The couple takes the lead, navigating the trail down. There isn’t anyone else attempting the path in these conditions and we’re closer to the trailhead versus Glacier Point, so we pick up the pace.
It’s treacherous, but I can’t help the thought as I watch this couple descend. What would it be like to share a loved hobby with another person? They move like a unit, checking in with each other with glances and small touches as they navigate. It’s subtle, and with the downpour, hard to see, but that kind of connection. That kind of knowing. I shake it off and focus forward. I don’t make another call on my radio due to my arms being occupied, but I instruct the couple to call in on their cell phones while we traipse through the hazardous conditions.
I watch each step, gripping her freezing body close to mine. I calculate the decision I made to move her over the next mile, praying I didn’t choose wrong. The rain continues to lash at myface and sting my eyes, but I grit my teeth and progress slowly, carefully. My arms burn with the strain of holding her as steady as possible, each of my breaths coming in shallower. Each time a rock shifts under my boots, slipping in the mud, my heart leaps in my throat. I refuse to succumb to the fear. To the exhaustion. Instead, I hold her tighter.
“Just hang on,” I mutter. “I don’t know you, but I have a feeling you’re too stubborn not to make it.” My eyes flick down to her—those blue lips, ashy skin, and the weeping gash on her temple. I don’t know if she can hear me, if anything’s getting through, but I talk anyway.
Lightning flashes above, startling me and lighting up the trail ahead. It rattles my bones, thrown back by the cliffs magnifying the intensity. I keep moving, even though my legs are trembling with the effort, with the agonizing steps putting fatigue on my muscles.
The couple ahead rushes forward as the trail levels out. Shouts morph through the hiss of rain, and distant flashing emergency lights fracture and blur through it.
Relief grips me so hard my knees threaten to buckle, but I grind out an “Ahhh” to keep upright. Blood pounds in my ears, louder than the surrounding storm, when four other rangers rush out to meet me.
“Sullivan, what the hell, man?”
“Ihadto move her!”
It would be a different picture. A rescue on the side of a cliff face, or worse, the three of us watching her succumb to her injuries because we couldn’t get help on the radio or cells.
The EMTs rush forward with a stretcher, and as they reach me, there’s a moment I clutch her tighter before I hand her over. I’ve carried her this far, felt her unresponsive. It hits me hard, and it isn’t subtle—the need to shield her. I lower her onto the stretcher. Rain slicks her wet hair to her skin and streaks overher blood-smeared face, but she doesn’t stir when I shift her weight onto the gurney.
As the EMTs rush her to the ambulance, I gulp down air, never taking my eyes off her. Several of my fellow rangers speak to me, pat me on the back, or squeeze my shoulder, acknowledging that the risk of moving her paid off. That’s not to say my supervisor won’t have words for me, seeing as technically I went against protocol.
However, most of what is said is muffled as she’s rolled to the ambulance and secured in the back of the truck. The siren wails, sending a chill through me. I glance down at my rain-drenched uniform, at a bloodstain where her head rested against me.
I’ve done this before. Handed people off to emergency services for them to do their job. There’s a satisfaction that follows, a sense of closure. Job done.Move on.
But something is missing.
It doesn’t feel like that.
She’s safe and in well-equipped hands. I should be relieved, but as they tear out of the parking lot, something unsettling shifts inside me. A faint tug of incompletion.
Where’s the closure?
“It’s adrenaline,” I whisper to myself. It’s the hike. The fatigue. I’m not coming down off the high like normal. But it’s more than that. The weight of how she looked crumpled in my arms—it drags up an ambiguous restlessness I don’t like.
The need to follow her takes over, and I run to my truck.
Since my mother’s diagnosis, hospitals have been something of a trigger for me. The first year, she fought intensely. The lung cancer had progressed beyond the allowable stages for surgery.Normally, they would remove the cancerous section of the lung, but it wasn’t an option for her.
We spent months in and out of radiation therapy and chemotherapy. It was devastating to watch her waste away only to find out the chemo wasn’t working. The cancer was too advanced, and the cells were resisting the treatment. About nine months ago, her oncologist recommended immunotherapy, and she’s been continuing with that. However, along with that recommendation came the words palliative care, and her doctors have since focused on medicine to help her quality of life. She still undergoes treatments from time to time, hoping the cancer will respond—but so far, it hasn’t.
It makes walking through these heavy hospital doors difficult, and my chest tightens with a familiar anxiety.
I shake off the lingering dampness from the storm that passed hours ago—the chill clinging to my clothes. With Max at the cabin, I drove straight here, answering the quiet pull in my gut.
My boots squeak along the sterile hallway, a stark contrast to the mucky woods I’m used to, and the scent of sharp disinfectant hangs in the air.
Why am I here?
I hadn’t planned on coming, but something about the girl sunk deep into my mind. The way she looked so fragile, unconscious on that soggy trail, when just days ago she’d been snarky with attitude. Perhaps I just need to know she’s okay. I’ve checked in on other rescues before. Granted, most of them soughtmeout, but still.
I just need to know she’s okay,I repeat to myself. To make sure there isn’t something about that spot on the trail I need to be aware of for future hikers … maybe part of me wants to make sure her being near the edge twice now isn’t a cry for help.
As I approach the nurse’s station, I clear my throat. “I’m here to check on a patient, the girl from the Four Mile Trail accident,” I say, my voice low. “She was brought in this afternoon.”
The nurse, dressed in purple scrubs with black hair pulled back, glances up from her chart. “One second.”
