I clenched the ridge of the windshield, my feet hanging over the edge of the hood. My shoulder was exploding in pain, but I somehow managed to pull myself up. As I did, the wound in my shoulder ripped open, and the pain cruised up my neck and blistered apart inside my head. I felt warm blood oozing from the wound, drenching the back of my shirt. I tried to ignore the blast of pain but almost blacked out.
The ambulance was slipping, everything was slipping. I needed something to tie into, quick, before we went down. I felt along the icy rock face beside me. It was cluttered with fissures and cracks. I needed something to jam into one. Anything that would hold my weight.
And I only had one thing with me. My flashlight.
I pulled it out and pounded at it with one of the carabiners, smashing its precision-machined high-strength aluminum alloy case into a slim crack.
Using one of the prussiks, I flipped a lark’s head knot around it. Clipped in and then smacked my hand against the windshield. I had to wake her up. “Tessa!” I smacked it again. Nothing. “Please! Wake up!”
I eased closer, saw her chest rise and fall. Rise and fall. She was still alive, thank God. The ambulance tilted beneath me. Below us I could hear Sevren enraged into madness calling out my name, making his way up the rope with the catch and click of the ascenders. Catch and click. Ascending the rope. Catch and click. Getting closer by the second.
Tessa! You have to wake up!
I reached through the open window and grabbed her shoulder. Shook her. “Tessa!”
Her eyes fluttered open then closed.
“Wake up!”
I whipped off my belt and as gently as possible, tucked it around her arm above the cut artery and then cinched it tight. A crude tourniquet. She might lose the arm, but at least the tourniquet should keep her alive.
Then I whispered a prayer to the God I wasn’t even sure was listening. I begged the heavens to hear me, a guy who had no right to expect any divine favors. Please. Please, she doesn’t deserve to die. You took Christie, don’t take her. Please let her live. I don’t care about me, just let her live.
I shook her. I loved her. “Tessa!”
Snow fell past us, all around us. She blinked and looked up, confused. Behind her I saw the back doors of the ambulance burst open.
Sevren.
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.