THE NEXT FOUR days passed in a blur for Taylor. Every moment she wasn’t setting traps or trying to catch fish, or cooking what she’d caught, she spent doing her best to cool Brian’s fiery, fevered body.
On the first day, he had moments of lucidity.
“This is what I think you should do when I’m gone,” he said.
“Don’t you dare talk about your death as though it’s going to happen,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.”
He tried again. “If anything happens to me—”
She cut him off before he got any further. “Don’t bother speculating. I’m not listening.”
“You have to listen.”
“Blah. Blah. Blah,” she said, putting her hands to her ears.
When he persisted, she got up and walked away, working on a parachute net she could use to catch one of the large trout in the stream. He was too sick to follow her. She came back bearing a smile and a fish. She was pleased and encouraged when he was able to eat some, after she broiled it over the fire.
The fever came back with a vengeance, and he was never coherent again for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Have you heard any planes?” he rasped.
She shook her head.
“Have you been shouting so they can hear you?”
She told him yes, even though the answer was no. What was the point of yelling when there was no one to hear?
The next time he woke up he asked, “Have you heard anyone yelling?”
She told him, “No, but I’ve been yelling like you told me to.” She’d decided it couldn’t hurt to yell for two or three minutes every half hour, just in case.
By the second day, Brian’s wound looked awful. She wondered how he would feel if he survived but lost his leg. She wondered how she would feel if that happened. She tried not to think about it. Naturally, amputation was constantly on her mind. She tried to think how far up his leg a doctor would need to cut to get out all the infection. The longer they were lost, the more of his leg the imaginary doctor took off.
Brian wouldn’t be able to fight fires anymore. Maybe he could do an administrative job with the Jackson Hole Fire Department.
He would hate that.
Smoke jumping would be out of the question.
He would hate that, too.
Sometimes she thought it might be better if Brian died, because his life, if he survived, was going to be so different from anything he’d ever imagined. Then she would picture a world without Brian Flynn and knew it would be a darker, sadder place.
So she struggled to keep him alive.
She stripped off his shoes, socks, and jeans, so she’d have easy access to his leg. She saw the deepest claw mark was filled with pus. She wasn’t sure what to do, and Brian was no help. He was out of his head with fever.
Taylor decided to lance the wound and drain the pus.
The thought of cutting into human flesh was nauseating. Cutting into Brian’s flesh was horrifying, but she knew getting rid of as much of the putrefaction as she could was his best hope of survival.
So she did it. She cut open the wound and pressed out the awful gunk inside.
Brian cried. He howled and fought to be free.
She cried, too, but she didn’t stop. She sat on his legs facing the wound to hold him down. It was a sign of how weak he was that he couldn’t throw her off.
When she was done, she decided to do something she’d seen in movies that were set on the Western frontier. She didn’t know if it would work, but she thought it couldn’t hurt.
She heated Brian’s Swiss army knife till it was red hot, then pressed it against the wound to cauterize the cut she’d made.
This time he screamed. She screamed too, frustrated by the awful need to hurt him so badly in order to help him.
When she thought the wound was sealed, she threw the knife aside, then turned to embrace Brian, pressing kisses to his hot face and holding him down on the sleeping bag to keep him from touching his leg or injuring himself further.
“Shh. Shh. It’s all over now. You’re okay. I won’t hurt you anymore.” She kissed away the salty tears that seeped from his closed eyes. She would willingly accept the condemnation she was sure to see, if he would only open them and recognize her.
On the third day, despite her efforts, he wasn’t any better. She knew she had to do something to try and get his fever down. She loaded Brian onto the parachute and dragged him into the water, letting it cool his body and ease the swelling in his leg.
Although she was unable to get him to eat, she forced water down his throat. She took care of all his needs, even the most private, all the while watching his strong, masculine body waste away. She studied every shallow breath in and out of his chest, wondering when he would breathe his last.
Taylor woke up the morning of their fourth day at the stream, took one look at Brian, and knew he probably wouldn’t survive until sundown. She splashed his body with cool water. She listened to him murmur and mumble in his delirium, and wondered who would take care of her when the end came.
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t caught a fish or a squirrel or a rabbit in the past twenty-four hours. She felt weak and sick, although she was more sick at heart than anything else. She’d done everything she could to try and save Brian. She was out of tricks.
Brian was going to die.
It had been only twelve days since her Twin Otter flamed out, and they’d jumped into the wilderness. Twelve hungry days. Twelve terrifying days. Twelve wonderful days, because she’d finally found a man who loved her, a man she might have been able to love for the rest of her life, if only he managed to survive the infection in his leg.
It had been her habit to stoke a fire all night to keep the predators away and snatch a nap every morning. She was exhausted and having trouble keeping her eyes open. But she didn’t want to be asleep when Brian passed away. She didn’t want him to die all alone.
She sat beside him, lifted his head onto her thigh, and tried to force a little water into his mouth. It dribbled down the sides of his face.
“Damn it, Brian! Open your mouth and swallow. Do you hear me? I’m not going to die out here alone. We’re going to be saved. So swallow!”
To her amazement, he did.
“See? You’re not gone yet. Keep fighting. Just keep fighting. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up.”
She sobbed. There was no one to hear her cry. No one to chastise her for being weak.
In a fierce voice she said, “I love you. Do you hear me? I admit it. I’m willing to take a chance with you. If we get out of here alive, I promise I’ll give it a try. I’ll love you more than anyone’s ever loved you before, and I expect you to love me just as much. We’ll have those twins—two sets of them—and raise them to care about their aunts and uncles and grandfathers on both sides. We’ll put a stop to this feud as surely and completely as you’ve put a stop to all those fires.”
She swiped at the tears blurring her eyes, unwilling to lose sight of his beloved face.
“Helloooo!” she screamed. “Is anybody out there! Can anyone hear me? Heeeelp! Somebody answer me! Just open your goddamn mouth and say something!”
“I can hear you!” a female voice called back. “Keep yelling!”
At the sound of another human voice, a voice that meant salvation, Taylor’s throat had swollen completely closed, and though she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Tears of frustration spurted from her eyes. She swallowed hard, to get rid of the painful knot preventing speech, then took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs, “We’re here. We’re right here!”
She reached out with two fingers to check the pulse at Brian’s throat. She couldn’t find it.