23
EZRA
I was an idiot.
Running around the outside of the mountain, all I felt was love for Sam. The need to be with him, to watch him, as if that somehow would help in his battle. I couldn't be a spectator. It wasn't who I was.
But it was obvious now why he'd insisted I stay where he left me. He wasn't trying to keep me in the trees.
He was trying to keep me on that side of the mountain.
The avalanche plan worked brilliantly, crushing the dragon like a freight train and burying him within moments. But the snow was moving incredibly fast, and it was expanding outward, coming in my direction, and for a long moment I couldn't understand what I was seeing.
I turned and ran straight down the mountain. It was more of a controlled fall, sliding on my butt from tree trunk to tree trunk, listening to the growing roar behind me. I could feel the vibration in the ground like an earthquake, shaking the trees so much that snow cascaded down from bare branches, which added fear to my movements. It was coming. I couldn't outrun it.
I was going to die.
The snow snapped the trees behind me as easily as if they were twigs, loud explosions that echoed above the greater roar of the avalanche. Climbing a tree to try to gain some height might have worked, except there were few branches at the lower levels that I could use, and I doubted I could move fast while wearing all these layers. Plus, with the adrenaline coursing through my veins I didn't think I could stop for even a second. I had to keep running. My panic was a visceral thing.
The violently snapping trees grew louder, closer. I couldn't get away in time; it was now obvious. I would make it another twenty feet before the snow overtook me. The thought of all that snow on top of me, an unfathomable amount of weight, made my lips quiver with fear.
Hundreds of thief pinches, two dozen cars stolen, being shot at by a maniac who then tried to burn me to a crisp with fire from his throat... and it was snow that was going to be my death. What a fucking way to go.
I began to accept my doom when I felt Sam.
He dove with reckless speed, flying through the trees just above the breaking wave of snow. His talons clamped down on my shoulders painfully, then yanked me off the ground.
But the trees were too close together. I felt Sam pull in his wings to fly between two, but he was too slow and the tip of his left wing slammed into a thick trunk. Then branches tore across his right wing, ripping away feathers and skin, and Sam screeched.
I screamed with him, sharing in his pain and fear.
But somehow he maintained enough lift to glide us out of the trees and into the open air. I looked down to see the avalanche continuing through the trees, knocking them over as easily as a child knocked over toy blocks. I tried not to think about what would have happened if he'd been a few seconds slower.
"Sam, are you okay?"
I barely felt any thought come from him as he glided to the left, away from the avalanche. His left wing trembled as he flew, and I could see the terrible gashes in the underside of his right wing where the feathers had been torn away. The pain pulsing through the totem was so raw and intense I almost passed out myself.
I don't know how Sam did it, but he kept us in a steady glide all the way back to our camp. The moment we were over the flat plateau he dropped me to the ground. Then he was crashing himself, landing roughly on the snow and sliding across to slam into the metal shape of the radio array.
By the time everything settled, he was changing back into his human form.
Lurching to my feet, I realized that the pain I'd felt wasn't all from the bond with Sam. I reached into my coat to feel my shoulders, and my glove came away coated in red. His talons had cut me pretty badly.
Still, I ignored my own pain and ran to Sam, who was now nude and shivering on the ground.
Vertical gashes ran from his hip to his nipple, and one arm bent at a wrong angle. It looked dislocated. I put my hands on him and held him for a moment, savoring the feel of his hair against my cheek.
"Sam! Can you hear me? SAM!"
His eyes fluttered behind their eyelids, but there wasn't anything else.
"What..." I heard across the clearing.
Thomas was prone on the ground, exactly where we'd left him. He twisted his head, trying to see what was going on.
I took care of the most pressing need first: I dragged Sam into the warm work tent, finding some spare jackets to cover him. Then I went and helped Thomas; he couldn't put much weight on his injured leg, but we managed to hobble over to the tent too.
He asked why Sam was nude, and how he was injured, and where the crazy gunman had gone, but I ignored him.
The med kit had enough bandages to patch up the entire US Army, which was good because between the three of us we ended up using all of them. Sam's wounds weren't deep, but it still required two rounds of gauze before they finally stopped bleeding. Thomas's gunshot wound was worse; judging by the pool out on the ground he'd lost a lot of blood, and if not for the scarf I'd wrapped around it earlier he might have bled out. But the bullet had gone all the way through, so it was easy to wrap the bullet holes tight with cloth and tape.
Only then did I peel off my own clothes and tend to myself. Now that I had a chance to stop and actually process it, the punctures in my shoulders stung something awful. But with Sam unconscious and Thomas looking the wrong shade of white, I suffered through a few splashes of rubbing alcohol and did my best to cover my wounds.
The next part was harder.
I found the telephone, but there was no signal. Same for the laptop: no internet. We would later discover the avalanche took out one of the radio relays on the mountain, but that didn't help me just then.
Thomas was able to use a pole as a cane and hobble around, but Sam was still unconscious. I fashioned a sled from a sheet of metal and spare rope, and laid him flat on the surface. Using that, I was able to slide him down the mountain ten feet at a time. It was a struggle since I had to constantly stop and readjust Sam on the sled, and keep him from sliding all the way down the mountain out of control, but slowly we worked our way down the path. Twice the sled caught an edge on the snow and flipped, sending Sam's body rag-dolling onto the ground. Each time sent pangs of guilt and helplessness into my chest, the fear that I was failing Sam, but I did my best to calmly readjust him and continue on.
I didn't know CPR or anything else medical related. But Sam's eyes continued fluttering, and his breathing seemed steady. Still, the urgency to get him to safety pulsed in my heart the same way it pulsed in the totem.
When we reached the van I had the sickening visual of the engine not starting because of the cold, or that the dragon had slashed our tires when he arrived, but neither was the case. We laid Sam across the seats in the second row, tied him with seat belts and the rope from the sled, and began the drive down the mountain.
Thomas was quiet in the passenger seat until he said, "You know Sam, don't you?"
I blinked. "Yeah, sure. From the intern program."
I kept my eyes on the road, but I could see Thomas shaking his head in my peripheral. "You know what I mean. The two of you knew each other prior to this."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I whispered.
"Your fingers are gripping the wheel so tight the knuckles are white."
I saw that he was correct, and tried my best to relax. "I'm just worried about what will happen."
Thomas nodded, but I could feel his quiet stare the rest of the way to Denver.
*
Nurses came running to the van to help with Sam, transferring him to a gurney and then wheeling him out of sight. I left the van--not caring what happened to it--and helped Thomas into the waiting room. A nurse took one look at his leg, heard the phrase gunshot wound, and took him to the back.
And then I was alone.
I tried to calm down. I'd done everything I could; it was out of my hands. But instead of relaxing me, that thought only made me more anxious. Like I wasn't helping.
I flipped through the shitty magazines on the table, stared at the news on the TV in the corner, and examined the others in the waiting room. I couldn't sit here like this or I would go insane.
"Mr. Harmon?" a nurse called from the doorway.
An old man with a walker slowly rose from his seat across from me. I hopped to my feet and put a hand on his back. "This way, here we go..."
He looked at me with surprise, but then accepted it. The nurse watched us inch toward the door with the walker.
"How long has he had the symptoms?" she asked me instead of him.
"Ohh, grandpa's had them for, uhh, three days now?" I met his eyes, and he seemed surprised, but he didn't reveal my cover.
"Three days," the nurse made a note on her clipboard. "And is he experiencing any other discomfort?"
I looked at him, and he said, "Oh, no... just the joint itself..."
We inched along down the hall. When we came to the first water fountain, I stopped to get a drink.
When they were ten feet ahead of me, I slipped away.
The building was a maze of hallways and doors, and the too-clean smell in the air was unnerving. I hated hospitals. It was worse knowing Sam was here somewhere, being poked and prodded. What if they found out he could turn into a gryphon? Were there any physical signs? Wing bones hiding in his back that might show up on an X-ray?
The totem hummed in my pocket, guiding my feet down the hall. Then to the left, along another corridor. I could feel where Sam was as if the walls were invisible and I could spot him across the building. Four doors down, on the right.
I stopped at the open doorway, hesitated, then stuck my head inside.
Sam reclined on a bed in a brightly lit room. A male nurse stood at his side hooking up equipment, and he blocked Sam's face.
I pulled my head back into the hall and stood against the wall with my arms crossed, waiting for him to leave, hoping I didn't appear out of place. The nurse left a few minutes later, thankfully without noticing me waiting outside the door.
I slipped into the room and went straight to the bed. The nurse had hooked up an IV drip to his wrist, and I could see his heartbeat pulsing on the monitor next to it. Pulsing in time with the totem. That didn't seem so weird anymore.
"Oh, Sam," I said, rounding the bed and taking his other hand in mine. He felt warm, and his face had the right amount of color to it. But he was still unconscious, whether naturally or because they'd put him on something for pain, and his eyes continued moving rapidly behind his eyelids.
Being there, simply holding his hand, made me feel a thousand times better. I pulled up a chair and sat down, never letting go of his hand.
I wouldn't leave until he woke, no matter how many nurses tried to drag me out.