Alex Morel - Survive

I stop for a moment and take stock of everything. I close my eyes and try to imagine the trail back to Paul. I know where I am, I think. I open my eyes and kneel in the snow, looking at the trail of steps I have just taken, and I visualize myself walking back to Paul.

I keep moving forward until I find a clearing with a fallen pine. It looks like it has been lying here for a while. I walk to the top end, where the branches are younger and thinner. I break off four sturdy branches and head back to Paul, following my prints, still fresh in the snow.

I think about one therapy session with Old Doctor when the trees were just beginning to bud, so it must have been early spring.

“You like to read, Jane?” Old Doctor asked.

“Yes, but not if you tell me what you want me to read.”

“I see. I’m the same way.”

“Good.”

“But,” he mumbles.

I couldn’t take it. “Always a ‘but’ with you people. I wish you would just say what you want to say. Always a bait and switch. I’m just like you, BUT. I like movies myself too, BUT…” (Of course, this was early on, before I got the hang of what was needed to manage Old Doctor.)

“You’re right, Jane.”

“But? Come on, what’s the BUT?”

“No, no. You’re right.”

We sat there staring at each other for about a minute, maybe two, and I waited for his qualification. I thought if I spoke, he might be able to dodge it and make his point with some other turn of phrase. If I waited, I knew, he would undoubtedly provide it.

“Emerson believed that all the human world could be explained, in Nature, if one sat long enough, patiently enough, with enough focus and insight to pull the lessons from beneath the hard bark of an old tree.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I like the sound of it.”

“You want me to read him? Emerson?”

“Not really, not unless you’re interested.”

We sat again in silence. His watery-blue eyes had no emotion on the surface, but in that moment I thought about all the tears, shame, anger, and misery they had probably witnessed. I wondered if he absorbed all the pain he listened to. Then I snapped out of it.

“Double reversing now. I am not falling for it,” I finally said with a smirk and a great deal of satisfaction.

“I am not your enemy, Jane.”

“Are you in charge of when I can get out of this place?” I asked. “Because, actually, I think you might be.”

He smiled.

“You are the most important person in this process.” He said this calmly. It bugged me that he wasn’t getting really angry.

“So I could be at home studying a tree in my own backyard.” I snorted. “Is that what you have my mother paying you the big bucks for? So you can tell all of us trapped people to go out and contemplate trees?”

“I was offering up something for your further thought or meditation, in response to your suspicion about our conversation.”

“Bullshit,” I said, looking right at him. I knew he was being honest, but backing down would be too embarrassing.

“Our time is up for today.”

“You always have that trick.”

“I suppose we both do.”

I follow my path in the snow back to Paul quite easily and find him sleeping. I lay the branches down on the ground and shake him gently. He comes to fairly quickly.

“You can’t sleep now,” I tell him.

He looks at me dully, the information not processing through his brain as quickly as normal.

“Right,” he says, “should stay awake after a head injury.”

He looks at the pile of branches.

“You’ve taken a lot of pills, Paul. I’m going to have to wake you every hour or so, just to be safe.”

“Take off the branches and find the straightest one,” he whispers.

I pick out two short, thick pieces and pull off the small branches.

“Okay,” Paul says. “Make my arm straight like yours and then lay it between these branches. Then wrap one of the extra shirts around it as firmly as you can and tie it off.”

“I can’t straighten your arm.”

He ignores me. I take a sideways look at Paul’s arm. It looks fine through to the elbow, but then a little more than halfway down the forearm, it breaks the wrong way. Even underneath his jacket, the angle is profoundly distorted.

“Put your hands on my arm, as gently as you can.”

I place my hand on the top part of his arm.

“Undo the snap by my wrist, gently, please.” I can’t believe I am going to do this, but I know that I need to save him and I think that-to save myself-I need him.

I pull his jacket sleeve open, and Paul winces with pain but nods at me to keep going. I can see the sweat building up on his forehead.

“Pull back the jacket sleeve, and the sweater and the turtleneck.” He shuts his eyes as I begin and adds, “As carefully as you can, please.”

As I pull back his jacket sleeve, the bulge from the broken bone protrudes more clearly, the thin underlayers holding the form of it. Paul muffles deep, painful groans by biting on the outside of his left jacket sleeve. But he can’t suppress a yelp of pain when I begin to pull back the tight-fitting turtleneck sleeve. There’s blood staining the sleeve, and I realize part of the way down that a little piece of the bone is sticking into the fabric, holding the sleeve to his forearm.

“I’m so sorry!”

“Aahhhh!” he screams. He pounds his good fist against the snow two or three times, screaming, “Fuck!” I stop pulling and watch his sleeve for a bit as a little more blood pools into the cloth.

“Leave it on. Leave it on.” He pounds his fist twice more and then looks at me with wild and alert eyes.

“Do it, Jane… set it now!” he commands.

“I can’t hurt you!” I shout.

“Just push the bones together and get them as straight as you can. Put them between the sticks and wrap it up as tightly as you can. Please, Jane!”

In a swift motion, I grab his arm and push the bone back down into what I hope is its proper place. Paul screams like a wild animal caught in a trap and then goes silent, slumping to the ground. His shrieking rings in my ears.

I say his name, but he doesn’t respond. Pain, of the severe and unrelenting variety, can cause people to pass out or numb up. Or it could just be the full load of pills kicking into his system. I look at his arm again, and it is straight now, but still twisted so the hand doesn’t face the right direction. I hold the forearm steady in my left hand and turn the wrist and the hand into place. The sound of bones crunching is stomach-turning.

I slide the flattest branch under the arm and then I place two skinny straight ones on either side. I take one sweater sleeve and put it under the forearm right at the elbow and slowly wrap it around and around, as tightly as I can manage, until it reaches his wrist. I grab the fourth stick and slide it in between his arm and the flattest piece of wood, creating a splint to keep the hand from dangling.

I look at Paul and he’s still out cold from the pain and probably the pills. I look up and see that the day is almost over. I look around and try to imagine what he would decide to do. First shelter, that’s number one. Then water. I pull out the bottle of melting snow from between my back and jacket. Then I feel for his, lifting up his jacket to pull out the pouch of water.

When I push my hand up under his jacket, I feel a swollen lump on his ribs right beside the bottle. I touch his ribs gently, following the laceration and the bump, from the left side of his rib cage all the way to the front near his heart. I wonder if his ribs are broken too.

What if he dies? Please don’t die.

“Don’t second-guess, Jane,” I could hear the Old Doctor speaking. “It’s neither helpful nor worthy of your time.” Focus, Jane. I look around again and quickly head back toward the dense forest with the fallen tree. I find the tree and gather as many dried-out branches as I can break and carry.