Be Not Far from Me(44)

Everything outside is whipping past us so quickly I can’t take it in, can’t see each tree, touch every leaf. My life has slowed to a point that moving above a crawl feels obscene, and sounds startle me. When Paul started the truck the radio blasted on and Tammy had snapped it off quickly when I yelped, covering my ears with my blanket.

They’ve both been quiet as we drive, the rain picking up and soaking my arm as I let it drift out the window, feeling the resistance of the breeze against my hand. I look over at Tammy, and she tucks her phone away but not before my own face appears under a news headline.

“You googled me?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says sheepishly, turning her phone over. There’s a muted video playing of my dad standing at a podium, the only tie he owns tied all wrong and his dress shirt from Grandpa’s funeral too tight across his belly. But I don’t think anyone is looking at him, only listening. Faces crumple along with his as he breaks down, and I don’t need to hear the words to know that he’s asking for someone, please, to bring his little girl back to him.

“I brought myself back,” I tell him quietly, my thumb resting against the screen.

There’s a long article that I can’t read while the truck is moving so fast, the few bites of bologna and cheese that I managed to get down threatening to come back up. I don’t want to thank Tammy and Paul by puking on them, so I give her the phone back, aware that she’s double-checking the face on the screen and comparing it to the one in front of her. I wonder how hard it is to find a resemblance.

The squad meets us where the service road dumps out on a state route, their lights flashing but sirens off. I pop my truck door and move to get out, but there are suddenly people everywhere, and no one seems to want me to move. A female paramedic scoops me out of the truck like a baby, not even huffing for breath when we make it over to the ambulance, where I’m given a lot of instructions.

Lie back. Relax. Calm down. Breathe normally.

I’m doing all these things, but the medics in the back with me still have little frowns on their faces as they methodically list everything that has gone wrong with me. They use different words than I would, like contusion for bruise, laceration for cut and malnourished for starving. The male—his lanyard identifies him as Michael—is reeling off these things, and the female is writing quickly across the back of her rubber glove.

The ambulance is rolling and the sirens going. The female medic is still taking notes, flipping her hand over to write on the other side of her glove when Michael eases my sock off.

“Holy fucking shit!” he says, which is pretty much the same words I would use to describe it. I lift my head to look.

“That’s nothing,” I tell him. “You should’ve seen it before I took the bad parts off.”

“The bad parts?”

“Yeah,” I say, reaching for the bag with what’s left of my foot inside. “These bits.”

I lift it for him to see, and he covers his mouth and looks away real quick, taking a minute to compose himself. Then he lifts my heel gently, turning my foot to see the damage from all angles.

“You took this off?” Michael asks.

“Yeah,” I say, lying my head down as the spots threaten again.

“With what?”

“A big chunk of flint.” I consider reaching into my pocket to share the sliver I kept with me but decide against it because I don’t want it taken away from me.

He whistles low between his teeth and sets my leg back down. “Nice work.”

“Thank you,” I say, weirdly pleased by the compliment.

“Can you tell me your name?” the other medic asks.

“Ashley,” I tell her.

“Okay, Ashley,” she says. “I’m Barbara. I’m going to start an IV to keep you hydrated, all right? It’s going to make your arm a little cold.” She says it apologetically, like it’s the worst possible end to my day. There’s a pinch and she’s done, a needle tucked into the crook of my arm.

“Do you know what day it is?” Barbara asks, and I realize she’s trying to decide if I hit my head at some point or not. I definitely did, and I certainly don’t know what day it is, but that has nothing to do with having a concussion.

“No,” I say.

“Who is the president?” Michael asks, but only gets a snort out of me in response. They exchange a glance, like maybe that answer is kind of common.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Barbara tries, like she’s tossing me an easy one, something I should be able to explain.

“I was lost,” I say, the first time I’ve spoken the word. My voice cracks around it, either because I’m too proud to admit it or because it’s so damn terrifying, even now that I’m safe. Because I knew, every time I left my house for the woods, that it could kill me. I just never believed it would try.

“The world is not tame,” I tell Barbara, and she nods like maybe she gets it as she wraps a blood-pressure cuff around my arm, then swaps it out for a different one. Judging by the Dora the Explorer sticker on the band I’m guessing it’s the one they use on kids, my arm too small for the one made for adults.

“How’d you manage?” Michael asks, eyes still on my foot.

“There was no one else to do it,” I tell him. “So I had to.”