron, who probably wouldn’t even eat it? Some for me, the one who might have to sprint for two hours straight? How do you divide the lone granola bars of life?
We had planned to stop for lunch in Chasm before heading to Jed’s house. Despite everything, I could hear her stomach already rumbling.
I put the whole thing in his jeans pocket and smiled at Sierra, relying on her to decide to eat it if she needed to, or sacrifice it if Daddy needed it more. Me? I was fine. I could run on pure anxiety juice. I was already overdosing on it.
I began to head out and was close to the mouth of the cave when I heard Aaron’s voice behind me. He was starting to talk!
I spun around just as he was already slipping back into a deep sleep. He’d summoned every last ounce of his energy to utter a sentence that would occupy my mind for the rest of the day.
“Be careful who you trust.”
Chapter 6
I was alone now. Not in the spiritual sense. Not in the romantic sense. But in the imperiled sense. The survival game. I was now hiking away from everything that mattered to me.
How does a small child survive in a cave? She would never leave her dad’s side, but what if her dad’s side left her? What if the unthinkable happened while I was gone? What if my husband died? What if tiny Sierra ended up there alone?
I was walking across incredibly jagged crags. Rocks sharp enough to cut flesh, rocks that could severely hurt me if I twisted my ankle. But worse than the pain if I was crippled—Sierra would be alone. No one would know where we were, where my husband was. She’d be stranded.
With that in mind, I crossed the rubble painfully slowly. The hesitation felt necessary, but it was a risk in itself; hesitation breeds bad decisions.
Be careful who you trust.
Why would Aaron tell me that, out here in the land of zero population? Nobody lives here. Nobody camps here. Nobody was here. I’d started to truly see it on this hike. We’d be lucky to find anyone at all.
But I had to maintain hope. Maybe today is the day there is a nurse convention in the desert crags. I was heading for elevation, to the closest viable ridge. From there, I figured I’d be afforded at least a twenty-mile vantage point. There was a fairly clean path up the rock face on my left that looked like a few miles of gradual slope, before zigzagging back up the hillside for another stretch of gradual slope to the top of my target ridge.
Or I could climb.
Climbing would be risky—possibly deadly—but I’d be saving myself hours of walking, a tough economization to resist. I could be up that ridge in half an hour. It wasn’t steep, and limestone is a safe rock. I’d climbed tougher routes. My instincts said I could handle it.
And yet my mind kept arguing with the numbers.
This particular hill offered a decently high chance of success. Let’s say 80 percent. The problem was that I’d be facing that sort of choice more than once. And every time I chose the riskier option, I’d be multiplying the risk factor times all the future risk factors. That’s 80 percent times 80 percent times—
“Oh, my
