Mitch and Megs reached him as quickly as they could.
He spoke through gritted teeth. “I think… it’s broken.”
Megs slid her hands over his leg on the outside of his jeans, her gaze meeting Mitch’s. “His tibia is definitely displaced. It could be a tib-fib fracture.”
Dean was sucking in big breaths, fighting with pain. “Fuck.”
The danger wasn’t the broken bone itself. There were arteries in the leg that could be severed by displaced bone, causing a person to bleed out. A talus field at fourteen thousand feet was no place for triage. Dean needed a hospital—fast.
Mitch ripped into his backpack. “I think we’ve got Advil in the first aid kit. We can probably rig some kind of splint once we reach timberline.”
“I’ll hike ahead and come back up with something we can use.” Megs set off, moving a bit too fast for Mitch’s tastes.
“Be careful!” he shouted after her.
“Apart from the leg, how do you feel?”
“I’m okay.”
If he’d severed an artery, he would probably have collapsed by now. Instead, he seemed like himself—coherent, focused, normal respiration. If he had severed an artery up here, there was likely nothing they could have done for him anyway. It was several hours to the nearest town.
By the time Megs returned carrying two thick sticks of about the same size, a freezing rain had begun to fall. “This is the best I could do.”
Working carefully, she and Mitch rigged a splint, tying the two pieces of wood together on opposite sides of Dean’s lower leg with fabric they’d torn from a sling in the first aid kit.
“We’ll head down with you between us.” Megs looked down at the path below them. “It’s going to be a long, slow descent. We’ll take a step, and you hop on your good leg. We’ll rest when we can, but we need to get out of this weather.”
Grim-faced, Dean nodded. “Right.”
They helped him to his feet, Mitch slipping his arm beneath Dean’s, Megs wrapping hers around his waist.
“Okay, we step and you hop. Step.” She and Mitch took a step. “Hop.”
Dean hopped, the movement clearly causing him pain.
“Great.” Megs tried to encourage him. “A few thousand more times, and we’ll be at the vehicles.”
Step. Hop. Step. Hop. Step. Hop.
Rain pelted them, making the talus slick and hitting exposed skin like icy daggers.
Step. Hop. Step. Hop. Step. Hop.
Mitch could see that Dean was suffering. “You’re doing it, man. It’s not easy, but nothing you’ve done has been easy. You can do this.”
Step. Hop. Step. Hop. Step. Hop.
On and on they went, their progress slow, each step grueling for Dean.
Then the talus slope beneath their feet shifted in a mini-avalanche of stone, dropping them all to their asses and knocking the air from Mitch’s lungs.
Dean cried out, his face twisted in agony, his injured leg bent.
“Jesus, Dean!” Megs scrambled to help him.
Mitch got onto his hands and knees and crawled over to him. “Hang on, buddy.”
They got him to his feet, but an hour later, they’d gone only a couple hundred yards, rain turning to snow as they reached a more technical bit of climbing.
