The Broken Parachute Man: A Novel of Medical Intrigue

By Robert B. Bolin

After middling pharmaceutical company executive Clyde Young boards an airplane to attend a national meeting to make a presentation concerning his employers premium drug, his schedule is thrown into a curve when terrorists hijack the plane. After refusing to keep his head down, he is hurled out with a parachute that barely functions.

He is able to survive in the wilderness, but upon his arrival back to civilization, no one believes his story. They assume he is one of the terrorists that hijacked the airplane, so Young escapes to Las Vegas to determine why he was targeted and who was responsible for his ordeal. He lives as a street person and meets four people who believe his story: a sociopath, a prostitute, an alcoholic doctor and a pickpocket.

These people become his allies. They travel with him to the east coast and then to Europe. As Young continues his investigation, he discovers abuses on the part of his employer that could result in mortal danger for innumerable innocent patients. He must act quickly to expose the danger by staying one step ahead of the unknown criminals who are closing in on him and his allies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 7, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595601387

Robert B. Bolin

Author of Unwanted Inheritance, Robert B. Bolin practiced oncology in a small northwestern town in the United States for more than twenty years and has written several medical articles. He currently lives in eastern Oregon.

Book preview

Chapter One

I’ve always wanted to be what I am not. But fate plays tricks, and on the twenty-third of February 2006, when I wanted to be more than I am, I became what I am not. It all happened in a flicker of time that would later define what I could be. You, the reader, may find the story incredulous, and even today, I wonder how it could be real. This is how it happened, at least the way I remember it.

She looked like a statue, white and chiseled, as she sat in the airplane seat with her belt tight around her waist pushing what little midriff fat she had over it. It was not like a fat man’s roll squeezed out by a tight belt, but just enough to steal the image of an otherwise lithe, shapely body. Even as the plane descended and hit turbulence, she did not move a muscle. I stole another glance at her, remembering how alive she seemed when we boarded. The contrast was striking but certainly understandable. All 147 passengers sat quietly with their gazes down, not wanting to do anything to attract attention. How did I know there were 147? I counted them. There were not many people on this big plane going to Portland, Oregon. I was disappointed. More people going to Portland might mean more people would be there for my announcement.

But they selected me out of 147 people. Why me? Am I paranoid? Yes, but my mind works that way. Maybe it was just bad luck, but sometimes nature is not good to us. We all make an instant impression of others, and terrorists are no different, I guess. Although I am, at times, congenial, my facial features, even when I am pleased, convey truculence. A large jaw with a big mouth turned down at the corners and a prominent furrowed brow with bushy eyebrows on a broad, sloping forehead just do not say friendly. My right ear was larger than the left which caused most people to focus their vision there. But I had always wondered why they cocked their head to the right when facing me. At five feet six inches and fifty-nine years old with a receding hairline, I just didn’t cut it. Even my hairline failed me. Oh, men of my age did have receding hair, but mine was different. There was abundant hair out the nose, ears, and around the head but none on top, except a scant patch right above the forehead with another fuzzy area just behind. I tried combing the sides up and over, but all that did was make it look like a toupee. Letting it grow out natural made me look like a clown, and cutting it close made me look like a monk. No, there was no coiffure that helped.

Some people are easy to look at, while others are not. Funny, if you look handsome or pretty, you do well, and people are more likely to accept you whether or not you are intelligent or talented. But if you look ugly or homely, you do not do well and people are less likely to accept you as intelligent or talented. If your appearance is really different, like mine, some people might even tend to look the other way. Why couldn’t I look like Sean Connery instead of … well … me?

But I had other challenges besides the physical ones. I was not endowed with much … well, mental capacity, or at least not enough to be what I wanted to be. While in the second grade, I figured that out when the teacher segregated us into three groups—bright, average, and challenging—I wanted to be in the bright group. I don’t know why it was important at the time. Maybe because Cynthia was in that group, or maybe because I looked at the others in the challenging group and didn’t want to be with them. By the fifth grade, I’d already had two years of summer school just to stay with my peers. But by the sixth grade, I had figured out how to fit in, even if I didn’t. First, I learned never, ever to raise my hand and never, ever to question the teachers. I’d just sit back, do the assignments, and let the bright ones lead the way. There was only one exception to that rule. I learned it in the eighth grade: Teachers were impressed by big words—words like sesquipedalianism. Most of the time, I couldn’t spell them or even pronounce them the right way, but usually the teacher didn’t know them either. I would stay quiet until a topic or question came up whereby I could use a big word, and then I spoke up—it worked every time. My skills got me graduated from high school and, later, college. From there, I become a low-profile executive who always looked to something better, always trying to get in that bright group. That’s why I was on the plane.

Looking back on it, and I had looked back at the scene many times since, it didn’t make sense. All I did was look up instead of keeping my head down like the other passengers. Amazing is the effect of unspoken communication. Unfortunately, it appeared, I was communicating the wrong message to these guys. Too late, I dropped my eyes trying to hide like the rest of them. He came toward me. Apparently, my aura was not capable of contrition even though I wished it. His eyes bored into me with a hate-filled glow as he continued staring at me during his trip down the aisle of the Boeing 767. No, I was the true victim this time. He stopped at my seat, pointed at me, and yelled while waving the pistol above his head like it was a sword. How did they get guns on board? I almost completely undressed to get on this flight. He pointed the gun right at me. My heart started pounding hard. Funny what you think about at times like this. I don’t know the difference between the front or back end of a pistol but this one fascinated me. It was bigger than James Bond’s and had a cracked brown plastic handle wrapped with electrician’s tape. I sized up the barrel thinking a bullet coming out of there would do a lot of damage. He waved it again indicating I was to stand up. When I didn’t respond, he yelled. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to comply; my muscles just went on strike and refused. Another terrorist came rushing to grab me by the shoulders, but 285 pounds was too much for him to lift, so he pulled me down into the aisle, kicking my soft body to show his contempt. I lost my glasses, and an already weak urine sphincter failed as I lay looking up at the white lady. She still hadn’t moved. The blows hurt, but the most damaging effect was the humiliation. My pants were wet.

The two of them strained to get me to a standing position then marched me up the aisle, but not before I grabbed my glasses off the floor and pushed them into the suit coat pocket. Strange the things one prioritizes to do in times of stress. I was being manhandled like a five-year-old kid who had just gotten in trouble with an angry parent, but the priority was eyesight. The trip seemed longer than it was. None of the passengers looked up, but I felt them. I wanted to shout out, Help me, for God’s sake! I didn’t know what was going to happen but knew it wouldn’t be good. My knees were weak, and the only reason I didn’t buckle was the fear they might hit me again if I did fall. Bowels rumbled as terror settled down there. I fretted about losing control. Losing urine was bad enough, but to lose bowel control in front of all these people would be the ultimate humiliation. Concentrating on that one thing took all my effort—and blocked out the horrible ordeal.

At the front of the plane, the real flight crew sat silently in the front row held at gunpoint by one of the ski-masked men. At first, I wondered who was in the flight deck until it dawned on me: the terrorists, of course. I was pushed into a seat next to the airline pilot. Every so often, the presumed leader would poke his head into the flight deck then ask, with a cockney-like accent, if it was time, then at the monosyllabic Aye, he would turn around with agitation and brandish a pistol our way. The real hostage pilot, next to me, was nervous too and tried to look out the porthole. He whispered to me when the abductors weren’t watching.

They’re flying below radar. In these mountains, we aren’t more than a thousand feet above any given peak. Any closer and we will crash.

I just looked at him, my mouth too dry to talk. As it turned out, his was the last human voice I would hear for a long time. After what seemed a lengthy time at the flight deck, the leader nodded to the other man guarding us. One of the terrorists produced a parachute, taken from somewhere in the galley, and tried to strap it on me. One of the straps got snagged by the ring on his fourth right finger; he looked into my eyes with hatred as if I was to blame for it. His pupils were not the same size, and his eyes were an unusual green, an army green. I resisted until the other one came up from behind and hit me in the right kidney with his pistol butt. I never knew how sensitive kidneys were. Nausea and dizziness kept me occupied as they finished strapping the chute and moved me from the starboard side of the plane to the port side by the fuselage door. The leader indicated with a wave of his pistol that everyone should fasten seatbelts and then sat down and clicked his own belt in place. I was left standing next to the door. The man twisted a handle on a little box, and the port door was blown away as wind rushed out of the cabin and oxygen masks deployed. It sounded like a hurricane, but in a flicker of time, too fast to contemplate, as I was sucked out. Having been standing right next to the hole, obviously I would be the first victim. They had probably made demands of the authorities and threatened, if their conditions were not met, to sacrifice hostages. But why the parachute? I tried to claw and hold the door or anything as I went by, but things happened too fast, and I found myself in the void of darkness.

At this time, I’m sure you, the reader, are questioning the story and wondering if I am confabulating. Believe me, it was a nightmare and the events happening to this sedentary, mundane, fat, white-collar worker seem unreal, but they were real, I assure you.

I have always heard that a person’s life flashes by when they face death, but mine didn’t. All I remember about the fall was the cold and noise. The sensory overload precluded reflection. There was no white light at the end of a tunnel; there was no life flashback. The only rational thought wasn’t even rational. I thought of the woman seated next to me and wondered if she was still afraid.

The cold bit at my skin as I plummeted. My business suit did not provide much insulation, and the wind tore the back of my coat. The noise actually hurt. It was dark, so there was no reference to when I would hit, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. Funny, even when death is imminent, there is a will to prolong life. I tried to slow my descent by extending my arms and legs to live a few seconds more. I had seen skydivers maneuver in that position on television as I sat in my comfortable chair munching Kentucky Fried Chicken on a Sunday night. At that moment, I realized I would not be eating fried chicken anymore. I sure liked extra-crispy. A few seconds more, that’s all I wanted now. Then I remembered the handle the skydivers had on their harness. I groped for it with barely enough strength to fold my arm onto my chest. The handle was on the left side and normally would be pulled with the right arm, but I was using the left arm, making it awkward to pull straight out. At first, it seemed nothing had happened, but then I heard a popping sound as the wind whistling decreased and my legs straightened downward, indicating the chute was opening. Still, I was not in control and felt disoriented. Was I already dead?

With that thought, I hit a soft surface with my right side. The landing, though, was anything but soft. It stung like nothing I’d ever experienced—maybe like a belly flop from the high-dive board, only worse. It knocked the wind out of me as I continued to descend in slow motion. Within seconds, I hit terra firma with a splat. All I could do was fight to get my breath, but while I was struggling, the tunnel I had just come through collapsed onto me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t comprehend. Was being buried in cement like this? At least the noise and cold were gone. My ears rang. I resigned myself to the ending. It actually felt good.

I was settling into a pleasant death when a loud cracking sound followed quickly by a tremor rose beneath me. I resented the interruption as the side wall of my tomb gave way, and I was forced to ride it downhill like a giant slide. The noise was deafening, and now the cold returned to my numbed body. I remembered the giant waterslide my sons forced me to do with them several summers ago. Where were they? I hadn’t seen them in years; they were both grown now, probably with their own families. At least in the waterslide, the tube kept you upright. Out here, the body just tumbled on what I now deduced was snow. At first, my parachute billowed open which kept me on top of the moving mass of snow, but then it too collapsed and was torn to shreds, leaving me with only a harness.

It seemed an eternity, but in actuality, the trip down the slope took only seconds. During that time, my suit was shredded, my skin was abraded to bleeding, and the parachute harness was ripped off. Finally, the roaring mass stopped as fast as it had started, and I came to rest on top of the pile as a backlash of snow swooshed up to cover my body again. This time, though, it was more a blanket than a tomb. By now, breathing was possible, and I blew the covering off my face. The silence was noticeable as I opened my eyes. It seemed incongruous that nothing was happening. I could only lie there trying to orient myself. The ringing sound in my ears decreased, and my heart quit pounding hard and fast. My pants were still wet, but the biggest discomfort was my throbbing whole right side.

Suddenly, I could see stars, real ones. I was lying on my back in a snow pile. Moonlight gave the scene a surreal look. There were trees silhouetted down below to the right. Looking back up, I could see the outline of a mountain ridge where I assumed this pile of snow had started. My fall from the plane must have ended in a snowdrift high on that peak. I was the wedge that precipitated an avalanche. Since my body was at the cleavage, I was freed from the drift as the snow mass gave way ahead of me. The effect saved my life … at least for the moment.

Clouds closed the open sky, and darkness returned. Thoughts of my plight were beginning to cause anxiety. I should have been in Portland by now, sitting in a hotel room going through the PowerPoint presentation for the umpteenth time. Tomorrow morning was the big presentation.

About an hour and a half from touchdown, the plane had descended rapidly with a hissing sound and people yawned because of plugged ears. It then slowed. I remember thinking that if this plane didn’t speed up some, it would just fall out of the sky. At first, most of us passengers were not aware the terrorists had taken control. Just minutes earlier, I was in a warm, comfortable seat, but now I lay in the snow on a mountain somewhere in a northwest wilderness. I was going to freeze to death.

Damn it! I’m really pissed! I have lost my dignity, was almost shot, survived a fall of at least one thousand feet, lived through being buried, rode an avalanche to safety, and now I’m going to freeze to death. It isn’t fair.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop crying. Dying was so … pleasant when I was buried, but freezing wasn’t nice or peaceful.

Shit!

Chapter Two

There were just no more tears. I really wanted to lie there and cry. I deserved it. I’d earned it: the ultimate victim. I’d waited all my life for this … justification. I mean, look what I had to go through to get here? My life had been so mediocre. Here I was, pushing sixty with nothing to show for it except being thrown out of an airplane and assumed dead. I was just another midlevel manager who got kicked upstairs to the position of vice president for customer data analysis. Hell, I didn’t even have a secretary. I did the PowerPoint preparation all by myself. My fifteen minutes of fame was supposed to be tomorrow when I, eloquently, would show the world that my company’s product did not cause those deaths. I was going to prove it with statistics: sophisticated data manipulation that wove a sophistry of logic irrefutable.

Damn, I need more tears.

My teeth started rattling as shivers interrupted. Reality called. Think. Why? There’s nothing to do. I am injured in the dark with only shredded lightweight clothes designed for offices, not mountains. I don’t know anything about the outdoors, let alone survival. Survival in the winter? I’m doomed. No, think. Maybe if I could get down the side of the avalanche to those trees, I might find shelter.

Painfully, I attempted to stand. Nothing was broken, just sore. Well, that was a blessing, but my first step just punched through the surface. The snow was too soft to carry my 285 pounds. There was nothing to do but stay where I was until morning, and hopefully I could find a way during daylight. Big deal; I would freeze to death by then.

The clouds moved on. Dim light, but light nonetheless, shone on the snow bringing some sensory relief. I yawned with a shiver and curled into a ball to conserve some heat, but, now relaxed, my body started sledding downhill. Before I knew what was happening, I was accelerating, uncontrolled, toward the trees. I plowed into the grove, coming to rest in a snow pit hollowed out around the trunk of a large pine tree. Another bad experience with nothing worse than a few more bruises. As a bonus for my suffering, it was not a bad place to spend the night. It was surrounded by snow mounds and covered by snow-laden boughs, with a bed of dead needles. I was cold but dry and out of the elements.

Still, it was a miserable night. It seemed at the time to go on forever. There was no sleep as the cold bit everywhere. I had to move around every now and then to keep the cold at bay. By daylight, my toes stung and there was no feeling in my fingers. White hands reminded me of the woman on the plane. Stiff muscles due to the injuries and shivering made movement almost impossible. By now, I was no longer capable of logical thought, and the cold was not perceived as cold; it was something else. At one point, I felt like taking off the jacket as it was too warm. Was my mind playing tricks? Yet I knew I had to keep moving even if it was just to shiver. I hadn’t frozen … yet. Some inner drive was at work. The instinct to survive?

As dawn rose over the mountains, I didn’t care anymore. The shivering stopped, and there were no more goose bumps. I felt peace, just like when I was buried. It was time to sleep.

I don’t know what woke me. Maybe it was sunlight or the cracking of frozen tree limbs heavy with water as the sun melted the snow hanging on the boughs, or maybe it was the chafing in my thighs from the now thawing urine in my pants or none of the above. Whatever, something made me wake. I was angry at the interruption; all I wanted was to be left alone. But the sun just got brighter and kept creeping into the grove of trees changing things with its passage there. Like a cold-blooded reptile, I felt the energy come with the heat from the sun. Hands, feet, and ears tingled and then became very painful. It was as if heating them up was worse than freezing; moving around seemed to help. Besides, I had to do something.

Now, if I was a reasonable reader, at this point, I would scoff at the whole story. Unbelievable! I would slam this book shut, throw it in the garbage, and get a Robert Ludlum novel. Yet … could this really happen? Is survival possible?

My first priority was to climb out of the snow pit. The boughs of the big pine tree were too heavy with moist snow, dipping to let their load fall into the pit below. Soon the pit would be a pool. So much for a dry sanctuary! Now it wasn’t the cold that was the enemy, it was the wetness. I had to stay dry. The leeward side of the pit was not as deep as the outer, windward side, so I crawled to the top. The snow hurt my bare hands and crammed into my Florsheim wingtip shoes where executive, black, sheer socks did not insulate my feet. From the top of the pit, I could see the landscape changing. Deeper into the grove, about fifty yards away under the evergreen trees, it was almost clear, just skiffs here and there where snow fell from limbs above. As I inspected, it became apparent this wasn’t a grove but a forest with downed trees and limbs cluttered everywhere while larger trees crowded out the sunlight. Shaded, it would be cooler in there. The floor would be relatively dry, though. I crawled forward still not trusting my weight on the snow or my own limbs. Half a football field is a long way to crawl on painfully sore muscles, but the sight of a potential sanctuary motivated the exertion. Still, my right side hurt along with my hands and feet. At one point, I stopped to rest and inspected my fingers as if they were new appendages. The thumbs were okay but the tips of all the others were black. Although they were painful, I couldn’t feel anything with them. The middle and index fingers were the worst, black all the way back to the joint. The rest of the fingers, along with the hands, were white, and I thought again of the lady statue on the airplane last night. My wrists were red, and they tingled badly. My mind wandered. Just last night? So much had happened since then that it seemed more like a week. I shook off the idleness and finished crawling into the grove until the snow was only a few inches deep.

Cautiously, I stood, at first, unsteadily. There was no feeling in my toes to sense balance. I would have to learn how to walk without relying on them to tell me. I never realized how much our toes told us about our position—wonderful mechanism that is. My right side hurt with the first step. I was sore mostly, but I was upright and walking; a great sense of accomplishment enveloped me as I ambled onto dry ground.

The earth here was soft and spongy due to ground detritus. Even I knew this was a good sign: insulation and fuel for a fire. Weak, I sat back down. I had to prioritize things in order to survive. First, I surveyed my assets: two black wingtip shoes … Damn, the right one was badly scuffed, but the shoelaces weren’t broken … two socks without insulating qualities; pants made of wool and polyester but pinstriped with the right leg torn; leather belt beveled on the top and bottom, size 50, with chrome-plated buckle; long-sleeve blue cotton shirt; men’s sport-cut briefs; and a size 56-short suit jacket with a torn back and right arm rounded out the apparels inventory. In my coat pocket, there was a wallet with a ten-dollar bill, four ones, a credit card, a Safeway ID card, and four pictures of the kids when they were about seven or eight years old. Did I take that picture before or after our trip to Colorado? My car keys were in the pants pocket—Not a complete survival kit, that.

For today, I had to have warmth and dryness. That would be the priority now. The problem was I didn’t know how or what to do. Panic arose, then heartburn and palpitations just like when I would get called up to the boss’s office. Well, what would I do in that situation? I would take a deep breath and draw on my experience to get through the ordeal. Yes, I needed to do that now. As I took a deep breath, I realized I had no experience in the outdoors to draw from. I had never gone camping in my life; the closest thing to being outdoors was the trip to Colorado with the family, and even then, we stayed in motels. God, I was a lousy father. Oh yeah, there was that business convention in Cancun several years back; all I did was walk back to the hotel on the beach after dark to avoid the crowds. Did that count as being outdoors? Overwhelmed, I started to cry again as I flopped over on my left side.

Then I remembered the Nabisco Shredded Wheat boxes.

My brother is seven years older than me; I haven’t seen him in years. He used to get breakfast for the two of us every morning when we were kids. It was always the same thing: shredded wheat. I hadn’t had them for years; I hated them actually. He would get the Nabisco box down from the cupboard, along with sugar, then go to the refrigerator for milk—whole milk not homogenized. We skimmed off the cream for our cereal. I got one shredded wheat biscuit; he got two. Each box contained three stacks of three biscuits each separated by a cardboard spacer. Of course, in those days, the biscuit was big, not these little bite-size things you get now. He would pulverize mine, almost to a powder, and pour milk over it, and I would eat the mushy stuff while whining, almost begging, him to let me crush it or eat the thing whole. No, he insisted on pulverizing it for fear a shred would cause choking. Mom never seemed to be concerned about that, but he was.

Now, Nabisco knew that their product was boring so they spiffed up the box. At least I had something to read to take my mind off of gagging. When I was eight or so, Nabisco decided to appeal to us readers by printing things on those cardboard spacers. One series had to do with cowboys and Indians. Every self-respecting eight-year-old wanted to be an Indian or cowboy. The spacer cardboard had survival tips, presumably the information imparted by some wise Indian, like how to make a lean-to or how to make a fire without matches or how to catch a rabbit with a snare or identify an animal by its tracks and things like that. I was so engrossed in these cards that I would stick my arm in the box and pull all three boards out at once to read. This act got me in trouble more than once with my brother who claimed it caused the biscuits to crush. I didn’t understand what the big deal was since he crushed them anyway. So that’s how I read all about survival in the wild.

Fire was a priority. I would use the bow-and-stick method to start a fire. I wished I had the Nabisco cardboard instructions. A lithe green limb torn from a sapling evergreen would serve as the bow, and a dead, dry one would be the stick. My shoestrings would be the bowstring. With a purpose, I set about to create a fire. The bow proved too limber, and the shoestring was not long enough. I procured a stronger stick and used the two shoestrings to make a loop, but the knot kept catching on the stick. The problem was solved by only using half the bowstring, ending at the knot. A hard piece of wood was the hub to hold and apply pressure down on the stick while a soft piece of wood would be the fire starter. As I stroked the bow back and forth, the string wrapped around the stick would cause it to rotate back and forth creating friction on the fire starter until the heat caused combustion. That was the theory anyway, but several problems became apparent. The hub wood had to have a notch to hold the stick, and the fire starter wood had to be just right to get a high enough temperature to ignite. It took many attempts until the hub wood wore its own groove, and then it had to be lubricated to keep it from falling apart. I finally settled for earwax as the ideal, and available, lubricant after trying spit, resin, snow, and the shoe insole. It was serendipity rather than logic. My right ear started to drain, but I couldn’t get at the wax with my poor fingers. Instead, I wiped the ear canal with a stick. Eureka! The perfect lubricant! Talk about luck.

It took several wood samples to find one that would heat up just right for the fire starter. I had to crawl around the forest looking for the right kind. Finally, a soft, dry piece of semi-rotted wood gave the desired result: It heated fast and pulverized to a fine dust as it got warm. Trial and error—with mostly errors—took up the day. Panic set in as the shadows got longer. It took a long time to find the right combination, and nothing was prescient. To compound the situation, my fingers could not hold the bow. They hurt. Pressing the bow on each end with palms protected by shoe insoles worked best to prevent pressure sores and further damage to my hands. Removing the shoes was difficult, and painful, but necessary in order to get to the insoles and socks. This was my first view of my feet which hurt so badly. All the toes were black except the big ones, but even they had black tips. I put the shoes back on after removing the insoles and socks. I would not be able to get them off again without a lot of pain.

I sat on a log, held the fire starter wood with my feet and pressed down on the hub with my chin protected by socks. God, did they stink! The sight would have been comical if it wasn’t so critical to survive. Time was against me. If I didn’t get a fire, I would not survive another night. I was getting weaker by the moment. Every failure just accentuated the anxiety. Shoulders, arm, and chin muscles fatigued and cramped screamed for relief as I obsessed on pyromania. Soon, I would be too exhausted as it got cooler and darker. Smoke? Is that smoke? Yes! I stroked the bow faster, giving it all I had left for about twenty strokes and then dropped to my knees and gently blew the dust pile. A red glow emanated. I grabbed one of the bills from the wallet and stuck the edge into the pile. Damn, it was the ten-dollar bill. So much for legal tender as now the ten was worth no more than a one as tinder. I chuckled at my feeble humor.

Carefully, I nursed the fire, lighting the tent of pine needles with the ten then adding small sticks and larger and larger ones up to downed dead tree trunks. Flames roared, but I couldn’t stop piling on wood fearing it might go out. It didn’t. Exhausted, I stretched out and soaked in the heat. For twenty-four hours, each moment could have been the last, but now the warmth engulfed me like a mother wrapping a shivering kid with a blanket. For the moment, I was secure and had a flicker of hope. It felt good. Later that night, when strength returned enough, I built a circle fire and made a bed of needles in the middle. Using fresh, dry boughs for a blanket, I curled up and slept for a little while. Oh it wasn’t warm and cozy, but it was tolerable. When parts got cold, I just turned over and warmed them—a human rotisserie.

Chapter Three

It didn’t snow that night, and even the wind was calm. I was too tired to enjoy the night sky. I would have slept more, but fear that the fire would go out made my sleep fitful. I was grateful there was dry firewood close by, but the supply in close proximity would soon be gone. Besides, if I lay too long, the cold crept back into my bones. I had to move around to keep warm and learned to sleep in spells, usually no more than fifteen minutes at a time.

I was still weak in the morning. My fingers didn’t get any worse, but they weren’t better either. My fingertips felt like wood. My hands were still white to the wrist where the demarcation to red was striking. The red area was almost up to my elbow and hurt, the same picture for the feet. I wondered about the discoloration as I was relatively warm now.

It wasn’t until later in the morning I discovered the reason. I wondered why I had a dry mouth, what with all this snow, then it dawned on me that I hadn’t peed since I lost it on the plane. I was dehydrated! The thought of needing fluids was not even on my list of priorities. Maybe I needed to think about priorities. I knew I needed warmth and a dry place then food, but fluids just never entered the equation. There were so many things I needed. If yesterday was an example, it took time and hard work. Did I have enough time? Would I be strong enough? Life is so precarious.

I tried to stand again but couldn’t. The nearest water was snow and being so far in the dry forest was a disadvantage. With the fire stoked, I knew it would be all right for a couple of hours. I started crawling and rolling. Why didn’t I get thirsty yesterday? Even now, I was more cold and sore than thirsty. Even with a dry mouth, I had no real desire to drink. As open sky appeared through the trees, I could see dark clouds to the northwest, and the wind was coming up. A storm was heading this way, giving a sense of urgency to the mission. Why were there no search planes out there? Why weren’t they looking for me?

In the beginning of this trip, I had decided to crawl to the opposite side of the forest thinking it might be easier than going back to the avalanche pile. Indeed, the terrain was flatter. Thank God for small favors. At the forest edge, the snow was granular and easy to scoop up, but my hands could not hold on. I pulled off a sock and filled it like a drag chute by sliding it across the snow then sucked on the foul-smelling thing. At first, it seemed like I would vomit as waves of nausea occurred each time I swallowed. Slow down. I scooted to one of the trees and leaned, sucking my sock. When it was empty, I made another trip, but this time I filled both socks and repeated the ritual.

After I filled the socks a third time, the shivering started again, and water sloshed in my stomach with any movement, followed by nausea. Cramps started causing me to curl into a ball. Hoping I would vomit, I stuck my finger down my throat, but nothing happened except dry retching that made things worse. It was a weird sensation sticking my finger in my mouth. There was no feeling—like sticking a stick in there. Finally, I resigned myself and lay cramping until I could take no more. With all my strength, I rose to my knees and yelled.

Damn you! Why me? You son of a bitch!

There was a roar from above as the wind rose to hurricane force and a wall of snow descended from the ridge above heading straight for me.

I stood and faced the onslaught. A feeling I did not understand at first, as I had never felt it before, overwhelmed me. Maybe the feeling when I was buried in the snow was close to this, but that was resignation. I wasn’t resigned now. No, I was defiant! The feeling was the absence of fear. For the first time in my life, I had no fear. This was the greatest feeling in my whole, miserable life. Always, I feared: Mom; Dad, when he was there; my brother; teachers; bosses; and even the janitors. The past twenty-four hours were the ultimate in fear but no longer; I faced my fate proudly.

Fuck you! I shouted with joy at the approaching mass.

Ahead of me, the avalanche roared into the trees uphill breaking them off like matchsticks, kicking snow high into the air. The trees saved my life by buffering the mass and throwing its energy upward. A vanguard of the avalanche came to rest at my feet, snow falling around. I dropped to my knees and raised my head and arms to laugh at the heavens.

Thanks, God.

Why the hell am I thanking him?

Still laughing, I plopped over holding my aching ribs.

Lying there, I noticed that all the trees were not the same. The larger ones on the perimeter of the forest had bare trunks, long needles, and dead limbs that extended a third of the way up with green limbs at the top. The smaller ones were green all the way down to the ground with darker needles completely surrounding the limb like a bottle brush. While studying, I noticed one of the bigger broken ones. The inner wood was white and sappy. This tree fascinated me. I wanted to inspect it closer but instead scooped up more snow in the socks and started sucking. The nausea was gone, the cramps were gone, and my strength was returning. Except now, my feet, hands, ears, and nose hurt like hell. My nose was a new site. Cross-eyed, I could see it was bright red. My hands turned from white to red.

After two more socks full, I felt like I could tackle anything. I was not as weak, and my mind seemed to just turn on. I stood and plowed through the soft snow to the big tree. The bark could be peeled away revealing the soft inner white side. For some reason, it looked good to eat, kind of like crème brûlée, so I did. I stripped the inside of the bark with the bottom of my hand, harvesting the moist, fibrous substance. It was bland with a hint of pine, chewy and juicy, but tasted oh so good.

Sorry, God.

I scraped up more and ate until I realized it looked better than it tasted. It wasn’t crème brûlée.

I gathered some bark pieces, stacked and cradled them in my arm, and set off back into the forest. The fire was out, but there were still embers and, after some anxious moments, I stoked it back to life. Getting smart, I spread some of the fire into a six-by-three-foot rectangle