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McCarty laughed, shrugged, did everything short of actually saying "pshaw." The fact that he did it with humor and a thick gob of charm didn't let him off the hook. He put A
However unsatisfying to the ego, A
Unless he didn't think she'd wake up.
Unless he didn't think she'd remember if she did wake up.
Remember what? An attempt on her life? Surely there would have been a reason for attempted murder. Hope she would have forgotten that reason? Not likely, not unless that reason had occurred moments before the rock fell, and even then traumatic amnesia wasn't something anyone would count on, especially not a doctor of medicine. In a heretofore undiscovered crack in the earth there was no secret Frieda could stumble on, and it was unlikely, though not impossible, she'd overheard anything compromising. Peter McCarty's too hearty skepticism was making more and more sense.
The doctor left. A
"Hard to tell," came the reply.
"Do you have any idea why somebody would want to push a rock on you?"
"No reason. I'm a secretary, for Chrissake."
A
"How about personal animosities," A
"No way. I'm a frigging saint. Oops. Make my apologies."
Frieda was succumbing to the medication, and A
6
If two people know a secret, it is no longer a secret. On long car trips A
Oscar was the first to pay his respects. McCarty, he said, felt duty bound to tell him and Holden of the change in the patient's condition. His tone left no doubt that he felt A
In the way of runaway secrets, the tale spread without any traceable source-each person told one other, someone overheard, someone deduced. Within an amazingly short period of time, Frieda's lucidity went from secret to news.
As the Stokes was moved up the incline, cavers greeted her, welcomed her back to the world of the living. Never comfortable with subterfuge, Dierkz dropped the pretense and answered as best the pain medication allowed until a squat clean-shaven caver from the outside, boasting EMT status, as if EMTs weren't a dime a dozen in this crew, got so officious Frieda became anxious. Then Holden asked the rescuers to dispense with their good cheer and let her get what rest she could, given she was being trundled up a steep slope.
For reasons of his own, which were possibly sinister but more likely intended to save Frieda from embarrassment, Peter McCarty had left the gloved hand and the possible murder attempt out of his report.
A
Shelving these vague possibilities, she put her back into carrying Frieda home. With each step taken, each rock climbed, they were that much closer to getting out. Left to herself, she knew she would set an underland speed record from Tinker's to the surface, but even the creeping gait of their human caterpillar was heartening.
The passage out of Tinker's closed down so tightly a person couldn't walk upright. It narrowed until shoulders and hips brushed the sides. Well back on the balcony, between the Stokes and the cavers derigging the first haul, A
"Everybody listen up," Holden said, and she felt an icy poke in her i
The cavers, most of whom were crowded onto the balcony or perched like colorful crows on rocks nearby, fell quiet. Those who weren't actively engaged in derigging had their headlamps switched off. Holden moved the beam of his light from one face to the next, and they appeared like actors in the spotlight, each with his own bizarre tale to tell before the curtain came down.
Counting his sheep, A
"This passage is one hundred sixty-two feet long. There are only two rooms big enough to stand up in, and there're not many flat enough to set the Stokes down. What we're going to do is turtle it." Judging by the intrigued looks that flickered from the darkness, "turtling" wasn't a classic maneuver culled from the most recent edition of the Manual of U.S. Cave Rescue Techniques.
Deferring often to Frieda to make sure she knew that she was part of her own rescue and not just one hundred forty pounds of packaged meat, Holden talked them through the next leg of the journey. Turtling was evidently a process he'd learned from his predecessor at the BLM. Like many things that worked, it wasn't in the pages of any how-to book. Though to give credit where credit was due, the few books on cave rescue A
One by one Holden sent them into the passage. Half a body length apart, they were to get on hands and knees and pass the Stokes along their backs, a shoulder-wrenching premise, but workable. When Frieda reached the head of the line, the trailing cavers would close ranks like an inchworm taking up its inch. The litter would be pushed to the last two backs, the leading fourteen would spread out farther up the passage, and Frieda would recommence travel over the soft shells of Holden's turtles.