The Great Alone

Still, she could feel the life ebbing out of him. There was no him in the broken body beside her. “Don’t leave me, Matthew…”

A distant whirring sound reached down into the darkness, the thwop-thwop-thwop of a helicopter.

She unwound from Matthew and scrambled into the mud. “We’re here!” she shouted, sloshing to the break in the rocks where the sky showed.

She flattened herself to the sheer rock wall, waved her good arm, screaming, “We’re here! Down here!”

She heard dogs barking, the buzz of human voices.

A flashlight shone down on her.

“Lenora Allbright,” yelled a man in a brown uniform. “Is that you?”

* * *

“WE’RE TAKING YOU UP FIRST, Lenora,” someone said. She couldn’t see his face in the mix of sunlight and shadow.

“No! Matthew first. He’s … worse.”

The next thing she knew, she was being strapped into a cage and hauled up the sheer wall. The cage banged into rock, clanged. Pain ricocheted in her chest, down her arm.

The cage landed on solid ground with a clatter. Sunlight blinded her. There were men in uniforms all around, dogs barking wildly. Whistles being blown.

She closed her eyes again, felt herself being transported to the grassy patch up the trail, heard the thwop-thwop-thwop of a helicopter. “I want to wait for Matthew,” she yelled.

“You’ll be fine, miss,” someone in a uniform said, his face too close, his nose spread like a mushroom in the middle of his face. “We’re airlifting you to the hospital in Anchorage.”

“Matthew,” she said, clutching his collar with her one good hand, yanking him close.

She saw his face change. “The boy? He’s behind you. We’ve got him.”

He didn’t say Matthew would be fine.

* * *

LENI OPENED HER EYES SLOWLY, saw a strip of overhead lighting above her, a line of glowing white against an acoustical tile ceiling. The room smelled cloyingly sweet, full of flower arrangements and balloons. Her ribs were wrapped so tightly it hurt to breathe and her broken arm was in a cast. The window beside her revealed a pale purple sky.

“There’s my baby girl,” Mama said. The left side of her face was swollen and her forehead was black and blue. Wrinkled, dirty clothes told the tale of a mother’s worry. She kissed Leni’s forehead, pushed the hair gently away from her eyes.

“You’re okay,” Leni said, relieved.

“I’m okay, Leni. You’re the one we’ve been worried about.”

“How did they find us?”

“We looked everywhere. I was beside myself with worry. Everyone was. Tom finally remembered a place his wife had loved to camp. He went looking and found the truck. Search and Rescue saw some broken branches on Bear Claw Ridge where you fell. Thank God.”

“Matthew tried to save me.”

“I know. You told the paramedics about a dozen times.”

“How is he?”

Mama touched Leni’s bruised cheek. “He’s in bad shape. They don’t know if he’ll make it through the night.”

Leni struggled to sit up. Every breath and movement hurt. There was a needle stuck in the back of her hand, and around it a strip of flesh-colored tape over a purple bruise. She eased the needle out, threw it aside.

“What are you doing?” Mama asked. “You have two broken ribs.”