Page 78 of Stay With Me

“Samantha, what’s your friend’s name?”

“Nick. He … he fell and I—”

“Did you fall?”

“No.”

“Samantha, we’re going to lift you onto a board so we can get you out of here. I need you to hold still for me.”

She tried to turn her head again to check on Nick, but they’d strapped a restraint around her neck. “Is he alive?”

“He is. We’re going to help you guys, but we have to get you out of here so hold still.”

With that, she was hoisted off the ground and onto a less-hard surface. A second later, she felt a sting in her arm reminiscent of the bite, causing her to shriek.

“Snake!”

“Samantha that was the IV. You’re pretty dehydrated, and we’re giving you fluids.”

“A snake bit me!”

“It was the IV, I promise.”

“On my other arm!”

A set of hands gingerly grasped and poked at the bite. They seemed to be talking about it.

“Samantha, are you sure it was a snake?”

“It was dark. I didn’t see it. I set my arm down and I felt it.”

“This looks like a scorpion sting. Are you having trouble breathing?”

She sighed, both attempting to test her ability to breathe, as well as exhaling her extreme relief. “I don’t think so.”

They did something to her arm that she couldn’t identify, and then they began carrying the board out of the canyon.

She noticed she was feeling slowly, steadily better, and the sway of being carried began to lull her toward drowsiness again.

“I told you someone was coming,” she muttered to Nick while instinctively reaching for his hand. But it wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t there. If he had died, she knew they probably wouldn’t tell her right then, but she asked anyway.

“Is he going to be okay?”

“We’re going to do everything we can. Try to relax as much as possible.”

She knew what that probably meant. A lump rose in her throat and tears stung the corners of her eyes.

I tried.

* * *

Samantha slept all the way to the hospital, the majority of her time in the ER, and for a few hours in some other hospital bed. She hadn’t seen Nick since she’d last looked at him right before they’d been rescued.

She’d been diagnosed with extreme dehydration, heat exhaustion, and fatigue, which was treated with lots of IV fluid and sleep. The cuts on her arms and face had been dressed with ointment and little band aids, and she’d received some kind of shot for her scorpion sting—not snake bite—and was told it would hurt for a while, but it would be fine. She was marginally embarrassed, but more relieved than anything. She was told that the symptoms she’d experienced were typical of the Striped Bark Scorpion and that she was fortunate she hadn’t had a bad reaction to its venom while being in such a remote location. Which meant she hadn’t actually been dying the whole time. What a relief, indeed.

In her brief moments of being awake, a nurse took her vitals and Samantha asked about Nick, but there seemed to be a breakdown in communication between the paramedics and the ER doctors and the nurses in the unit where she’d ended up. Most of them didn’t know she’d been admitted with him, and there were several patients who’d come in that day from Big Bend so they were confused, and she was still too worn out to fight with them about it so she simply went back to sleep.

She woke again and saw through the window in her room that night had fallen. She shuddered at the thought of the previous night, shaking her head and clutching the blanket closer to her.