12:22 A.M.
EVERYONE WAS STARING AT the space where Lisa should have been. Some people were screaming. Ryan’s mouth was so wide Natalia could see the glint of fillings, but he was silent, his empty hands reaching out to the empty air that had once held his wife.
Lisa had dropped off the trail at a point where the path pinched down. Falling to her knees, Natalia army-crawled forward until her head hung over the edge.
Her headlamp shone on Lisa’s body. But it wasn’t a hundred feet down, broken on boulders. She was just ten feet below them, precariously cradled in a steeply slanted cleft barely wide enough for her body. She lay on her back, her right leg bent. Three feet past Lisa’s left foot was nothing but darkness.
Wyatt hurriedly handed the child carrier to Marco and dropped on the dirt next to Natalia.
As Natalia watched, one of Lisa’s hands twitched. She was alive!
But there was no time to rejoice. Lisa began to scream. Her hands went to her right knee. As she writhed in pain, she slid an inch closer to the edge.
“Stay still, Lisa!” Natalia shouted. “Don’t move!”
“My knee! My knee!” Her voice was choked with tears.
“We’re going to help you,” Wyatt called. “But right now you cannot move or you’ll slide off!”
On his knees and one unbandaged hand, Ryan crawled toward the edge.
Natalia could see two Lisas. The one lying on her back. The other, the one in her imagination, sliding off in a skitter of pebbles.
Natalia called, “Lisa! What’s wrong with your knee?” So many blood vessels ran through the joint. A broken bone could become a knife. Even if they could get Lisa back up on the trail, Natalia couldn’t fix a severed vein or artery.
“It just”—Lisa panted between words—“gave out … all of a sudden.” She groaned, and then arched her back so she could look up at Wyatt. “Where’s Trask?”
“Marco’s got him, honey,” Ryan called out. “Be careful!”
“Can you turn over and crawl toward us?” Natalia asked.
“I don’t know.” Slowly, Lisa started to flip over but then rolled back with a shriek. “I can’t. I can’t move my knee at all.” Her voice was shaky with tears and panic.
“You guys have got to help her!” Ryan said urgently.
“Do you have a rope?” Natalia asked Wyatt. “If we made a loop and Lisa put it under her arms, we could haul her back up.”
Wyatt bit his lip. “All I’ve got is some parachute cord. It’s strong, but it’s not nearly thick enough. It would be like trying to drag her up with a piece of twine.”
“Take Blue’s leash!” Marco called out.
As it passed from hand to hand, Jason said, “Even if you get Lisa back up here, what happens then? If her knee’s broken, she won’t be able to walk.”
Ryan’s head whipped around. “Shut up! No one cares what you think.”
But Jason was right. If Lisa couldn’t walk, then what? Could they improvise a stretcher with Susan’s trekking poles?
But first they had to get her up. Holding the padded handle, Wyatt dropped the leash down. It was too short. The end landed about four feet above Lisa’s head. And even if she could reach it, how could she use it if she couldn’t even move her leg?
Natalia thought of SAMPLE. Most of it didn’t apply. But now she seized on the P—Pertinent history.
“Lisa! Has this ever happened before?”
“Once. In high school.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “I was playing basketball and my knee just collapsed. Dislocated kneecap. It felt like this.”
Hope surged in Natalia. “And how did they treat it?”
“Just pushed it back into place while they pulled my leg straight.” She panted. “It hurt worse than having a baby.”
Lisa’s cropped pants ended at her calf.
“Can you do something for me?” Natalia said. “Can you pull up that one pant leg so I can see your knee?”
With a grimace, Lisa grabbed the cloth at the thigh and edged it upward until her knee was exposed. Even from ten feet away it was obviously misshapen. Instead of being in front, the circle of the patella was now on the outside edge of her knee. It looked like someone had tucked an egg under the skin.
“Okay, Lisa,” Wyatt called. “I’m going to come down there and try to put your kneecap back in place.”
Natalia’s stomach dropped at the thought. She pitched her voice for his ears alone. “That space is barely big enough to hold her. You could both go over the edge.”
“No, Wyatt. It’s not safe,” Lisa said. She had either heard Natalia or had the same thought. “I think I can do it myself.”
“Are you sure, honey?” Ryan called. “Maybe let Wyatt try.”
“I’ll try it myself first.” Lisa’s voice shook but she sounded certain.
“Won’t that hurt a lot?” Wyatt asked Natalia in a low voice.
“Either way it’s going to hurt a lot.” She pictured the anatomy and then raised her voice. “Okay, use your left hand to massage the muscles on the outside of your right thigh. That’s your quadriceps, and it attaches to the kneecap. Try to get it to relax. Then take the heel of your right hand and as you straighten your leg, push the kneecap back into place.”
Groaning through gritted teeth, Lisa started to massage her thigh. She set her other hand next to the skewed kneecap, then began to straighten her right leg. But her foot hadn’t gone more than an inch when she stopped. “I can’t,” she panted. “It hurts so much.”
“You can do it, Lisa,” Ryan said. “Do it for Trask!”
Lisa put her hands into position again. She started making a high-pitched keening noise. It sounded almost like she was singing, holding a single note that stretched out endlessly. But as she massaged and straightened and pressed, the egg-shaped bump slid over and popped into place. The sound she was making abruptly ended with an audible sigh of relief.
The entire procedure had taken less than thirty seconds.
“Can you move it now?” Natalia asked.
Lisa tentatively bent and then straightened her knee, stopping when she began to slide downhill. “I think so.” Her voice shook. “But how am I going to get back up?”
“Now that you can move your leg, you just need to get to the leash,” Wyatt said. “I think if you very carefully turn over onto your stomach there will be less risk of you sliding.” Natalia held her breath as Lisa carefully did. “There, that’s it. Now see if you can crawl farther away from the edge.”
Step by step, Wyatt, with encouragement from Ryan, coached Lisa as she half crawled, half dragged herself nearer to them and farther away from the edge. Finally she got close enough to grab the leash.
“Now hold on tight, get to your feet, and go up hand over hand like it’s a climbing rope.”
“Be careful, honey,” Susan called as Lisa slowly began to pull herself up. She was putting weight on her right leg, albeit gingerly. The muscles in Wyatt’s arms bulged as he held her steady.
Finally with a grunt and a heave, Lisa was back on the trail. She turned so she was parallel with it and then lay on her back, panting. Ryan knelt next to her, stroking her forehead.
Natalia knelt on the other side. Lisa’s pant leg was still rolled up, exposing her knee. The kneecap was in the right place and it didn’t even look swollen. “I’m going to touch your knee, okay?”
“Yeah.”
She palpated gently, but felt no sharp edges, only dampness. Lisa’s skin was covered by a light layer of sweat. “How does it feel?”
“A lot better. But not completely normal.”
Natalia looked up at the other woman’s face. “Do you think you could walk?”
Lisa raised one dark eyebrow. “Do I have a choice?”
What Lisa needed was a brace, like a person might wear after knee surgery. Natalia’s eyes lit on Marco’s backpack, which he had given to Beatriz. “Marco, do you think I could borrow your backpack and empty it out?”
“Sure.” He began to transfer snacks and sunscreen from his pack to Wyatt’s.
Natalia pointed. “Oh, can I have that T-shirt, too?”
“It’s not very clean.”
“I just want to use it for padding.” After undoing the backpack straps, she wrapped it around the knee, padding the bend with Marco’s T-shirt. Then she refastened the straps in front, tightening them until the pack was firmly holding the knee.
“There.” Natalia got to her feet and held out her hand. “Let’s see what it feels like when you walk on it.”
With the brace preventing her from bending, it took some effort for Lisa to get on her feet. But once she was up, she took a step, and then another. A smile lightened her face. “That feels a lot better.”
Ryan hugged her with his good arm. She closed her eyes and leaned forward so that their foreheads touched.
There was one more thing that would help. Natalia called to Susan. “Is it okay if Lisa uses one of your trekking poles?”
Susan looked at her with rheumy eyes. “What? Who are you?”
AJ patted her shoulder. “It’s Natalia, Susan. Can I give her one of your poles to help Lisa?” When the older woman nodded, he gave it to her.
Lisa put it in her right hand, but then Natalia put it in her left. “Actually you use it on the opposite side of the injury. That way you’ll plant it at the same time you’re putting weight on your bad leg.”
Wyatt already had Trask on his back. The toddler had been roused by all the noise but now was nodding off again, opening and closing his palms. “I think we should get going as soon as you think you can.”
Natalia allowed herself to look back. The sky was red from one end to the other with flames.
Lisa lifted her chin. “Let’s do it.”