Blood Diamond (29 page)

I stared at Richard’s seat, wondering what had happened. Had I woken up during the crash? It was possible. The gash across my brow was evidence I had smacked my head on something. After an hour, the chances of surviving a crash plummeted. If the sun, high in the sky, was any indicator, I had been in the downed plane for far longer than an hour.

The fact I was conscious amazed me. By all rights, I should have been dead.

My survival depended on categorizing my injuries and figuring out how to escape from the wreckage. I’d have a host of other problems I would need to overcome after, but unless I could free myself, they weren’t worth worrying about. My biggest fear was broken bones. A broken wrist I could live with for a while. If I had cracked anything in my legs, I was as good as dead. Bracing myself for pain, I tested my feet and wrists one by one. My left wrist was the worst off, but I was able to force my fingers to move. I breathed a sigh of relief.

If I managed to escape alive, I’d have to thank Richard for splurging on his plane; the Cessna TTx had reclining seats, and I could reach the lever, buying me a few extra inches of space to work with. After several tries, I freed myself from the three-point harness. The effort left me panting. Once I gathered my flagging strength, I fought to pull my left hand out from where it was pinned beneath the tree and the armrest.

The leverage didn’t help much; while the wreckage hadn’t cut off circulation to my hand, my arm was pinned at the narrowest part of my wrist. Spitting curses, I shifted in my seat. With the Cessna’s instrument panels smashed to bits, I couldn’t even check where—or why—we had crashed. Richard was a far better pilot than I ever would be; he was in the air whenever possible, and from my understanding, his TTx was less than a year old, broken in to his satisfaction. He didn’t rely on others telling him if something was wrong with his bird, and I remembered him doing the initial walk around to check for the common issues.

Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been violent; while I had hit my head, I should’ve remembered something if I had been awake before the impact.

If I survived, I had a feeling that Evelyn was going to finish what the crash had started. She might permit me to live long enough to witness her taking chunks out of Richard first. Wolf or not, I doubted she would have left if she believed I had any hope of surviving. The golden hour was short, and Fenerec understood how fragile humans like me were. They had no reasonable expectation of me leaving the wreckage in anything other than a body bag.

All I could do was fight to prove them and crash statistics wrong.

~~*~~

After several hours of trying to free my left wrist from the wreckage, I was ready to give up. Even if I did manage to somehow pull free, I doubted I’d be able to worm my way out of the plane. From what I could tell from my cage of debris, the Cessna had mated with a tree, leaving me in the center of a mess of thick, unyielding branches.

I had no idea how there was any space left for me at all. My final conclusion was that Canadian foliage ignored the laws of physics, because I couldn’t come up with any other explanation. If I could somehow pull free and fit into a gap half my size, I was several feet from freedom. Whether from blood loss, fatigue, or shock, I lacked the strength to do anything other than stare dully at the wreckage.

It didn’t help matters any that as time marched on, I became more prone to losing a few minutes here and there in increasingly frequent intervals.

My determination to prove the statistics wrong faltered as I worked my way towards accepting the inevitable. While my golden hour had lasted longer than sixty minutes, I was at the end of my rope. At best, if I didn’t die from my injuries or hypothermia first, I’d last a couple of days before dehydration finished me off. Despite my legs being submerged in cold water, I couldn’t reach it.

All I could do was settle in and wait, hoping that Richard would take care of Evelyn for me. Guilt tightened my throat and chest. I had promised a lot more to Evelyn than a few days on a cruise. I hadn’t had time to do more than stoke the hope of a long future together.

I hadn’t even considered the possibility of the plane crashing on route to Yellowknife. The odds were so against it that it hadn’t been a consideration. Time went by in a blur punctuated by brief flashes of pain and panic, which faded to bone-deep exhaustion. My ears buzzed, as incessant and tenacious as the wreckage holding me prisoner.

It should have alarmed me when I stopped hurting, but I basked in the warmth I recognized as my daughter’s spirit. I imagined her worrying, despite knowing the dead couldn’t, not really. Those trapped in the stone I wore around my neck were unusual in their relentless desire for freedom, but there wasn’t a true sense of intellect to them.

They were more like sound tracks stuck on repeat, all wanting the same thing and unable to break the repetitive cycle. No matter what people liked to believe, the dead didn’t leave a whole lot behind when they moved on; their names and glimpses of their final moments often proved to be their final legacy.

I wondered what would remain of me when I finally lost the battle. Would another earth sensor see the plane crash, or would they glimpse my slow demise? Part of me envied Scarlett.

Her end had been quick. For me, dying hurt, and as the buzz in my head intensified, it was an unpleasantly noisy affair.

Something hard pressed against my face, startling me into the realization that the noise wasn’t a figment of my imagination. After several confusing moments, I recognized the hissing of an oxygen mask. Then the buzz started again, accompanied by the crack of a chainsaw backfiring. I lost a few more minutes before the babble of conversation around me captured my attention. I struggled to listen to what was being said.

My French was limited to hello, goodbye, and a variety of rude expressions Gerald had insisted were appropriate for sporting events in Montreal. While inappropriate for the situation, I was amused at my utter inability to understand a single word, which made the situation even funnier.

When I tried to say something, there was a disconcerting lurch, and I was aware of someone flashing a bright light in my eyes, which triggered agony in my skull. There was another burst of chatter in French, followed by someone speaking in English. It was a woman, and she sounded awed by something, probably the fact I was still alive.

I was inclined to agree with her.

~~*~~

One transfusion, numerous x-rays, a CT scan, an MRI, and a stint with an IV later, it was determined that I would survive with a concussion, a sprained wrist, and a handful of scars as mementos of the crash. An overenthusiastic doctor trapped my left hand and forearm in a brace as a precaution, something I regarded with silent disdain.

When I was coherent enough to talk, an agitated nurse scolded me, waving a handful of IDs in my face.

I found out later that they had managed to figure out which Anderson twin I was, at the cost of several hours, thanks to my inability to string two words together. That had been much later, not long before I had been whisked away to endure another gauntlet of tests to confirm how extensive my injuries actually were. As I regained my wits, I suspected that they had redone several of the scans due to their disbelief that I had escaped relatively unscathed.

It was an opinion I shared with the doctors.

Twenty-seven hours after arriving at Queensway-Carleton Hospital, I was released. The nurse thrust a clipboard at me. Instead of the bill I was expecting, she gave me my wallet and a change a clothes. Before I could ask where she had found a suit in my size, she left the room, leaving me to fill out a mountain of paperwork. I changed, having no recollection of anyone asking me about what I preferred to wear. Perched on the edge of the hospital bed and fighting through a skull-splitting headache, I strained to fill out the discharge papers, at a loss of what to fill in. I didn’t have the address of Richard’s Yellowknife lodge memorized, but it didn’t seem accurate to give them my Georgia address.

My lack of health insurance information didn’t help matters any; my card was probably in Inquisition custody somewhere in Georgia, and I didn’t have my policy number memorized. Within ten minutes, I was ready to hurl the clipboard across the room.

“This should help, otherwise you’ll owe your life and all of your wealth to the Canadian health care system,” a sickeningly familiar voice said, followed by a card landing on the papers I was trying to fill out. Gerald Leclerc was a forty-something father of two with gray hair, loyal servant of the Canadian government, and my Ottawa contact.

He grinned down at me, hooked his foot around the nearest metal chair, and sat down beside me. “While I am an avid supporter of you experiencing Canadian hospitality, I didn’t mean for you to visit a hospital, Jackson. Something funny happened yesterday at around four in the morning. I got this strange, rather hysterical call that you had crashed your plane somewhere in the area.”

I balanced the clipboard on my knee to pick up the card. It was a Canadian health card, complete with my real name and a frighteningly up-to-date photograph. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t a legal card, Gerald. Anyway, it wasn’t my plane. I wasn’t flying it.”

He chuckled, reaching over to tap the card. “It’s a perfectly legal card. Have you forgotten that you hold an open work visa? You pay Canadian taxes and you have legal status. I’ve been sitting on the card for the past year, waiting for you to get around to visiting me again.” He snatched the clipboard, flipping through the sheets. “Pen,” he demanded.

I handed it to him. “Thanks, Gerald. What are you doing here, anyway?”

With a chuckle, he filled out some of the information, flipped to a new sheet, and handed the clipboard back to me. “Sign there.”

I did, grimacing at how much my hand shook as I wrote.

“I’m here because I was the best man for the job—and probably the only one capable of getting you to take your medication. I have a long list of prescriptions to pick up for you on the way home, which one of the doctors was kind enough to call in. From my understanding of the situation, there are three Fenerec running wild around the Baskatong Reservoir, which happens to be a prime hunting and fishing location. I would have come for you sooner, but the doctors wanted to run a second set of tests to make sure you were safe to discharge. It didn’t help matters any that I’ve been trying to calm an entire pack of frantic wolves convinced their Alpha is in trouble.”

“Richard,” I groaned.

“And he’s not in trouble for the reason you’re thinking. I’ve been reassured several times that he’s quite lively. The problem is Mrs. Murphy. They’re convinced she’s going to murder her husband once she finds him.” Gerald laughed, took the clipboard, checked it over, and bounced towards the door. “I’ll be right back.”

“You’re supposed to be a dignified government official,” I called after him.

Within several minutes, he returned. “Okay, you’re clear to go. Think you can walk or do I have to hunt down a wheelchair?”

“Ask me again in five minutes,” I replied. While my knee was still sore, it paled in comparison to my other aches and pains. The drugs the doctors had pumped into me left me battling more nausea than vertigo. “I’ll be fine.”

“Then let’s get out of here. Anytime I get a call like I did yesterday, and it ends with a pick-up from hospital instead of a funeral, it’s a good day. Maggie’s frantic with worry, and I’m pretty sure she’s working on her laundry list of ways to scold you once I get you home.” Gerald hovered nearby, probably worried about whether or not he’d have to stop me from hitting the floor.

While I was mobile, walking in a straight line required concentration and effort.

“You were damned lucky, I hope you know. If half of what I’ve heard is anywhere near the truth, you should be dead.”

“I’m rather surprised myself,” I admitted, only partially aware of where we were going, as most of my focus was staying on my feet without bumping into anyone. All things considered, I thought I did pretty well. There was only one time Gerald had to grab my elbow to keep me from cracking my face open on the curb getting into his car.

The Toyota Camry was probably one of the more practical things he owned, and I held a newfound appreciation for it when he turned on the heated seats.

After paying fourteen dollars in penance for parking at the hospital, we were on the road. I couldn’t look out the window without my stomach churning, so I stared at the dashboard. “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Freeing me from the hospital, for one,” I mumbled.

“Glad to help, Jackson. Knowing you, you would have checked yourself out, left the hospital, and wandered around for two hours before making collect calls from a pay phone. It’d probably take you that long to find one. Someone had to keep you from doing something stupid while under the influence of hospital-issued drugs.”

Grunting because I couldn’t argue with him, I stretched my legs, grateful the car had sufficient room. “I doubt I would have made it to the sidewalk without an intervention.”

“I doubt they would have let you out without some form of adult supervision.”

“How did you find out I was there, anyway?”

Gerald zipped his way through traffic fast enough that I clutched the armrest of the car, praying I wouldn’t end up in another wreck. “Please be careful,” I whispered, shuddering at the thought of the Camry colliding with the concrete wall or one of the other cars in an equal hurry to get home from work.

Instead of slowing, he sped up, chuckling as I squirmed. “Your ID. What were you doing with your brother’s anyway? The nurse admitting you was about ready to have a litter of kittens. You were in the ER, and the only difference between you two is your height. She ended up calling the police with both names. They pulled your records and started calling around until they got a hold of Maggie. Since we already knew you’d crashed and that you were the one on board, it was easy to sort out from that point. Your brother is frantic, by the way. I’ve never heard an Anderson on the brink of hysterics before. It was something, I’ll tell you that. I wasn’t sure anyone in your family was capable of it.”