The cluttered contents of the ambulance spilled out all around him. He put his good leg on the bumper.
Tessa’s lips formed words that were faint, barely audible: “Help me.”
I hooked my hand under her right armpit. As I did, I noticed the rope had flipped over the body of the ambulance and was now jammed in the crack between the open back doors. Sevren was on the bumper, bouncing it with his leg. The ambulance began to rock. “Stop,” I yelled to him. “The rope. It’s caught!”
Tessa looked down at her bleeding arm. “My arm,” she whispered. Her voice was soft, fragile, that of a child. She’s a little girl, and I’m her daddy.
Sevren jumped on the bumper again, and the ambulance tilted one final time. I clutched Tessa’s good arm. I’ll never let go… I’ll never let go…
We were moving, moving. I slid down to the end of the prussik. My anchor held. My trusty flashlight.
I tightened my grip, and Tessa snaked up through the open window as the ambulance spit her out and slid away from us and into the gorge. As it did, it met Sevren Adkins’s body, jerking him into the slit between the doors. Pinning him. Crushing him. His piercing cries told me how tightly his body was wedged in place. The entire weight of the vehicle was crunching down on him.
Tessa and I swung into the cliff. “Patrick!” She was dangling over nothingness, and I was holding her.
“I’ve got you, Tessa,” I yelled. “I’m not letting go. I promise!” But the ambulance was still moving.
How? The rope tied to the guardrail should have held it in place.
Oh. The guardrail.
“Against the cliff!” I yelled. I hoisted Tessa up into my arms and embraced her as the twisted chunk of metal that used to be a guardrail rushed past us on its way to the bottom of the gorge. A long narrow scream cut through the valley. Sevren’s cry seemed to stain the day, a dark scar blacker than midnight arcing up toward us from his descent into hell. It lasted longer than I thought it would and then ended with a sickening crunch as the ambulance sandwiched his body against the boulders at the base of the cliff.
I hugged Tessa close. “It’s OK now. He’s gone. You’re safe.” And in that moment, I was neither angry nor afraid. Somehow, somewhere, I found a fragment of hope that I could hold onto, buried deep beneath the months of rage. A new anchor.
Chaos is evidence of human beings.
Hope is evidence of God.
High above me I heard the unmistakable gruff voice of Ralph. “Pat!”
They’d found us. The mic patch!
“Tessa’s hurt,” I yelled. “Hurry!”
I heard the clink of carabiners as someone pulled out the rest of my climbing gear and got ready to throw down another rope.
I was starting to get dizzy again.
“Hold on,” I said. She clung to me, and I took my last prussik, tied it into a quick field harness around her waist, and clipped her into the anchor.
“Patrick?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Where did you learn all this rock climbing stuff?”
“Something called experience.”
“Oh yeah,” she said with a faint smile. “I’ve heard of that.”
“Now,” I murmured, “I need to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Why?”
“I think I’m about to pass out.”
“Really?”
And before I could answer, I did.
90
22 hours later
I heard voices all around me speaking in hushed tones, respectful tones, and for a moment I wondered if I was dead.
“Looks like he’s coming out of it,” said a voice from somewhere nearby. A husky voice. “’Bout time.”
When I opened my eyes and saw Ralph’s massive form next to me, I mumbled, “If I’m dead and this is heaven, what are you doing here?” I mumbled.
“Who ever said we’re in heaven?”
I blinked my eyes and then squinched them shut, overwhelmed by the sharp white glare of the room. I grimaced. “We better not be in a hospital. I hate hospitals.”
“At least this time, no one’s dying,” said Tessa.
I turned. She sat beside the window, her face outlined by daylight. She might have been an angel sitting there-a beautiful black-haired angel wearing a T-shirt with a cobra slithering through the eye socket of a human skull.
It was a beautiful sight, slightly twisted and macabre, but adorable nonetheless.
“I knew you’d wake up.” It was Ralph again. “I told the docs not to worry.” Then he added proudly, “While you were asleep I made it past the crypt.”
“Beheaded the ogre, huh?”
“Yup. Fast and clean.”
“I showed him how,” added Tessa.
“Well, that’s nice,” I said in a fatherly sort of way. I noticed that Tessa’s arm was thickly bandaged in the place the Illusionist had cut her. She didn’t seem to be in too much pain, maybe the cut wasn’t as deep as I thought. I’d ask her about it in a minute.
I rubbed my head. “So, how long have I been out?”
“A whole day,” said Ralph. “I guess you really needed your beauty sleep.”
“Wow, I guess I did.”
“They gave you some pretty nasty stuff, Pat.” I looked toward the voice. Lien-hua was the third and last visitor in the room. She was seated in the corner in one of the prerequisite ugly chairs.
“Phencyclidine, aka PCP,” piped in Tessa. “It’s a disassociative hallucinogenic analgesic, kinda like its cousin- the ever popular but not as potent club drug Ketamine. A dose as low as 20 milligrams can kill you, and doses as high as 150–200 milligrams are considered not compatible with life.”
“Let me guess, the Internet?”
“Do you even have to ask?”
“So how much was in the capsule Kincaid tried to stuff down my throat?”
Lien-hua answered, “250 millgrams. If that capsule had dissolved any more in your mouth you wouldn’t be here talking to us.”
“Which reminds me,” said Ralph soberly.
“Yeah.” She lowered her eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
Ralph’s voice stiffened. “Pat, I don’t think you heard about Tucker… He didn’t make it.”
The news took the air out of my lungs, the moment out of my heart.
“He died trying to protect Tessa.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes. It seemed like forever but still not long enough.
“How’s his wife?” I asked.
“Taking it pretty hard. They didn’t have any kids. He was all she had.”
I hated hearing all this. Brent Tucker had been a decent man. A good man. Annoying at times, overly enthusiastic, but dedicated. I couldn’t have found Sevren without his ideas. I didn’t know what to say.
“We’re going to see her this afternoon,” said Lien-hua. I don’t know how long we sat in silence before a nurse came in to check my heart rate, and life eased forward again.
