Dan Versus Nature (22 page)

Penelope leads the way with her Maglite. Charlie, Hank, and I step-limp our way behind.

“Did you see my mother?” Penelope asks, not sounding terribly concerned.

“Max . . . dragged her off . . . into the woods,” I gasp, struggling to keep Hank vertical. “When . . . the bear attacked.”

Penelope looks amused. “It’s not bear that Max should fear,” she says. “It’s cougar.”

A short but agonizing while later, we find the stream. Charlie and I ease Hank down onto a log.

“Thanks, guys,” Hank says, his shirt soaked in sweat. He winces as he props his injured leg on a rock. He grabs the cuff of his sweatpants leg and tears it in two to reveal the full horror of the trauma.

I retch, my stomach turning.

Penelope shines her flashlight on the wound, examining both sides of Hank’s leg. “It’s fairly clean. The projectile perforated the soft tissue and passed straight through the gastrocnemius. Missed your fibula and tibia completely.” She stands. “I’ve seen worse.”

“How do you know all of that?” I ask in awe, still barely able to look at the wound myself.

“I consider myself pre-premed,” she says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I was reading
Gray’s Anatomy
when you were still trying to find Spot.”

“
Gray’s
?”
Charlie asks skeptically. “Isn’t that a bit antiquated? I’d have thought a serious doctor-in-training would have read Netter’s
Atlas of Human Anatomy.
”

“Netter’s is excellent,” Penelope says. “However, it isn’t completely representative of practical anatomy. Not to mention the mistakes. Now Rohen’s is another story completely, as it uses actual cadaver photographs.”

“I’m all for photographs,” Charlie counters, “but don’t you think illustrations have the benefit of being able show the borders of structures more clearly?”

“In some cases,” Penelope says. “But if I’m going with illustrations, I’m sticking with the Sobatta. The drawings are superior, and they identify all of the anatomical structures by their Latin names, which I prefer.”

“Enough!” Hank says, his voice strangled. “Let’s get on with this. After I break off the arrowhead, I’m going to need one of you to remove the shaft.”

“Wh-why can’t you do that, too?” I ask, feeling light-headed.

Hank grimaces. “It’s not going to come out without a fight. And to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll remain conscious long enough to finish the task.”

Oh, God.

Penelope shrugs. “I’ll do it. Bloodshed and viscera don’t unnerve me. Unlike these two hemophobes.”

“I didn’t . . . say I wouldn’t do it,” I croak.

“Me . . . either,” Charlie adds weakly.

Penelope shines the flashlight on Charlie and me. “You sure? Because you both look decidedly whey-faced.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I shot the arrow. So . . . I should be the one to pull it out.”

“I appreciate the gesture, Dan,” Hank says, his sweaty face tinted blue by the moon. “But it has to be done quickly, without any hesitation.”

“That settles it,” Penelope says, pushing me out of the way. “Give me some room, boys. The more time we waste, the greater the risk of infection.”

“Well, technically,” Charlie says, “the wound’s most likely already infected, but —”

“Oh, shut up, Bill Nye,” Penelope snaps. “Your pop-science trumpery is next to useless here.” She turns to Hank. “You ready?”

Hank takes a deep breath and nods. He grabs the tip of the arrow with both hands and flexes it. “Oh, God.” He grimaces as the arrow bows but doesn’t snap.
“Rrrrrrrr!”
he groans, bending the shank even farther.

Fresh blood spills from the wound as the jostling arrow tugs at the holes.

“Jesus Christ,” Charlie says, turning away. “I can’t watch this.”

I half close my eyes, but for some reason I can’t stop looking, even though my head is full of helium and my stomach is flopping over like a dying fish.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Hank gives one last long scream as he bears down and —

Crack!

The wood splinters and the arrowhead breaks off.

Hank’s body crumples. He starts to teeter off the log, and I leap over, grab him, and heft him upright.

“Thanks . . . Dan,” he mumbles.

“Would you like to wait a minute?” Penelope asks, sounding authoritative. “So you can compose yourself before I commence with the extraction?”

He shakes his head. “No . . . get it . . . over with.”

Penelope looks at us. “When I withdraw the projectile, the wound will start to hemorrhage. One of you needs to be ready to perform hemostasis. The last thing we want is for him to become hypovolemic.”

“And if we were speaking English?” I say.

“We have to stop the bleeding,” Charlie explains.

“How do we do that?” I ask.

“Your T-shirt should do,” Penelope says. “You’re going to want to put a lot of pressure on it in order to initiate coagulation. And no matter how loud Hank begs and screams for you to stop, you do not let up, understand?”

I nod, my chin trembling.

Hank meets my eyes. “It’ll be . . . OK, Dan . . . Once . . . it’s done.”

“I’d offer to do it,” Charlie says, retching a little. “But, you know, blood-borne pathogens and everything. Not that I think you’ve got anything, Mr. Langston.”

“It’s fine,” I say, with false confidence. “I’ve got it. If you could stand behind him, though, and keep him steady . . .?”

Charlie gulps. “Oh, uh, right.” He moves behind Hank, placing a hand on each of his shoulders. “But make sure you cover that wound immediately. A severed artery can really spray.”

“I’ll do my best.” I pull off my shirt, the night air chilly on my chest. I fold the cloth over a few times to give it some layers. “R-ready,” I say to Penelope.

Penelope hunches over Hank’s leg. She grabs the tail of the arrow with her right hand and places her left against his calf. All business now.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” she says. “This is going to hurt like a motherfucker. But I’ll do it as fast as I can.”

“Wh-what do w-we do n-now?” I say, shivering like crazy, my arms wrapped around my naked torso.

Penelope, Charlie, and I are huddled up next to each other like penguins, sitting on the ground in front of a passed-out Hank. With the LED light on my ID bracelet now blinking an angry life-support red and the smiley faces on my boxers glowing a bright green, I’m a regular neon advertisement for loserhood.

“We w-wait until he w-wakes up,” Penelope chatters back. She’s seated on my right, wearing nothing but her red underwear and a white tank top, her milky-white skin glowing in the moonlight.

I mean,
probably
glowing in the moon. I’m doing my best not to look at her. Because when I eventually tell this story to Erin, I don’t want to have to censor out parts of it.

It took Penelope three hefty tugs to get the arrow fully dislodged from Hank’s leg. He blacked out sometime between the second and third tugs. And who could blame him? If I had to deal with that kind of pain, I would’ve prayed to pass out the moment the arrow pierced my skin.

There was a shitload of blood. The first big squirt caught Penelope in the glasses, making her look like she’d just staked a vampire. I covered the wound as soon as I could and kept the pressure on. But Hank bled through my shirt and sweats, Charlie’s jeans, and Penelope’s T-shirt and sweatpants before we were able to stop the bleeding completely. Then we gently cleaned the wound with fresh stream water, using Charlie’s undershirt as a final bandage.

Afterward we all rinsed off in the creek, which didn’t help with the cold situation.

Now we sit and wait for Hank to come to.

In our underwear.

I shift my position. My ass is starting to feel sort of . . . itchy. Probably because I didn’t have time to wipe up properly earlier.

Shifting makes me hyperaware of Penelope’s naked arm touching my naked arm. My eyes drift over to her and her long, naked legs, pulled up against her body. Her smooth arms, the moonlight cascading over the soft swell of her —

Whoa-kay!
Enough of that. I wrench my gaze away.

“You, uh, think he’ll be OK?” I ask the stream. “It s-seemed like he lost a l-lot of blood.”

“It’s n-not the blood l-loss you have to w-worry about.” Charlie, seated to my left in his not-so-tighty-whities, rubs his arms vigorously. “It’s s-septicity. That’s what’ll k-kill him. There are at least thirty different types of bacteria that’ll c-cause a wound to become gangrenous: staph, strep, klebsiella, E. coli. The list goes on. If he’s l-lucky, it’ll be localized and he’ll only lose the leg. If he’s not so lucky . . .” Charlie shrugs. “Well, you’ll pr-probably want to avoid an open casket.”

“J-Jesus.” A grossed-out shiver runs up my spine.

“Way to be ch-cheery there, Dr. Doom,” Penelope says.

“I’m just st-stating facts,” Charlie replies.

I look over at Hank. “How long d-do we have before something like that happens?”

“Symptoms usually start to sh-show in a few hours,” Charlie explains. “Redness, sw-swelling, oozing pus, fever. If it’s not treated, I don’t like his ch-chances.”

“Shit.” A sick feeling balloons in my gut. “M-maybe one of us should go back to camp and g-get some of Charlie’s medications. Maybe we can find Max and your m-mom too.”

“We’re not going to f-find the two of them,” Penelope says.

“Why not?” I say. “The four of us f-found each other.”

“If I know my m-mother,” Penelope says, “and, unfortunately, I know her all t-too well, she will use the bear attack as an excuse to sp-spend the next four days getting to know M-Max better. Much,
much
better.”

“Won’t she be w-worried about you?” I ask.

Penelope shrugs, her flesh sliding against my flesh. “She s-saw me run off with Hank and Ch-Charlie. Of course, she d-doesn’t know that you sh-shot an arrow through Hank’s leg, disabling our team captain.” She raises her eyebrows. “As for the trip b-back to camp, the potential for getting l-lost in the dark is far too high. Also, there’s the p-possibility of another bear encounter to take into account.”

“L-loath as I am to admit it,” Charlie says, pressing his bony shoulder into mine, “Penelope raises some valid p-p-points.”

“Wh-what about Hank?” I say. “Wh-what about infection?”

“You know me,” Charlie says. “I t-tend toward the hy-hyperbolic. We cleaned the wound well. Bandaged it up. It’s entirely possible he’ll be fine until morning. Our m-main concern now should be keeping warm through the night.”

“And j-just how do you propose we do th-that?” I ask, blowing into my numbing hands.

“We can make a d-debris bed,” Charlie says. “I read about it in one of the s-survival books. First we cover Hank’s body with leaves, moss, p-pine needles — wh-whatever we can find. Then we pile up a waist-high mound for us and cl-climb inside. It’s good down to t-ten degrees Fahrenheit, which we shouldn’t even get close to tonight.”

“W-well, w-well, your first g-good idea,” Penelope says. “Sh-shocking. You do know, though, that a d-debris bed poses a certain amount of contagion r-risks. Are you sure you c-can handle it?”

“It’s not my ideal sc-scenario,” Charlie says. “However, if I balance the r-risk of infection with the risk of a f-fatal drop in body temperature, in this case the chance of freezing to d-death is the more likely.”

“All right, then. Let’s g-get to w-work.” Penelope claps her hands and hoists herself to her feet — a bespectacled, nearly naked goddess.

Suddenly, a certain part of me is no longer cold.

I wrench my gaze away again and stare at poor, passed-out Hank to try to keep my smiley faces from bulging.

I am in heaven and hell simultaneously.

I am lying under a pile of leaves next to Penelope — essentially we are in bed together — staring up at a sky teeming with brilliant stars. My left arm and leg are pressed against her right arm and leg. Even through the coarse, scratchy bristles of pine needles, twigs, and grass, her skin feels warm and wonderful. Lithe and lovely. Soft and supple.

One part of me wants to casually roll over and stare into Penelope’s eyes, declare my feelings of attraction, and let our bodies do the rest.

And the other part of me is clinging to the edge of the Erin cliff by my chewed-to-the-quick fingernails. The only thing keeping me from free-falling off the precipice is this damn burning itching in my anus. Must be diarrhea rash or something.