Page 77 of Stay With Me

The combination of the heat, and the vomiting, and the dehydration, and the venom had made her too weak to do anything. She figured it was all of that and not necessarily the fact that she hadn’t slept all night. She’d pulled all-nighters in the past and she never felt like this.

This was a wicked combination of being psychologically and physically exhausted. Exhausted to the point of being unable to move, other than the slow turn of her wrist from side to side. The heel of her palm rested on the ground and she clutched the mirror, flashing it at the sun in a last ditch effort of signaling someone. Probably not to rescue them, just recover their bodies.

Nick’s breathing had become more and more shallow. He was probably about to go. She didn’t have the strength to lift up and place her ear on his chest so it was only an assumption. But she knew if he wasn’t breathing, he couldn’t hang on much longer.

All she could do was pat his hand. So she patted his hand.

“Nick.” She couldn’t speak above a whisper.“Nick, hang on. Somebody’s coming.”

It was a bold-faced lie, but he didn’t know that.

“Keep breathing. Just a little while longer. Somebody’s coming. We’re going to be okay.”

She heard a screech from somewhere in the desert and she instinctively opened her eyes. The sunlight seared her pupils, and she closed her eyelids again. In the half second they were open, she saw the circling birds.

“See?” she said to him. “Somebody’s coming. They’ll be here soon.”

It was sort of the truth anyway.

She exhaled heavily and turned her face into his shoulder in an effort to shield it from the sun. She decided it was time to sleep. She’d put it off long enough. Then she wouldn’t have to be there for his death or her own.

The drowsiness took over quickly and her body jolted with a falling sensation causing her eyes to shoot open briefly, but she closed them again.

Her mind spun and she became less aware of both his breathing and her own. Unaware of their surroundings. Everything was silent until it was not.

“Hey!”

Now her mind was playing tricks on her.

“Hey! Can you hear me?”

“Mm-hmm,” she murmured, eyes still closed.

She heard the static of what sounded like a radio coming from somewhere behind her head. Some kind of crackling voice.

“…looking right at them … center of … canyon … man and a woman … badly injured.”

“Hello?” That sounded less like a radio and more like a person. Like a man’s voice. Someone who was about her age.

She turned her face to look at Nick. “Did you say something?”

“Hello?”

She was watching his mouth and his lips hadn’t moved. “Nick?”

“There they are.” The voice was accompanied by a flurry of footsteps and words that sounded incoherent to her.

A hand gently gripped the top of her head, turning it toward a face that she couldn’t see well due to the blinding light of not only the sun, but also a small flashlight of sorts. “Miss? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

“Samantha.”

“Samantha, do you know how long you’ve been down here?”

“Since yesterday.”