That’s when you see the third body, Troy’s, sprawled out on the ground. Fran is closest to you. She hugs Diana, and then puts a hand over her face.
“He tried to make it to shore too early,” she says.
When you get closer, you can see that Troy is breathing, buthe also has a wound on his forehead and one on his arm that looks reddish brown and blistered. His glasses are missing. He needs help, and he needs it fast. You pull one of the wet socks from your feet, and Will helps you rip it apart. A bandage has to be better than nothing. Anything else you had has been dumped in the lake. You bend down and gently begin to wrap Troy’s arm. He’s a skinny guy in the best of circumstances, but after days of little food, his limp arm in your hand seems like it’s barely there. You wonder how much longer he can make it without wasting away. He twitches slightly when you touch him.
You remember him bravely going over the falls, and you don’t allow yourself to think that this might be the end for him. But then, you also don’t know how you’re going to get him help.
“Fran, are we anywhere near the drop?” you ask with your last shred of optimism.
Fran is silent.
“What?” you say. “Did we miscalculate it?”
“No,” she says, and points down to the sand beneath you. “You’re actually standing on it.”
Off to the side of where she pointed is some melted plastic you assume was once bottled water. There are a few scraps of cardboard too from other supplies. Everything else is ash. First your food was eaten by a bear, and now by a fire. You don’t even feel much at this realization, just a kind of grudging understanding that there are so many forces against you that it seems pointless to try to beat them.
You lean down and put a hand on Troy’s cheek. His body feels warm.
“We have to get him some care,” you say. “We can’t lose him. We just can’t.”
You look up at Diana. She avoids eye contact. And everyone else you see looking back at you is barely there. The fight they once had, even hours ago, to escape the flames and get to safety, is gone. Now you are all exhausted and hungry and in various states of hypothermic shock. It seems like there’s nothing left, and you have no idea what to do.
Diana sits down by Troy and holds his hand. Fran sits next to her. And then finally, you sit on the other side of Troy’s body and Will sits next to you. You get close enough to combine body heat, hoping some of it might transfer to Troy too. It took a few days, but the wilderness has finally stripped you all down to nothing. You have no supplies, no medication, no food. You have boats and wet clothes; that’s it. Everything else is gone. Even the world around you has been stolen by the fire.
“We were never going to make it, were we?” asks Fran.
The sound of the fire is so far in the distance, you can barely hear it anymore. And with all the wildlife gone except a few insects, the quiet after she says this is all-consuming. No one says anything for a while, and you’re starting to think that maybe no one else is going to when Will chimes in.
“It was kinda unlikely, I guess,” he says.
The amazing thing is that no one sounds sad, exactly. Just resigned.
“Do you think… normal people would have done better?” asks Diana.
You so badly want to say no. That your mental illness has nothing to do with it. But it’s hard, sitting in this charred wasteland, without any gear or hope for rescue, to imagine anyone doing worse than you. And once you admit that, the floodgatesare suddenly open. All the things you’ve told yourself for years about your deficiencies come back like summoned ghosts. It’s a greatest-hits album that includes such favorites as: “Nothing You Do Will Ever Go Right,” “Self-Sabatage Is All You Know,” and “Your Own Brain Hates You.” Each song is more punishing than the last, and it ends with the epic power ballad: “You Were Probably Doomed from the Start.”
In the midst of this spiraling, there’s only one thought that gives you pause and keeps you from completely breaking down. As you imagine all the ways you screwed up on this trip, there is a difference between it and all your other anxiety-fueled tragedies: You were not alone.
It’s something, and it seems worth speaking aloud.
“If I was going to fail at survival,” you say, “I’m glad I got to do it with you guys.”
There isn’t a magic moment after this. No one stands up and claps or even says anything in return. But there are nods and grunts, and no one contradicts you. So maybe it’s actually an agreed-upon thing. And for now, you are still together, and you huddle for warmth. Night is finally falling, and one by one everybody starts to drift off to sleep. It’s the first time everyone has slept in such close quarters since the inaugural night at the lodge. But even though you’re borderline delirious with infection and hunger, you force yourself to stay awake. To make sure Troy is breathing. To keep watch for predators. And to keep yourself alive for just a little longer.
It could have been so much better.
That’s what you’re thinking in the dark.
Not this trip, which obviously couldn’t have gone much worse.But your life with anxiety. If you had just found other people—people you could talk to about it, people who really cared about one another—maybe you wouldn’t have needed this “adventure” in the first place. If you had just asked for a little more help from everyone around you, and, god, if Sean had done the same, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe you wouldn’t be here, at the end.
Diana is slumped against Troy, and all you want is just one last chance to be with her outside this place. To go to Perkins again and sit there drinking bad coffee and laughing. The longing you have to be back in that terrible restaurant actually makes your heart hurt. But it also feels now like something that happened in another life. In order to get back there, you’d have to use a time machine or a magic portal. But you have neither. Just a blackened canoe.
You manage to stay awake for another hour or so, trying to ignore your hunger. Mostly, you worry about Troy. Across from you, his chest moves up and down. The rhythm of it gives you hope, but it also makes you drowsy. And gradually, your blinks get longer and longer. Even if Diana is right and falling asleep might take you under for good, you have little choice at this point.
And as you sit suspended in that place between dream life and waking life, you wonder if when you die—today or another time altogether—you will see Sean again. You’re not a believer in much of anything beyond what’s in this world, but you let yourself dream. Would it be possible to hug him again and say you’re sorry? Would he still smell like himself? Chlorine and Old Spice deodorant. Could you ask him all the questions you never got achance to ask? And what would happen from there? In this place, whatever it is, would you be able to stay together again? Would you both have perfect brains? Would you even want such a thing?
You close your eyes.
