by Julia Kent
“Listen, Lydia, I—”
“We need you to come back and help with the search party. The guy has no food, no water, maybe a wallet, and—”
“I know.”
“You know?” She made a sound of frustration. “This isn’t the time to be all know-it-all, Mike. Hold the mansplaining for later.”
“I mean ‘I know’ because I found him.”
“You found him?”
Gasps and murmurs filled the echo behind her as he sat on the cold sand and began gently rubbing Pine’s unbroken limbs.
“Yes. He’s here.”
“Where?”
“About nine miles up from Escape Shores, at that little bay where the big cliff is.”
Stunned silence greeted him.
“He’s where?”
“I just found him. Looks like he fell off the cliff.”
“HE FELL OFF A CLIFF?”
“Yes.”
Pandemonium poured through the cell phone, with screams and shouts of joy and horror. And then it all died down to a stunned silence.
Lydia’s voice shook. “Is he...is he alive?”
A moan of pain filled his head, and he pulled away from the phone to look back at Pine, who was silent, his chest rising and falling, his eyes tight with agony. But that sound hadn’t come from him.
It had come from the background on Lydia’s end.
“Yes. He’s alive.”
Cheers of joy and shouts of relief filled the phone, the sound so loud it might as well have been New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Mike had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“How did you find him?” Lydia asked, her voice too loud and grating, her tone dripping with relief and incredulity. His throat tightened at the emotion in her words, because he knew why she asked. If he were the one missing, she’d be shredded by fear.
“Just kayaking. Thought he was a bear.” He kept his answers brief, fighting his own internal turmoil.
Pine snorted and rolled his eyes. Good. The guy was going to be fine, but—
“Where exactly are you? I’ll get an ambulance there.”
Mike looked around their location. This little bay was like two-thirds of a fishbowl, the cliff a large slope. He imagined Pine had dropped and hit sand, then tumbled down, the sheer force of speed and size making him end up close to the water. As shadows revealed large logs and rocks, he wondered how the guy had managed. He must be scraped up and in an enormous amount of pain.
“An ambulance won’t cut it unless they can haul him up a thirty-foot cliff. The way the hillside is angled makes it damn impossible.”
“What about a helicopter?”
He looked out at the water. Maybe a body basket, designed for this kind of rescue?
Wind whipped sharply, as if summoned by a trickster trying to make rescuing the injured guy harder.
“We could try. You having the kind of wind we’re seeing here?”
“Yeah. It’s not that bad yet.” But her voice said otherwise.
“He thinks he broke something. Leg or pelvis,” Mike said softly, trying not to let Pine hear him.
“Oh, God,” she muttered. The phone went silent. He assumed she was relaying information.
“I can move,” said Mike Pine, his voice clear and strong. “Looks like my pelvis just felt broken.” Mike watched as Pine sat up gingerly. He walked carefully over the shore debris and crouched next to Pine, his insides going liquid, the relief like a witness, a third person who stood by with a relieved grin.
“I pulled something in my leg, though, and fuck!” Pine lost his balance as he sat up. Mike moved on instinct, broken shells scraping his knees as he lunged, catching Pine before he twisted and landed on his side. The phone went flying and an ominous breeze shook the trees along the top of the cliff.
Bad storm coming. Of all the lousy timing.
“Mike! Mike!’ The wind carried Lydia’s voice toward the concave sandy wall leading up to the top of the cliff, and the weight of Pine on top of him made Mike appreciate how hard the past few hours must have been for the guy. A few scrapes and a little pressure on him was bad enough to bear.
Hours outside, exposed to the elements and in pain must have been hell.
And then there was the wondering. Mike’s throat tightened as he empathized.
“Sorry,” Pine muttered. “I think something in my left arm is broken.” As Mike wiggled free, careful to somehow precariously balance holding the larger guy up while getting himself into a sitting position, he realized how true Pine’s words really were. The left arm elbow bowed out, the soft skin of the joint protruding, veins bulging.
“You may have dislocated your elbow,” Mike said, struggling to keep his voice even.
“Look at my hand.”
If The Exorcist had included a hand that spun around like that little girl’s head, it would have looked like Pine’s wrist.
“Holy shit, man....”
“Mike!’ The sound of Lydia’s frantic cries made him pivot, propping Pine up just enough to move away, grab the phone, and reconnect with the crowd at the camp store.
“We’re fine. Just had a problem. Looks like he’s fractured his elbow and wrist. His arm looks like a bunch of sticks in a long bag. Not sure what else, but he can sit up, so we don’t think his pelvis is broken.”
“Okay.” She sounded winded. “Look, we need to get someone down there. Where exactly are you?”
Mike pulled up their coordinates on his GPS and read them off to her. He shivered, gooseflesh pebbling his skin, as another gust of wind made the sweat on his body chill. He wasn’t imagining the temperature dip. A cold front was pushing through, and the wind meant some kind of rain was coming. He eyed the water. A bad enough storm and they’d need to move further inland.
“You really are nine miles away!” Lydia gasped. Clearly, someone punched in the coordinates.
“Yep.”
“How did he run so far?” before he could ask, Lydia continued. “Miles is on his way. He says he knows where you are. He’s coming in a F-150 and has a tow winch.”
“What the hell is he planning to hook that up to?” One look up the cliff and he grimaced.
“I don’t know, but he’s already out the door. Can we get to you by boat?”
“Maybe the Coast Guard could.” He had to raise his voice to be heard above the wind now. “But I wouldn’t chance having Pete or Adam try it.” Both were accomplished with a motor boat, but this was starting to look grim.
He wasn’t worried about basic survival, but Mike Pine had lost some blood, was chilled (but warming), and their only fresh water was that small bottle.
“Can he stand? Can he walk?” she asked. Then, before he could answer, she added, “Miles says he’ll be there in fifteen minutes. The forest’s thick and he might need to switch to a four-wheeler.”
The vision of the truck bed filled with a four-wheeler made Mike smile. Leave it to Miles to think of everything. The guy could be a hermetic, sarcastic pain in the ass, but in a crisis, he was the person you wanted on your side.
“We can make it through fifteen minutes,” Mike said.
“Hey,” Pine interrupted. “Is Laura there? Dylan? Can I talk to them?”
Abashed, Mike looked at Pine with astonishment. Jesus. Why hadn’t he thought to offer up the phone sooner?
Because he was in crisis mode. That’s why.
Holding up one finger to Pine to buy him a few seconds, he asked Lydia, “Can Mike talk to Laura? He’s asking if she’s there.”
He heard muttering and then the high, breathy voice of a very, very scared woman. “Mike? Mike? Is that you?”
Mike chuckled. “Wrong Mike. Just a second. I’ll put him on.” He held the phone out to Pine, who reached for it with his good hand. Mike sat down next to the guy, holding him up. Sitting that close to a person made privacy impossible, but there was no other option. If he moved, Pine would topple over and injure himself more.
He had to hear every word, every sob, every c
hoked apology, every expression of love and fear and hope and distress.
And damn if it didn’t almost have him in tears.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just—no! No! It’s a stupid story,” Pine said, his voice shaking with emotion. “I was running at a full sprint and saw a clearing in the woods and thought it was a field. Turned out it was a cliff to the ocean,” he explained with a self-deprecating chuckle.
Mike heard the gasp of horror on the other end of the line.
“How far?” Pine looked up the hill.
“About thirty feet,” Mike answered for him. Their eyes met. Pine blinked hard, more of the whites of his pale eyes showing, then fading as he calibrated himself. He gave a curt nod, then lowered his voice to continue talking.
Mike felt the guy shivering, and realized it might not be from cold. A few hours alone, with broken bones and scrapes, in the dark and cold was bad enough. As the emotional impact of the last few hours kicked in, while on the phone with his almost-wife, Pine was probably having a delayed shock reaction.
And that meant medical attention was all-the-more important.
He didn’t want to take the phone away from the guy, so he stood slowly and whispered, “Put it on speakerphone.” Pine did, and Mike set the phone on his leg, then stood slowly as Pine braced himself on his good arm. As Laura jabbered into the phone and he watched Pine wince with pain, but relax with relief from talking to his woman, Mike canvassed the area, taking in his surroundings with an eye toward the easiest way to get Pine either up the steep cliff, or onto a boat that could take him to a better landing position to get into a vehicle that would deliver him to a hospital.
After two minutes of surveying, he came to a single, elegant conclusion:
They were fucked.
Pine couldn’t have picked a worse place to run off a cliff. On balance that wasn’t quite true—he’d picked the best place to land, because the sand cushioned his fall. Forty feet in either direction and he’d have hit jagged rocks. But in terms of an exit strategy, this little bay was so sheltered, it would be damn near impossible to get Pine out if he couldn’t walk.
Walking remained to be seen.
The low, ominous sound of thunder rumbled through his bones before the sound caught up to his ears. He ran a shaking hand through his unruly hair and stopped, hand frozen in place. He hadn’t worn his hair this long since...never? Raised in the Midwest, he’d been clean-shaven and short-haired his entire late adolescence and early manhood. Only since being forced out of his own corporation by the board of directors after his and Lydia’s sex scandal, and settling here at the campground, did he allow himself to grow out his hair and a beard.
Two months of beard had been enough for Lydia, who nixed the idea. But the longer hair had grown on him—pun intended—and as he fiddled and fidgeted, his mind speeding through contingencies and protections for helping keep Pine out of danger, he heard the unmistakable sound of a truck engine in the distance.
Good old Miles.
“Someone’s here,” he heard Pine say to Laura. “I’ll hang up. We’ll let you know what happens.” His voice went soft, and he added, “I love you, too.” Then Pine ended the call and handed Mike his phone back, giving him a look of white-knuckled pain, his eyes filled with a raw look. The guy’s broken bones must be screaming, and the road rash from that long tumble was probably pounding blood through him like a jackhammer.
A gust of wind tickled Mike’s skin, making him shiver as if a ghost had tickled his spine. He ministered to Pine and found him shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering, the big guy clutching the bottle of water in one hand and pitched to the side in a funny contortion.
“Cold, or nerves?” he asked, shifting his speech patterns. Simple was better with shock victims, and basic Eagle Scout training from years ago came in handy right about now as he assessed the man.
“B-b-both.” The truck engine didn’t sound like it was moving closer. Was it caught in the thick Maine forest? A burst of adrenaline made his limbs tingle with frustration and the kind of primal fear that you can’t stop. It has to run its course.
Half an hour ago, he was placidly paddling his way through a long, exhausting night tour of the shore, his mind wandering into that territory where thoughts become helium balloons that rise on their own, leaving the mind blank eventually, allowing for true thought to take place.
And now he was sitting next to a mylar-blanket-covered man with broken bones and a dilemma Mike couldn’t fix with a phone call or his own strong body.
His breath began to quicken with fury at his powerlessness. The boat tilted on shore, cock-eyed and sure, the tip staring at him as if to say, That’s it? That’s all you can do?
“Mike!” A man shouted from the top of the hill, his voice carried on the wind.
“Here!” he and Pine shouted simultaneously. Both began to laugh. The sound was great to hear out of Pine, who finished his chuckle and began taking long, deep, slow breaths, the rhythm clearly one borne of practice. His eyelids closed and he breathed in through his nose, out through the mouth.
“Mikey? You there?”
Pine muttered, “Oh, God,” under his breath. His hand began to shake. “Pa?” he shouted.
“Got the old truck here. We’ll get you outta this,” called out a thin, but deep, old man’s voice.
“Your dad?”
“Yeah.” The tone of voice Pine used made Mike shut up. He wouldn’t pry.
Most people didn’t sound that conflicted to have their dad appear in an emergency. Must be a backstory.
“Holy shit!” Miles called down. “You work as a stunt man in your spare time?” Mike looked up just as a third vehicle arrived, this one pulling close enough to the edge and with a focused search light. Suddenly, the shore exploded with light. Blinking hard, he saw the shadow of three sets of headlights in his eyes for the next minute.
The light gave him a look at what they were dealing with now. He let out a low whistle of horror.
Pine must have had a guardian angel with him when he ran off that cliff.
About ten feet to the left of them, the cliff was covered with jagged rocks, and to the right nothing but thick brush. Pine had accidentally picked the cleanest strip of shoreline going down from cliff to water.
Lucky guy.
The sound of crinkling filled the air, and Mike turned to find Pine struggling to stand, his blanket arguing with the night, as if flinging angry words to the wind. He rushed to support the man, and when he slid one arm around his waist and supported his good elbow, he was struck by how damn big the guy was. Mike’s best friend, Jeremy, was a tall guy, but wiry.
Mike Pine was a fucking redwood tree, thick and tall. He idly wondered how the guy managed to be a long-distance, endurance runner with a body made of so much muscle, but the thought shot off like a fired cannon as Pine started to crumple, taking Mike with him.
With the quick thinking that comes from that tiny slice between vigilance and panic, Mike twisted himself, maneuvering until he got Pine upright fully. As they took one step, then two, he felt like a teenager again, playing in a three-legged race.
“I’m good,” Pine said, his voice low with pain. “I can walk.” He peeled Mike’s support away until he was standing on his own, elbow at an awkward angle against his body, forearm crooked and sticking out, hand dangling like a useless, decaying leaf on the end of a branch of a tree in winter.
Step by step, deep breath by deep breath, Pine made his way across the cracked shells that littered the shore. He paused in front of an enormous driftwood log and sat down, folding slowly.
Up above the distinct sound of two people clapping could be heard.
“You can walk?” Miles shouted. “Can you make it up the path?”
“We’re comin’, Mikey!”
Pine’s breath hitched as he inhaled.
Path? Mike thought to himself. There’s a fucking path?
A bright LED light illuminated the bottom of the thick brush, and Mike jogged over
to it. A tiny path, no wider than two feet tucked together, snaked through the thick brush. Tracking it, he saw the climb would be steep.
They might need a boat after all.
That thunder he’d heard in the distance grew louder, and then the wind just...changed. He’d become accustomed to the weather patterns here on the coast of central Maine, so different from those in Indiana growing up, or even in Boston and the Cape. He could smell the rain coming, and he didn’t have to look at the ocean to see that the waves had picked up.
He could hear it.
Short, punchy breaths started to fire out of Mike Pine, the sound like a man with a sucking chest wound.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Gasp. “Just adjusting.” Gasp.
That thin line between vigilance and panic just got thinner.
“Miles! You got some way we can help him up?” Mike could see Miles standing there, talking to a guy as tall as him, which meant Jeremy. A fourth vehicle’s engine sounded in the distance. Damn—they must have called in half the town. Mike’s heart swelled with relief.
The more responders, the better.
“Hang on. Coming.” Jeremy’s form broke away from Miles and disappeared from the thin clearing between the woods. Mike could barely hear the sound of him making his way through the thick woods, but then the unmistakeable sight of a man wending his way down the path made Mike understand that there was a plan. Backup. Blessed backup.
He wasn’t the only one here to help Pine any more.
It took a few minutes, during which Pine worked to control his breathing and Mike jogged over to the base of the path to greet Jeremy, but he got there, face flushed and eyes intense.
“He okay?”
Mike shook his head and dipped his voice. “His breathing’s gone weird, and his arm’s broken in at least two places. I’m not so sure about his legs and pelvis, either.”
“Here.” Jeremy thrust a thick windbreaker at him, one of two in his arms. He walked away from Mike and reached Pine, Mike on his heels, blinded for a moment as he threw the jacket over his head.
“This,” Jeremy declared as he took a much-thicker down coat and tucked it around Mike Pine’s shoulders, “is exactly why I don’t run. Running’s dangerous. If I’m running, it’s because there’s a new batch of beer being delivered from the local brewhouse.”
