Page 74 of Wild Temple

Extreme exhaustion had set in. With little sleep, we were barely functioning. Jack's face was beet red, and the veins in his forehead and neck bulged as we carried Rex through thenarrow passage. We staggered through like zombies, legs like rubber.

There was no whining, crying, or stopping. We sucked it up and took the discomfort.

JD and I were both sucking wind in no time, drenched in sweat. I focused on one step at a time. That's all I had to do. One more step. Then another. Then another.

If you focus on the big picture, it can seem overwhelming. But a step? That's easy. You can always do one more.

It took some doing, but we made it back to the waterfall. That's where the real challenge began—climbing the towering steps back to the parking lot.

The stretcher was out. That wouldn’t work—not up the steep incline.

We switched to a modified pack carry. I slung both of Rex’s arms over my shoulder like a backpack and Jack grabbed his feet. That would keep the pressure off Rex’s lower abdomen.

My quads burned on the first step and more on the second. Rex was no lightweight—220 pounds of dead weight.

The row of stairs seemed endless.

One step at a time.

My heart pounded, and my veins bulged. Sweat poured. My chest heaved for breath.

One step at a time—some less sure-footed than others.

My back ached.

One step at a time.

It wasn’t pretty, but we made it to the top. We staggered down the path to the parking lot. The girls brought up the rear.

We put Rex into the passenger seat of the Jeep and buckled him in.

I fished the keys from his pocket, hustled around, and climbed behind the wheel.

JD and the girls hopped in back.

With a twist of the ignition, the engine fired up. I dropped it into gear and peeled out of the parking lot.

“Hang in there, buddy,” I said to Rex. He was still delirious. “We’re en route to the hospital.”

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The hospital wasn’t really equipped for this type of thing, but it was the only option. Rex was barely alive when we carried him in.

He was triaged and started on an IV and broad-spectrum antibiotics. His wound was cleaned, and necrotic tissue removed. A general surgeon performed an emergency exploratory laparotomy to remove the bullet.

There were a lot of questions.

We figured it best to play dumb.

“We found him in the jungle while we were hiking,” I said.

The nurse’s doubtful eyes surveyed me. She didn’t buy it, but that was the story we all stuck to.

As wanted fugitives, we couldn’t hang around too long. The hospital would call the police if they hadn’t already.

We decided to slip out with the girls and check on Rex later.

Two patrol cars pulled into the lot as we stepped toward the automatic glass doors.