A red dawn skims the shadows on distant peaks. Heavy fog swirls around the mountaintops, the summits bald and raw. Even the lake looks monstrous in the daylight. This scene, as savage as it is beautiful, reveals a sobering truth: We’re in the Rockies somewhere, probably hundreds of miles from civilization.
Colin takes a few limping strides toward the water’s edge. All three boys trail behind him, imitating his every move. He picks up a burned piece of the fuselage, its edges charred black. He hands it to the older boy. It’s about the size of a notebook, but there are other, larger scraps floating on the surface. Luggage, too. Things we need. Things that could be the difference between dying and surviving.
“I’ll go in—” I say.
“No,” he says, his expression hardening. “It’s too cold.”
“We have to try.” I follow Colin’s gaze to the boundless swath of the lake. “There could be food, medicines, supplies.”
Colin stands in a contemplative silence, studying the horizon. Something orange, shapeless, and very far away catches my eye.
“Do you see that?” I ask, squinting into the pale sunshine.
He nods. “Could be an emergency kit.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” I keep my voice down so the boys don’t hear the desperation in that statement.
“It’s too far anyway.” He shifts his focus to other, closer objects: A pink purse a couple hundred yards offshore, bobbing next to a giant, shredded suitcase, which appears to be leaking underwear. Beyond that, a plastic box. Boots.
I start peeling off my shoes. “I’m going in.”
“Avery—”
“The sun’s out. I’ll air-dry.”
“I’ll go,” he says. “You watch the boys.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You’re hurt, Colin! Has that not occurred to you?”
“It’s not that bad—”
“It is that bad. Last thing we need is you passing out in the middle of that lake.”
Colin looks at the boys, at their eager, shivering faces. They don’t say a word, but the prospect of losing the only man in the group has made them uneasy. “Ten minutes,” he says. “Stop if you’re cold or tired.”
I don’t tell him about the ache in my chest—probably a broken rib or two, based on my limited skills in diagnostics—but I’ve swum through pain before.
“I will.” I fidget for a minute, unsure how to broach the next subject. “Uh, can you . . .”
He watches me fiddle with the hem of my shirt. These are the only dry clothes I have, and it seems silly to swim with them on. He swivels his head quickly enough to cause whiplash. “Yeah, definitely. Of course.”
He grabs the boys’ hands and turns them all 180 degrees so they’re facing the trees. He didn’t have to turn everybody around, but I’m sure he’d rather overdo it than underdo it.
The lake is huge: over a mile across, bordered by looming pines and rocky shores. I wade in—toes first, then ankles. Too slow. I need to just dive in, the way I do every day at practice, but something in me resists. It’s a strange, aberrant feeling—an instinct gone bad. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to swim.
Colin still has the boys turned around, facing the trees. I can’t bear the thought of explaining why I’ve changed my mind, so I close my eyes and take a breath and plunge, fingers and hands and head first, under the surface.
The cold swells up my spine and settles at the base of my neck, flowing through me like a drug. The water tastes absolutely pristine, smooth as milk. It is nothing like the chlorinated pools I’ve been swimming in for years. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced, really.
The shuddering cold takes a moment to sink in, but when it does, my fingers and toes feel it first. Blood rushes to my core, but it’s a battle just to breathe, to think. I can’t seem to get enough air, and my muscles are feeling it. Everything starts to cramp up.
Keep going.
The fastest and most efficient way from here to there is freestyle, so I try to find my rhythm, keeping my torso high in the water. Hips roll from side to side; arms follow. Ankles flexible, legs beating to a steady, two-beat kick Coach told me went out of style in the seventies. Out here, it doesn’t matter. I do what feels natural because muscle memory is all my mind can process right now.
I breathe side to side, then straight ahead, keeping my chin just above water to see where I’m going. In this case, I’m headed for a tangle of suitcases tied together with a bungee strap. The orange duffel bag is much farther off—a mile from shore, at least. Too far. So I settle for the suitcases and swim back to shore, kicking until my legs give out.
Colin watches me until I’m ten yards from shore, his face fraught with concern. “I’m okay,” I say, reinforcing this with an overly enthusiastic wave.
As he turns back toward the trees, I stumble out of the water. With frozen fingers, I put my bloodied clothes back on. Hopefully these suitcases will yield a change of clothes, or at least something dry and warm.
“Okay, I’m decent,” I say.
He turns around. One of the boys runs into my arms, which startles me a little.
“Fourteen minutes,” Colin says with an exaggerated sigh. I know he’s teasing me, but worry swims in his eyes.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Okay,” he says, unconvinced. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” My recovery mission yielded three carry-on-size suitcases and a golf bag. One of the suitcases has standard female professional fare—push-up bras, blouses, dresses, and pantsuits. No coats. And, of course, she had to be a size zero. None of it does Colin any good, but the dresses and pantsuits could work for the boys, if we’re creative. I opt for one of her larger, baggier sweaters. The thongs are hastily discarded before the boys can see them or Colin can comment on them.
Another suitcase must have belonged to an Oakland Raiders fan; every T-shirt, sweatshirt, and pair of sweatpants bears its logo. All medium size, which is bad news for Colin, but it will have to do. Overall, it’s still a good find.
The golf bag appears to have lost its clubs somewhere along the way, but an assortment of useless crap fills the compartments—golf balls, tees, two golf gloves, and a pair of golf shoes. Huge golf shoes. They might even fit Colin.
He smirks as I dangle them in front of him. “You a golfer?” I ask him.
“I guess I am now.”
The smallest suitcase was clearly designed for a child, with a kitten-themed canvas and pink wheels. I swallow a lump in my throat. The clothes are even more indicative of its young owner: pink stretchy pants, purple flip-flops, an unopened package of headbands. The shirts are all tiny, but they’ll work for the boys. “I hope you like pink,” I tell them. The oldest one, who told me his name is Tim, reaches for a sweatshirt with a horse on the front.
“I like horses,” he explains.
“I like pink!” screams the boy in baseball gear. His name is Liam, and he’s four years old. He tells us this at least once an hour.
The smallest boy isn’t quite so selective. I think his name is Aayu, but his voice is so quiet, it’s hard to say for sure. He struggles to meet my gaze, even when I hand him the only toy in sight. The tiny smile on his face tells me he likes it.
“Pretty,” he says, and hands it back to me.
Colin sighs as he sorts everything into little piles. “There isn’t much here for you,” he says to me.
“Or you.”
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “I’m bigger.”
“That’s terrible logic.”
He smiles, but it feels strained. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing: Why are we even looking for clothes? We were on a commercial airliner, which means black boxes and media attention and lawsuits. The NTSB probably started looking for us the second we hit turbulence.
I hang everything on tree branches, while Colin does his best to dry out his bulky winter coat for the boys to sleep in. We find a few other coats, too, but they’re all saturated with either blood or lake water. It could take days for them to dry.
Colin tosses me a ski mask. The eyes and mouth are cut out, and I must look like a wilderness-based criminal when I slip it over my head. The two younger boys start to cry.
“I’m sorry!” I yank it off and pull them into a hug. They sniffle into my shirt. “It’s not real, I promise.”
I catch Colin watching me during this whole sad display, and he quickly averts his gaze. He must know by now I’m pretty much the worst caretaker ever. When the pregnant lady comes to, I can’t wait to let her take over.
“You think it’ll be enough for all of us?” I ask, gesturing to the clothes.
“I think so.” He stands back to assess the display. “Let’s walk the perimeter, see what else we can find.”
We start at the water’s edge and work our way south, returning to camp whenever our arms are full or one of the boys needs a breather. Colin makes at least a dozen trips lugging massive loads of fuselage—some larger than the hood of a car. The boys follow him everywhere. He refuses help, but I do my best to participate anyway, carrying as much weight as my weary arms will hold. Even with Colin’s bad leg, he shows zero signs of exertion. The man is a machine, carrying loads that would pose a challenge to three or four men put together. I never doubted Colin’s strength, but this is something else; this is adrenaline, and muscle, and the instinct to survive.
By midmorning, we’ve assembled enough scraps to build a small lean-to against the trees. Colin fortifies the walls while the boys and I sort through everything we found—which isn’t much, aside from the fuselage. All told, we retrieved fourteen snack packs, featuring Doritos, peanuts, and Oreos. No vegetables. No protein. The meal trays must have gone down with the plane, along with the bottled water, first-aid kits, and everything else that might have improved our situation.
They’ll come for us, I tell myself for the hundredth time. They have to.
Once the boys settle down, we all stop to admire Colin’s handiwork. He’s built us a fine shelter, with thick slabs of industrial-grade material and a durable roof. “Last piece is right there,” he says, gesturing to a particularly forbidding piece of steel. “Can you give me a hand?”
He doesn’t need my help, but a part of me swells with pride that he asked. “Sure.”
While he concentrates on placing the slab in its proper place, I can’t help but notice the rippling cords of muscle in his forearms and shoulders. His jaw is locked, his expression neutral. It’s no wonder he dominates so completely in the pool. His competitive streak shines through even now, and his strength augments it.
He fastens the slabs with bungee cords and rigs the door so it won’t blow open in the wind. “Where did you learn all this?” I ask him. “Civil engineering classes?”
“Nope. My dad’s a roofer.”
Another surprise, but he doesn’t elaborate. The boys are watching us with googly eyes, and for the first time since we crashed, the prospect of bad weather doesn’t feel like a death sentence. “It looks amazing,” I say.
“You helped.”
“Yeah, but you dragged half the plane across the shore!”
He shrugs, but his eyes tell me he appreciates the compliment. “Fuselage is lighter than it looks,” he says, with the hint of a smile.
“It’s a fort!” Liam cries. The boys pile in, and the makeshift door swings shut.
“I guess they approve,” Colin says.
“I guess they do.”
The moment lingers a little too long, at which point we disperse in a hurry. Colin goes over to check on the pregnant lady, while I join the boys inside.
“Look what I found!” Tim holds up what looks like an old Walkman. He’s a cute kid: smart, funny, with the hint of a lisp he’s constantly trying to correct by repeating certain words. His parents probably put him in speech lessons at the age of two. His parents who are gone now.
He manipulates the object in his small hands, the pieces of cracked plastic glistening in the morning sun.
“It’s a golf GPS!” he says. “My dad has one.” He gives it a hard shake. “Batteries are dead.”
“Can I see it?” I ask.
He hands it over, and I know right away this pocket-size piece of technology has nothing to do with golf.
“See?” Tim says. “It’s broken.”
“Tim, I don’t think this is a golf GPS.”
He frowns. “Then what is it?”
“I think it’s, uh, a transceiver.” I leave out the part about avalanche transceiver. Best not to plant the idea of a deadly wave of snow in Tim’s mind.
“Oh,” he says, but I can see he’s disappointed. The image of him clutching his father’s shattered iPad sears through me.
“A transceiver is a fancy name for a radio.”
“Oh!” His eyes brighten again. “Well, I’m going to fix it.”
He digs through the next suitcase with unbridled enthusiasm. How many people travel with batteries? And even if he does find some AAAs, the chances of their being dry and functional are close to zero. An avalanche transceiver is the kind of false hope we don’t need; its only use is keeping Tim happy. Forget about it. You won’t need it anyway.
Meanwhile, Liam and Aayu have discovered two My Little Ponies from the kitty-themed suitcase. “It’s a horse,” Liam announces.
“Horse,” Aayu repeats. It sounds like huss.
The boys look nothing alike. Liam is freckly and blond, already flush with a mountain sunburn. Aayu is an ethnic mystery: lush mahogany skin, amber eyes, and curly raven hair. He held up three fingers when I asked him how old he was, but he seemed a little uncertain. He’s small for his age, with a fragility that worries me.
I’m watching them play when Colin opens the door. “Can you come outside a minute?”
I tell the boys to stay put, but they’re too invested in their new toys to acknowledge me. Three small children under control. I should savor this.
The makeshift door squeaks shut. Colin leads me toward the tree line, such that the fort is still within view but obscured by the low-hanging branches of nearby pines. His pace is strangely rushed.
Then I see her: the pregnant woman propped against a tree with her legs splayed out in the dirt. Her sweatpants are soaked from the waist down.
Colin stares at his mud-caked golf shoes as he says, “I think she’s in labor.”
Labor. The word lands in the air with a hollow thud.
“Are you sure? Has she come around at all?”
“No.” He skims his head with his hand. “I was moving her into the sun, and she . . . I dunno. I think her water broke.”
I kneel down next to her, this sad, tragic woman without a name. As her body contracts, her face registers no response.
“Can you get the penlight?”
“Penlight.” He pats his pockets, comes up empty. “Yeah, sure. Hold on.”
He returns a moment later with the penlight, its beam already waning. I shine it in both her eyes, searching for a response—an equal response. Her left pupil is fixed and dilated, which means the right doesn’t matter. She won’t survive this kind of injury.
I shake my head. Colin, in his quiet, stoic way, accepts it.
“How long does she have?” he asks.
“A few hours at most.”
He kneels in the dirt, averting my gaze as he takes the woman’s hand. I know he doesn’t blame me, but blame is the only real currency we have out here. Blame the airline; blame the weather. Blame bad luck and circumstances.
I know this woman’s situation is hopeless, but so was ours eight hours ago. We survived. We’re still here, still fighting.
I place my hand on Colin’s wrist, his body quivering with the unexpected touch. He looks up. “Can you get me some wet towels?”
“Why?”
“Because she’s in labor, and that’s what we need.”
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. He returns ten minutes later with two T-shirts, each freshly saturated with lake water. We have two water bottles on standby and a dry towel for when the baby is born.
“Now what?” he asks.
“Now we wait.”
“How long?”
“Contractions are a couple minutes apart, so . . . I don’t know. Soon?”
“Have you, uh . . .”
“Ever done this before?”
He waits for my answer.
“No,” I admit.
“But you’ve seen it done?”
“A couple times.”
He glances toward the lean-to, with its door hinged closed as a kind of curious-boys alarm system. The boys can get out, but the scraping metal will wake the whole forest.
“They can’t see this,” I say.
“I’ll make sure they don’t.”
“Colin?”
He waits for me to draw in a breath, to say what must be said.
“If this doesn’t . . . If I can’t . . .”
He puts his hands on my shoulders—his massive, warm, life-saving hands. The gesture isn’t meant to inspire confidence; it’s intended to comfort. As if to say, I know. I understand. We grieve together.
Ten minutes later, the contractions stop.
•
I witnessed my first delivery in the backseat of a Dodge Ram; it wasn’t my kid, thank God, but the girl was fifteen and so was I, and even now, I remember it as if the labor, and the pain, and the triumph of giving birth had happened to me. I remember the girl’s gap-toothed smile at the end, her wails of agony in the beginning. I remember my father telling me to “catch” this brand-new human being as if a football were about to drop from her vagina.
More than any of that, though, I remember the moment when the whole process stalled, and the girl panicked, and Dad told her to breathe, just breathe, because her body knew what to do.
In her case, it did. The contractions went right along. The baby dropped into my waiting hands. A girl. A healthy, pink wailing baby girl.
Colin doesn’t ask what’s wrong, but he doesn’t have to. The labor has stopped. The mother is brain-dead. The sheer insanity of this situation rolls through me.
“Colin—”
“Is she close?”
“Yes, but . . .” I can’t do a Cesarean in the woods! I can’t do anything because I’m not a doctor. I’m a doctor’s daughter, with a high school degree and barely three semesters of college.
I rock back on my heels. For the first time since we crashed, my throat tightens and the urge to cry sweeps through me. Two more dead. Two more who didn’t have to die.
Colin rubs my wrists with his thumbs, a rhythmic motion that slows my heart and settles my nerves. I try to think.
Think.
But there is no thinking in childbirth. There is just doing. I scramble back onto my knees and reach between her legs, and with wet, shaking hands, I try to pull the baby out. I don’t know how this is supposed to work. Although my father has talked about using tools and hands and vacuums to facilitate the process, everything I’m doing right now feels grotesque and dangerous and hysterically stupid. My fingers slip.
Colin nudges me aside and attempts the same, although his efforts are somehow graceful, unhurried. I tell him to try repositioning her, which might give him a better angle. I don’t tell him to try breaking the baby’s collarbone. I couldn’t stand it.
But Colin doesn’t need my instructions—suddenly, wondrously, the baby slips into his hands and eases into the world.
A boy.
Our fourth little boy.
He doesn’t cry as Colin places him gently in my arms, but I rock him anyway because he deserves that much. I need that much.
Colin doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to.
We grieve together.
•
Tim is the first to emerge from the lean-to. He finds me sitting at the water’s edge, my palms splayed out over the surface. I dip them in the lake, and the water turns a rich, vibrant red. In spite of everything, my heart still beats; my blood still flows.
As only a six-year-old could, Tim wraps his arms around my neck and hugs me, hard, the kind of comfort that lingers for days.
“Tim?” I ask, after a while.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t give up on me, okay?”
He digs his tiny hand into one of my red, wet ones.
“I won’t,” he says.
We watch a hawk skim over the lake, its wings spread wide as it slices through the sky.
“Avery?”
“Yeah, Tim?”
I wait for his reaction, but all he does is gaze at the sky. The sun swims in his eyes, makes them gleam. “Are we going to die?” he asks.
He probes my face with those piercing green eyes, squashing my first instinct to lie. I don’t know what six-year-olds know about death. Do they understand it? Do I understand it?
All I know is what my own parents did: They told the truth. Especially my father. As soon as I was old enough to comprehend English, he told me what happened to people when they got really sick or badly injured: Their hearts stopped and they died.
“No.” I say it fiercely, which surprises even me. “We’re not going to die.”
“Okay.”
I don’t have to wonder if he believes this.
He knows it.
•
Colin wanted to bury the bodies alone, so it falls to me to put on a good face for the boys. The little ones crawl out of the fort, both desperate for attention.
“I’m hungry,” Liam says.
Aayu repeats: “Hungry.”
I look past the lake, toward the trees on the eastern ridge of whatever valley we’re sitting in. The sun has begun its slow descent toward the horizon. The fire flickers in the tease of wind.
“Try these.” I dig into my pockets for the trio of candy canes Liam found in one of the suitcases. They’re broken in a dozen places, which makes the choking danger a little less real. Even so, I do my best to crush the candy cane intended for Aayu. Tim helps me unwrap them.
With the younger boys sucking on the candy canes, I offer a bag of chips to Tim. He doesn’t look thrilled, but he pries it open and munches on a soggy chip.
“What kind is it?” I ask.
He turns the bag over and reads the label, pronouncing each word with careful precision. “Sour cream”—he pauses—“and onion.”
“Do you like it?”
He thinks about this for a second. “Sort of. Do you want some?”
I’m starving, especially since I missed dinner. “No, I’m good,” I lie.
“We could look for berries,” Tim says. “That’s what we do when my dad takes me camping.”
“Not all berries are safe to eat.”
“I know.” He swallows a big gob of chip. “But my dad has a guidebook.”
“I wish we had one now.”
“It’s in my suitcase.” He points in the direction of the lake. “Out there somewhere.” The wind has picked up, sending a plume of ripples across the lake. Most of the debris is floating in the opposite direction from where we’re sitting. Strangely, the orange bag hasn’t moved—but it’s still a long, long way off.
It won’t come to that.
“Maybe it’ll wash up later.” I pat his arm, which feels awkward to me but has the desired effect. He sighs and resumes eating.
While the boys finish their snacks, I picture our lean-to on a map of the Colorado Rockies—a speck in the wilderness, as insignificant as a cottonwood tree. We’re probably at least ten thousand feet up, which would explain the constant shortness of breath and the relentless ache in my hips and shoulders. It could take days for my body to adjust—maybe more, if we’re thirteen or fourteen thousand feet above sea level. The boys seem okay now, but altitude sickness can take days to set in. It’s a constant worry, with no easy fix. We don’t have the resources to hike out of here on our own.
Then there’s the climate: storms, snow, wind. Sunburn. Windburn. Dehydration. Exposure. Hypothermia. The sun looms over us like a giant eye in the sky, daring us to survive undetected. It feels like mockery. No matter how many coats and blankets and toothbrushes we find, we won’t survive a blizzard in the Rockies. There are no ski lifts, no resorts bathing the landscape in a warm, welcoming light. This is the kind of wilderness no one comes to visit, the kind of lake no one ever swims in. We’re the intruders, and we have nowhere to hide.
For now, the skies are a sunlit blue touched by wispy clouds overlaying the highest peaks. Completely benign, almost comforting.
“Don’t worry,” Tim says. He hands me a chip.
But I do.