I wake first and morbidly put my hand on Paul’s chest to make sure he is alive. His heart still beats and I can hear his breathing, though it sounds wheezy and shallow. The long rest has rejuvenated my body a bit, and I feel strong and determined, if also stiff and cold. I will find help for Paul or die trying.
While he sleeps, I pack up my sleeping bag and my bottle. I grab the hiking sticks, though I hope I won’t need them.
When I’m ready, I shake Paul and he reaches with his hand and holds mine.
“Come back for me. Even if it is long after I’m dead. Promise you’ll come back here.”
“Stop it. I’ll bring back someone who will help you. You’ll be alive when I come back.”
My voice chokes on the word alive. I’m looking at his body, and I can see how cold and pale and beaten he is. My hope is draining moment by moment, like the blood in his body. I feel helpless and angry, but I buck up and show him that I’m not afraid for myself or for him and that I’ll be back.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Maybe fate has plans.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believe we found each other.”
“Like we were meant to.”
He nods.
“Before my mother died, she told me she’d be a star in the night and I could always look up and find her. I believed that for a long time.”
“That’s so sweet,” I tell him.
“If you need me,” he says, lying back as if he lacks the strength to stay upright.
“Okay,” I tell him, “you too. If you need me.”
I kiss him one more time as deeply and lovingly as my dry lips and bereft heart can muster. He cradles my cheek against his. Then he kisses me one more time on my eyes and whispers, “Goodbye.”
A short cry bursts from my chest, and I feel his chest heave, and we hold onto each other for just a moment longer. Then I turn and walk.
“I love you, Jane,” he calls out.
I stop walking and turn around. I take him in deeply with my eyes so my heart and brain never forget this moment or this beautiful boy who will always be mine. “I love you too,” I cry out. I bring a big mitten to my mouth and blow him a kiss. He smiles his big, crooked, awkward, lovely smile. I will never forget that.
• • •
I walk away from our shelter. He is alone with his brother’s words, the memory of my kiss, and the fear that this is the end of his time on earth. I will find help.
I walk along the ridge, and it’s like walking through clouds. The mountain fog rolls around me, and it is impossible to know where I’m headed. Paul directed me to walk straight on the ridge, and from the daylight before the last storm, it appeared to descend and flatten out near here. If I can get to ground level, in an open space, and if the snow and cloud banks clear, I’m certain I’ll be found by a plane or somebody searching for us.
It’s a lot of ifs.
The ridge quickly flattens out and then descends into a steep, long slope that isn’t nearly as rocky as the valley. The tree line comes into view, and I am grateful for its protection from the wind. I often look up in the sky, hoping to see a plane. At one point I hear a faraway something, and I allow myself to imagine an airplane that will find me and then swoop in to save Paul. I push out all thoughts of him lying there alone and simply replay our night together, over and over.
By early afternoon, my legs shake and wobble. Each step requires strength my body no longer has. I fight to focus on moving and just keep Paul’s name as my mantra. If searchers were to find me now, they’d think I was a homeless person mumbling some psychotic chant about a long-lost relative. But it is the chanting, the repetition of just his name, that keeps me going.
By late afternoon I’ve reached the bottom, and I look out across a long stretch of flat terrain. It is open, and my mind tells me it is where I’ll be found. My gut checks me, though. Shelter. I can hear Paul’s voice saying that after water, shelter is everything. The trees and rocks offer me shelter and my best chance of survival if the weather turns, but the open grassland offers the greatest chance of being found and Paul being saved.
My first step into the open grass is deep and I realize the snow here accumulates in a way that isn’t true of the mountain slope protected by trees. Nor is it cold enough to create hardened snow, like on the top of the mountain. It isn’t a warning, I tell myself as I take another step and then another. It is the hardest walking I’ve done since this journey began. My legs are so tired it requires every ounce of energy to pull my feet free from the snow. The farther out I get, the deeper the drifts become, and I find myself becoming frustrated by my progress as night falls quickly around me.
The wind picks up and is vicious like never before. With each gust, I feel the temperature dropping. Here I am again. One way or another, I keep reliving that moment on the plane with the pills in my hand. I’m never going to make it across, and the cold is so severe I simply won’t survive the night.
I stop and turn my back to the wind and look back toward Paul. I’m sorry, I think. A tear freezes right on my cheek and I imagine his face before me. Words come and connect us. The snow is your friend, I hear him say. I don’t recall that he ever said that to me before, but the word snow reverberates throughout my head and heart. I start to dig and dig until I hit the earth. It is perhaps three feet deep. I work my way back toward Paul, digging out a grave the length of my body. I unfold my sleeping bag and stand in it. I zip the bag up to my armpits and sit in my snow grave.
I quickly shovel snow onto my feet and my legs and eventually cover my chest. I zip up my bag all the way and use my right hand to pull as much snow over me as possible. I pull my hand in and listen and feel for my fate. The wind is gone, or at least its chill does not touch me in the same way here. The bag is keeping my heat inside, and the cold from the snow is not enough to penetrate, at least not yet.
I smile as I hear Paul say, Solis, well done. I close my eyes and, just before I fall off, I have one thought: He spoke to me. It wasn’t memory.