“What happened?” Courtney demands as soon as Sam walks in with her bloody hand.
“I’m okay.”
Noah comes over to take a look, and she can tell he is impressed, but Courtney is already grabbing her keys to drive to urgent care and she is asking, Why didn’t you go already?
“They were going to take me.”
“Who’s they?’
“Justin and Amber.”
“So why didn’t you go?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“And they let you drive home?” Courtney is hustling Sam into the elevator.
Sam wants to defend them, but her mom has that steely glare she gets when you can’t tell her anything.
It’s a quiet Sunday night, and they hardly have to wait. The nurse takes them inside and Sam sits on an examining table while her mom stands next to her. The room is white as a light box and there is Sam in her bloody shorts and shirt while the nurse takes her temperature and asks what happened.
The doctor is tall and lighthearted, like You will be just fine. He says, “Mom, why don’t you take the chair for just a sec?”
The good news is that Sam didn’t slice anything, but she’s not going to get away with glue or Steri-Strips. The doctor is going to stitch her up. He gives her some numbing medicine and he says, You will feel a little pinch.
She looks away, because she doesn’t want to see the needle and thread.
“Hold on to me.” Her mom is hovering next to her.
Sam holds on hard with her uninjured hand.
“It’s okay, Mom,” says the doctor, because Courtney is crying. It’s as if the pain flows straight through Sam to her. “You’re doing great,” the doctor tells both of them, but the stitches hurt worse than the cut did. Maybe it’s just that Sam is not distracted. She is shivering with pain and adrenaline but this time she is trying not to move. The doctor keeps talking in his light cheerful voice. “So, you were climbing?”
“Yes.”
“And you know what you are not going to be doing the next few weeks?”
“Climbing.”
“Bingo.”
“Ow.”
“Sorry,” the doctor says more gently. “You’re a champ.” Maybe he is impressed Sam isn’t crying, except for a couple small involuntary tears.
Her mom is the one who’s scared. Sam hugs her around the shoulders when they finally get out and walk back to the car in the warm summer night. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” Sam tries to reassure her.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Courtney says. “I’m not going to lecture you.”
“Okay,” Sam says hopefully.
“But what are you doing ripping up your hand?”
“It’s not like I was trying to hurt myself,” says Sam.
“And why are you climbing with people who won’t take you to the emergency room?”
“It wasn’t their fault.”
“Oh really?”
“I won’t do anything until my hand is better,” Sam promises. The doctor already explained that if she climbs too soon her stitches will open and her hand will get infected, and she will have to come back and get sewn up all over again. “I won’t even try,” she promises, but she does not say she will stay home.
It’s weird when she comes back to Red Rocks. The others respected her before, but now she is like their teacher. Even standing on the ground, she gives advice like I don’t think that way is doable or Try your other foot. They say, What do you think? and trust her judgment if the rock is slippery. They also treat her like You know what, you’re a little crazy.
“I still don’t know how you did that,” Sean says after he tries to climb Sam’s route and fails.
“While bleeding,” Justin reminds him.
“You have a high tolerance for pain,” says Amber.
Sam says, “Not really.”
“It was like you couldn’t even feel it,” Kyle tells her.
“I felt it.” Sam looks at her stitched-up hand. The thread is black and gunky; it’s an ugly seam across her palm.
For now, Justin carries all her stuff—even her backpack. She says, “It’s not like I’ve broken all my bones.”
“But it’s easy.” Justin carries her mat and bags all the way down to the parking lot and they plan what they will climb once she gets her stitches out. He knows this boulder that nobody else likes.
“Can I see it?” Sam says, as they reach the cars.
He looks up at the sky. It’s almost dark. “Come early next time.”
Kyle teases as he gets into his truck, “Watch out for him.”
Sam and Justin look at each other and start laughing. “I want to see it now,” Sam says.
It’s dusk. The air is still. At first Sam can’t make out the whole boulder in the shadows, but then she touches it and she looks up and it is so big it blocks her view, a highball leaning sharply like a sinking ship.
Justin says, “The upper part is easy.”
“Yeah.”
“But this part.” They walk around and feel the underside of that great boulder and it’s like the flank of a gigantic animal. How could you ever climb up and over? You would have to cling and scramble all across like a spider in a cave.
“How would you even start?” she says.
“Oh, I’ve started,” he tells her, and she can imagine how many times he’s tried. “I saw this boulder when I first started climbing.”
The rock face is comforting; it shields you. “How did you learn?” Sam asks.
“Climbing?”
“Yeah.”
“Not from my dad.”
She confesses, “I didn’t learn from my dad either. He never took me here. He just talked about it.”
She waits for Justin to ask, Then why did you say he taught you everything? But he says, “My dad doesn’t talk to me at all.”
“Why?”
“Because a long time ago he was angry at my mom—and I took her side.”
“What was he angry for?”
“She left him for Jesus.”
“Oh.” In the twilight, she can’t read his face. “Did you leave for Jesus too?”
“No, just for my mom.”
Does she seem confused? Too solemn? He takes off his brown hat and claps it on her head. Instinctively, she touches the brim. The hat is so old and battered. It’s like a relic. She almost can’t believe he lets her wear it, even for a second. She asks, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
So, he is six years older—but it doesn’t matter. She’s just as good as he is on the wall, and maybe better. He touches the tipped boulder, and he says, “You’re probably the only person I know who would try this one.”
“I would try,” she tells him. “I doubt I would get anywhere.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Nah.”
He looks at her in the hat. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“No, I don’t know anything.”
“But you climb like you do. You believe in yourself.”
“No, I don’t. It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
She struggles for the words because it’s harder and also simpler than he imagines. “I don’t know anything, and I don’t believe anything, but I keep going anyway.”