Run

Jack turned over onto his right side, and he tried to listen for approaching footsteps but kept passing in and out of consciousness as the sun moved over the pines and made a play of light and shadow on his face.

The next time he woke the sun was straight overhead and he could hear Dee telling Cole a story. He sat up. His head swirled. Looked down at the pine needles, some of which had become glued together with blood. He felt feverish and cold, and soon Dee was there, easing him back onto the forest floor.

He opened his eyes, tried to sit up, thought better of it. Dee sat beside him and the sun was gone. Through the pines, the pieces of sky held the rich blue of late afternoon.

“Hi there,” she said.

“What time is it?”

“Four-fifteen. You’ve been sleeping all day.”

“Where are the kids?”

“Playing by a stream.”

“Nobody came?”

“Nobody came. You’re thirsty, I bet.” She unscrewed the cap from a milk jug and held it to his mouth. The coldness of the water stung his throat, ignited a fierce and sudden thirst. When he finished drinking, he looked up at his wife.

“How am I doing, Doc?”

Shook her head. “I stopped the bleeding, but you’re not so hot, Mr. Colclough.” She reached into the first aid kit, cracked open a bottle of Tylenol. “Here. Open.” Dumped a handful of pills onto Jack’s tongue, helped him wash them down. “I have to get that bullet out, and I need to do it before we run out of daylight.”

“Fuck.”

“Jack, there’s worse people you could be stuck with in this situation.”

“Than Wifey, MD?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re a GP. When’s the last time you even held a scalpel? Med school? I mean, do you even have the tools to—”

“Really, Jack? You want me to tell you the gory details of what I’m about to do, or you want to turn your head away and let me do my thing?”

“You can do this?”

She squeezed his hand. “I can. And I have to or you’ll get an infection and die.”

Jack lay flat on his back, his head turned away from his left shoulder, wishing for unconsciousness.

“Jack, I need you to be as still as you possibly can.”

Dee cut away his shirt.

“Using my Swiss Army knife?”

“Yep.”

“You’re going to sterilize it?”

“I’m afraid your health insurance plan doesn’t cover sterilizations.”

“That’s hilarious. Seriously—”

“It’s already done.”

“What with?”

“A match and an iodine pad. I’m going to wipe down your shoulder now.”

Felt like ice on a flaming wound as she cleaned the dried blood and gunpowder from the entry hole.

“How’s it look?” he asked.

“Like somebody shot you.”

“Can you tell how far in it went?”

“Please let me focus.”

Something moved inside his shoulder. There was pain, but nothing like he’d feared.

Dee said, “Shit.”

“First-rate bedside ma

“I thought maybe I could do this easily. Just pull the bullet out with these plastic tweezers.”

“That sounds like a super plan. Why can’t you do it?”

“I can’t get at it yet.”

“Fuck, you’re going to cut me.” Jack heard the snap of a blade locking into place. “Big blade? Small blade?”

“Think about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like what we’re going to have for di

And he did think about it. For four seconds. Pictured the jar of pickled beets in the Rover and it made him want to cry. All of it—lying here in the woods in extraordinary pain without food and the day leaving them and nowhere to go and no way to get there— and then the knife entered his shoulder in a revelation of searing pain.

“Holy motherfuck—”

“Hold still.”

She was really going after it, and Jack made a crushing fist, fighting back a surge of nausea as he tried to ask if she saw the bullet yet, if she could get at it now, desperate for some indication that this would be ending soon please God, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he descended into a merciful darkness.

When he came to, Dee was crouched over him, headlamp blazing and Cole and Naomi beside her looking on. She was lifting a piece of string attached to a needle and smiling. She looked exhausted.

“You passed out you big baby.”

He said, “Thank God for that. Please tell me you got it.”

Naomi held up a squashed mushroom of lead between her fingers.

“I’m going to make you a necklace so you can wear it.”

“You must have read my mind, sweetie.”

He groaned as Dee ran the needle through his shoulder again and tightened the knot.

“I know it hurts, but I have to finish.” She started another stitch. “I really had to cut you to get it out. You lost two, maybe three pints of blood, which is right on the verge of not being okay.”

He woke often during the night, freezing even inside his sleeping bag. The stars shone through the pines, and he was caught up in a fever dream—crawling toward a stream and dying of thirst, but every time he reached the water and cupped a handful to his mouth, it turned to ash and the wind took it.

Once, he woke and it was Naomi’s voice that came to him in the dark.

“It’s okay, Daddy. You’re just having a bad dream.”

And she brought the jug of water to his lips and helped him drink and she was still there, her hand against his burning forehead, when he sank back down into sleep.

* * * * *

HE registered the sun on his eyelids. Pulled the sleeping bag over his head, let his right hand graze his left arm.

The sickening heat had gone out of it.

Cole’s laughter erupted some distance away in the forest.

Jack opened his eyes and pushed away the sleeping bag and slowly sat up.

Midday light.

The smell of sun-warmed pine needles everywhere.

Wind rushing through the tops of the trees.

Dee inspected his left shoulder. “Looking good.”

“What about all that blood I lost?”

“Your body’s making it back, but you need to be drinking constantly. More water than we have. And you need food. Particularly iron so you can remake those red blood cells.”

“How are the kids?”

“Hungry. Na’s been amazing with Cole, but I’m not sure how much longer she can keep it up.”

“How are you?”

She looked back at the Rover. “Think it’ll start?”

“Even if it does, we might have a gallon of gas left. Maybe a cup. No way to know.”

“We can’t just sit here and wait.”

“We could head back toward the highway, or keep going up the canyon. See how far we get.”

“Jack, we’re not going to find anything, and you know it.”

“That’s a real possibility.”

“We need more gas.”

“We need a new car.”

“If we don’t find something, Jack, if we’re still in these mountains tonight and we have no way to travel anywhere except on foot, which you don’t have the strength for, it’s going to get very bad very fast.”

“You want to pray?”

“Pray?”

“Yeah, pray.”

“That’s really pathetic, Jack.”

The engine cranked on the first attempt, though when Dee shifted into reverse an awful racket jangled to life under the hood. She backed them out of the grove and took it slow through the trees toward the road.

“Which way, Jack?”

“Up the canyon.”

“You sure?”

“Well, we know what’s back toward the highway—nothing.”

She turned onto the road and eased through a gentle acceleration. They’d torn the plastic windows out and the noise of the engine precluded any communication softer than shouting. Jack glanced into the backseat, saw Naomi and Cole sharing the jar of beets. Winked at his son, thinking he looked thi