Survive

by Alex Morel

  Paul springs toward me and puts his arms around me, keeping me up. He holds me very tight, like my father did when I was a little girl.

  “Hold on, Solis. Steady.”

  I can’t believe this is same guy who joked about the captain’s head.

  My body continues to shake uncontrollably. He squeezes me tighter and tighter, constantly whispering, “Breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe,” until I gain control.

  And then something unexpected happens. I hear myself speak, and not sarcastically or vaguely, or with anger or rage, but with honesty.

  “I should be the dead one, not Margaret,” I say, pointing to her body.

  “Did you know her?” he asks.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “I mean, a little. She had a whole life; she was a newlywed and she had Eddie at home who loved her more than life itself.”

  “Sometimes luck makes you feel guilty,” Paul says softly. “You can’t beat yourself up for still being here.”

  He doesn’t even know what I’m talking about, but he has said the right thing. All that life Margaret had to look forward to, all that life I was trying to wreck and throw away. None of it matters. I was the lucky one. She wasn’t. And now I feel guilty about it. The same way I felt guilty about living and my father dying. Why should we carry on when the people we love are dead?

  “Doesn’t anything matter?” I say as a few tears roll down my cheek.

  I look up and see his eyes and I swear I see tears building. He looks down at me curiously and then drops his sunglasses back down.

  “Are you okay?” he says again, wanting to move on.

  “I should be dead.”

  “I understand.”

  “No you don’t. I tried to kill myself last night, in the bathroom, before the plane crashed. That’s why I survived. It’s fucked up. I’m so fucked up.”

  I don’t know why I chose to tell him at this moment, in a frozen graveyard of bodies, or why my normally impenetrable steel vault is suddenly wide open for him to see into, but there it is.

  “What do you mean?” he says. I can’t see his eyes, but his mouth is twisted with anguish and his upper lip trembles. I think he’s trying to say something—anything—to be helpful, but he can’t find the words. I finally blurt out a river of thoughts.

  “I started to take pills in the bathroom, then the plane crashed, and I woke up alive. I should be dead, but I’m not. She should be alive, but isn’t.”

  Paul stands there like a statue, looking at me and through me, trying to process his thoughts as quickly as he can. I can imagine some of those thoughts: Holy shit, I’m on a mountain with a freakazoid; Hide the knife, she could kill us both; Don’t let her at the minibar, if I can find it.

  But he only says, “If you weren’t lucky, I’d be dead. It’s not just about you.”

  His mouth relaxes and a big smile crosses his face, like he’s proud that he just put together a little philosophical escape hatch for me.

  “Thanks,” I mutter.

  He wraps his arms around me one more time and rubs my back. His arms make me feel warm and remind me of how cold I am.

  “I’m so cold,” I say, sniffling. “You must be frozen.”

  “I am,” he says.

  “This way,” I say. I grab his hand and pull. We walk silently together to the tail of the plane.

  Chapter 17

  By the time we cross the short stretch to the tail, it is nearly dark. We open the door and slide in. It’s tight, but we manage to stand side by side, though we are forced to lean against the wall to accommodate the tilt.

  Paul looks around for a second.

  “This is good.”

  I reach into my jacket and hand him an energy bar and some chips. He just looks at it, sheepishly.

  “My hands are too numb. I can’t open it.”

  I take off my mittens and put one end of the bar into my mouth and tear the packaging open. I hand it back to Paul. He holds it in his gloves and bites half off and hands me the rest. It’s semi-frozen, and we have a tough time chewing.

  Paul points to the chips and I rip them open. We both grab a handful and shovel them into our mouths. I immediately realize this is a mistake and Paul does too. We look at each other trying to chew up the semi-frozen, taffy-like energy bar and the greasy chips and start to laugh. We crunch and chew and crunch, but the giant wads in our mouths never get smaller. Paul starts to make his chewing exaggerated and then he tries to speak, which is apparently impossible with potato chips and energy bar in your mouth.

  “Wwwwtter.”

  “What?”

  He pantomimes drinking and I shake my head.

  “Noooothing?” he says.

  I shake my head again. I look at him closely for the first time as my eyes adjust to the light. His entire body is shaking uncontrollably. I reach up and take his sunglasses off and touch his face. For the first time, I notice how little he’s wearing. If he didn’t have his jacket on, he would be dead. But it isn’t a thick jacket, though that can be deceiving.

  But he is wearing jeans and, from what I can tell, only a flannel shirt underneath the jacket.

  “You’re freezing. My God.”

  I quickly pull out the clothes I had jammed under my jacket and hand them to him.

  He looks at his boots and then to me.

  “Can you unlace them for me?”

  I take off my gloves and tug on the laces and loosen up the knots. Then I pull the boot apart the best I can.

  “Pull with your leg and I’ll hold,” I say.

  There’s some resistance, but eventually his foot slides out. I unlace the next one and it slides off too.

  “The socks too.”

  I slowly peel off his socks, which causes a few yelps from Paul.

  “Fuck, that burns,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m trying to be careful.”

  Every part of his body is frozen red, and when I touch him, little white spots appear on his skin. His clothing is damp from the snow. The cliff protected him from the worst of the storm, especially the wind, but hanging out there for hours left him exposed.

  “My pants, please,” he says, still trying to flex his hands.

  I look up at him. His eyes are soft, sky blue. I nod, like it doesn’t bother me in the least. I’ve never taken a guy’s pants off before, and this certainly isn’t how I expected it would go down: on top of mountain, in the bathroom of a crashed plane, in the middle of a blizzard.

  I put my hands on his jeans. There’s a belt that I loosen and then pull off. I unbutton the fly and unzip. I put my fingers around his waist and grip both sides. I turn my head to the side and yank down as hard as I can. He lifts one leg and I pull the pant leg over his foot, then the next.

  “And these—they’re soaked,” he says, feeling the back of his briefs.

  My eyebrows go up instinctually and I say, “Really?”

  He puts his hands out in front of me and for the first time I see how red and bruised they are.

  “Okay, sorry. I’m gonna close my eyes.”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “Sorry. I apologize for the weirdness.”

  I close my eyes and slide my hand beneath the band at his waist and slowly pull them down as he steps out. I grab the long johns and open them up so he can step in them, which he does. I stand up and pull them over his crotch. I sneak a peek and feel a flush spread across my face. I never look up, afraid he’ll see me blushing.

  I grab the dry jeans and repeat the whole process in reverse. When I’m done, I put dry wool socks on both of us.

  I watch Paul pull down the bottom of his jeans over his socks with clumsy, swollen hands. I have an impulse to touch them, which is unexpected because they look gross. I don’t act on it. Instead, I look up into his eyes, and he’s staring down at me.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Thank you,” he says. “We should sleep together.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry, in the
sleeping bag, I mean. This is decent shelter, but our warmth is our greatest asset; we’ll maximize it in the bag. We’ll figure something else out when it’s light again.”

  “Right,” I say nonchalantly. Inside, I’m shouting, Holy shit, holy shit.

  Then I add, “Yeah, makes total sense.”

  We both step into the bag, and I slowly zip it up. It is really snug, and the front of his body presses against my back. We fit like crescent moons lying side by side. His body, despite being dressed in dry clothes, emits a coldness I can only imagine is painful to bear. His hands are right in front of me to study. His right hand is red and cold, but his left is bruised and cut. They both look angry and swollen. Then, as though he can see me staring at them, he speaks: “I’m going to put my hands on you, okay? I need the warmth.”

  Slowly his hands move under my jacket and my sweater, his long arms circling me, and then he tucks his hands under my arms. Blood rushes to my cheeks and my stomach drops with unexpected excitement. I’ve never been touched like this before, and though it’s probably just platonic, I feel a pulse of electricity shoot through my body.

  “Is that too awful?” he asks. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. But his body heat is good, much better than being in the bag alone. Instinctively, I cross my arms and place my hands over his. He grunts from the pain.

  “Your hands aren’t as soft as I remember,” he whispers in my ear.

  I smile, thinking of our first conversation.

  “I can’t believe we’re here,” I say.

  “I can’t believe you’re sleeping with me after one day.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t believe you let me know your little secret,” I say.

  “What secret is that, my philosopher friend?”

  “You make jokes when you’re nervous, so I guess sharing a sleeping bag with me makes you nervous?”

  I know he’s smiling—I can feel it in my heart. He says nothing for a long time. We just lie there on our sides, listening to the wind and our breathing. Our feet press against the wall beside the toilet and our heads lie softly on our coats.

  “Thank you,” he whispers.

  “I’m not a philosopher,” I whisper back. “I mean, I’m not a philosophy major. I lied before, so you can stop calling me that. Please.”

  There’s a pause in the darkness. I don’t know where all the courage is coming from, but I do know I feel an uncontrollable urge not to lie. Not to lie going forward, not to lie period.

  “Right,” he says. And then he adds an aside a few moments later: “But I can tell you think too much. Sometimes doing is better than thinking, you know?”

  “Not really,” I say.

  Suddenly, he kisses the top of my head, in a brotherly way, nothing further.

  “See, I wanted to do that, but I was thinking about it too much.”

  “Clever,” I say.

  “Night,” he whispers.

  I sit for a moment in the dark, thinking about the day. It’s been endless and utterly exhausting—like a lifetime lived in twenty-four hours. I can hear a soft snore coming from Paul. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

  Chapter 18

  I wake. Light splinters in from under the door. Paul’s arms are draped around me: his right arm snakes around my body, and his left circles above and around, cupping my waist, his hand gripping my side just above the hip bone.

  I’ve read about the wilderness and I know that you can experience hallucinations in extreme cold. Because there’s a twenty-ish guy spooning me, I question whether this is indeed a hallucination. Am I losing my mind? I consider the possibility that I am actually dead and that this is the beginning of an unexpected afterlife. Could I have conjured up a more conventional scenario than to wake up in the arms of a beautiful boy?

  I don’t want to move, for fear of waking him. I listen to his breathing, which is full and deep. His breath is warm on my neck. Maybe somebody will come today and find us and it will all be over. I wish I had a close friend I could tell. There’s nobody at the institution but the Old Doctor. He’d love it. I can imagine him saying, “Jane, don’t you see now? You were alive up there, face-to-face with death. Things happen when you’re alive in the world.”

  “Are you awake?” Paul’s voice is deep and rusty.

  “Yes, why?”

  “You were talking to yourself. I thought maybe you were dreaming.” He shifts around a bit, moving his right arm up to stretch it.

  “What was I saying?” I ask.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Oh my God.

  “Tell me, please,” I say.

  “I’m kidding.”

  Thank you, God.

  “My hands feel better,” he remarks as he flexes his bruised left fingers. “But my head is killing me.

  “Mine hurts too,” I say.

  “We’re dehydrated. A headache is the first sign from the body. We need to find water.”

  That’s true, no doubt, but what I’m thinking is I really have to pee badly. The bizarre nature of this situation dawns on me. I’m sharing a bathroom, literally, with a guy I met, in real time, maybe three hundred words ago. Sure, we survived an airplane crash together and I saved his life and I guess we have slept together, which may have created a bond so profound it will transcend time, but the thought of peeing in front of him still feels way out of the question.

  “I hate to break this up,” he whispers.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “What do you mean?” he says.

  “You’re whispering and we’re alone in the middle of nowhere, in a bathroom.”

  “Right,” he agrees, and then shouts loudly: “Nobody can hear us, can they?”

  Not a hallucination: he’s just as annoying now as he was when I first met him. But I can’t help finding some of his antics charming.

  He reaches over and pulls the zipper down on the sleeping bag.

  “We need to do some investigating. And I actually need to use the toilet,” he confides.

  “Me too. The bathroom.”

  We both stand, he hunched over and me leaning against the sink, and look at each other for a minute.

  “I’m not peeing in front of you,” I say.

  “Right.”

  He steps into his boots and laces them up. He pulls the door open and looks back out at me. “Don’t take too long; it’s freezing out here.”

  He steps out into the light and pulls the door shut. I know he can still hear me and hearing is almost worse than seeing. Either way I have stage fright, so to speak.

  “Start singing,” I shout.

  “What?”

  “I said start singing so you can’t hear me pee.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Start singing or I won’t pee.” I start kicking the door with my foot. “And I won’t let you in.”

  He clears his throat and then breaks into song. “Every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world, ends up making love to a sofa or girl . . . Death or glory, just another story.”

  I immediately let go, which is the most glorious sense of relief I’ve ever felt in my life. When I’m done, I move my foot and stand up and adjust. Then I pull the door slightly in to indicate I’m finished. Paul quickly jumps in and pushes the door shut. We are standing face-to-face. The top of my head only reaches his chin, which is black and stubbly.

  I look up into his blue eyes.

  “It’s very cold,” he says.

  “I wasn’t aware.”

  “Sarcastic, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it isn’t just cold. It’s bitter cold. It’s negative cold.”

  “That means exactly nothing to me,” I say.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well,” he mumbled. “My pee—it froze as it hit the snow. It has to be very, you know, cold. It must have dropped forty or fifty degrees last night.” He paused. “And the wind is kicking powder a
nd ice around; feels like flying needles on your face.”

  “Someone will find us soon, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “But they always find people when they crash. They must know we’ve crashed.”

  “Not in a blizzard and on a mountain in the Bob Marshall Wilderness,” he says. “Even if they knew where we were, it could take days or weeks to get climbers up here . . . With this amount of snow, we might not be found for weeks, maybe months.”

  “Bob what?”

  “Bob Marshall Wilderness. There are no roads. It’s two hundred and fifty miles of roadless mountains, and I think we’ve landed somewhere in it.”

  “How will we get out?”

  “I’m not sure, but down here they’ll never find us,” he says gravely.

  “If you’re trying to scare me, you’ll have to do better than that,” I say, remembering all the cuts and blood and pain that landed me at Life House in the first place. Slowly watching yourself die and being unable to respond sounds wildly familiar to me. In fact, I think freezing to death sounds pretty straightforward.

  “Do you know what happens when you die of dehydration?”

  “I think so.” Now he’s starting to scare me because I am so thirsty, my saliva is sticking to my tongue and cheeks like paste.

  “Well, here’s the thing: you can eat the snow and freeze to death, or we can stay here and die of dehydration.”

  “Is there a third option?”

  “The plane. We have to skin it clean of every drop of water and every morsel of food and every piece of equipment we can find in it.”

  “And after that?”

  “We’ll decide when the time comes.”

  Chapter 19