Against Medical Advice (14 page)
Read Against Medical Advice Online
Authors: James Patterson
DAY 3
My sleeping bag is covered by a good half foot of snow, which has been falling steadily throughout the night. It’s wet on the inside from ice that I must have brought in on my coat before passing out from exhaustion.
In my hurry to get out of the cold, I also left the bottom of the bag open to the wind, and now I can’t feel my right foot. I wonder if it’s been asleep too long to ever come back to normal.
If I had my boots on, I’d stand and jump up and down to try to get some feeling back in my foot, but they take away our boots at night in case anyone is still thinking about escaping — like they took mine that first night. I’m cold to the bone and hungry. If I’d known what it was going to be like here, I would have probably needed one of those escorts to get me to the camp.
What they said the first night has turned out to be absolutely true. The idea of this place is very simple: force troubled kids to cooperate in order to survive, and get us through the withdrawal period of our addictions by having us focus instead on more immediate issues — like eating, going to the bathroom in the woods, and not freezing to death.
I’m not the first person who’s come here with an alcohol addiction, but I’m the first with that plus Tourette’s and OCD.
Before I came up on the mountain, the people who run the place said they didn’t know if I could make it, but they were willing to give it a try. My main worry is that sometimes my tics are so bad I can hurt myself and then I can’t move without excruciating pain. If that happens, I won’t be able to keep up and they’ll send me home. The more I’m up here, the more tempted I am to fake my tics for just that reason, but I’ve promised myself I won’t do that.
If I go back home the way that I came, there’s nothing in my old life to help me.
So every time one of my tics makes me think of giving up, I tell myself that I’m not going to let it beat me. I can’t. This is life-and-death for me, and not just because of the temperature and the amazing amount of snow.
DAY 5
A terrible thought has begun to take over my mind. It’s been in the back of my head since the second day, but now it’s risen to the surface and I can’t think of anything else.
My father has been killed in a plane crash on his way home from the wilderness camp. Or he and my mother both died after he got home.
There is no other explanation for why my parents haven’t contacted me. In my whole life, I’ve never been away from them for this long. They’ve never even had a vacation away from me. The idea that they wouldn’t even try to see how I’m doing in this dangerous place is impossible —
unless something bad has happened to them.
The counselors haven’t brought it up either, and I think it’s because they must know something and are hiding it. I’m so preoccupied with this fear that it’s begun to slow me down from doing the normal chores required as part of group survival.
Finally the thought makes me so frantic that in the middle of a task I break the rule about leaving my area and force a conversation with Kevin, the head counselor.
“I’m scared that something has happened to my parents,” I say without wasting time. “I’m not kidding, I’m serious.”
“It’s possible,” he answers casually. “I don’t know.”
His calmness shocks me. “I have to find out. I need to know. I have a bad feeling.”
He shakes his head. “You’re here and you have to make it work on your own, no matter what. I think I explained all that the first night.”
I can’t believe he’s not trying to talk me out of my fear, to reason with me like all my other doctors have. He’s not nasty or mean, just firm and very clear.
On one level I understand why he is acting this way, and that it doesn’t mean he knows something. But on the way back to my work area, I’m still terrified about my parents, and now there’s nothing I can do about it. Obviously, he’s right. I am on my own in every way up here, and the fact that I don’t know for how long makes things a hundred times worse for someone like me. It’s a perfect formula for the panic that bubbles near the surface all the time.
I’m cold, exhausted, and always hungry, and I miss home so much I sometimes want to cry, but I won’t let myself. Kevin has forced me to recognize I have only two choices: throw myself on the ground and give up and let them send me home, or fight off the bad thoughts as best I can and do what I have to do to survive.
Trying to analyze my situation a little, I realize that I haven’t needed a drink or a cigarette almost the whole time I’ve been here. As hard as this experience has been, maybe I’m really starting to do something for myself. With everything I’ve always needed suddenly taken away from me, hey, I’m still alive.
And that’s when, for the first time, I start thinking about something really impossible.
As bad as it is, this is good.
DAY 7
As dawn breaks, the others around me are already out of their sleeping bags.
We’ve all spent the night close enough to be in touch in case of a storm but far enough apart so there’s no verbal contact. The guys are all busy trying to light a fire but not with matches. For whatever reason, we have to do it the way the Indians did, rubbing a stick between our hands into a groove in a piece of wood until it smolders into an ember, then quickly putting some dried grass on it and blowing to get a flame.
We need the fire for more than warmth. It melts our drinking water, which freezes every night, and is also used for all our cooking. If we can’t make a fire, we can’t eat the cornmeal, soy, and millet they’ve given us in small bags.
Today it takes me so long to get my boots on that there isn’t time to try to make my own fire. When I get enough ice off my boots to get into them, I realize that one of my gloves is missing, and I spend another precious few minutes looking for it. Finally, one of the counselors gives me another glove but says it will be the last. This is the third time I’ve lost a glove — in two days.
I walk out into the woods to go to the bathroom, then come back and start to clean up my area.
By the time I get to the common kettle, the rest of the guys are already finished eating and about to put out the fire. Nobody makes fun of me, but nobody offers to help either. That’s okay.
I get some water, but there’s no breakfast for me this morning because I haven’t contributed to the effort. Back at my sleeping bag, I stuff some raw cornmeal into my mouth, then spit it out when it makes me gag.
The lead counselor gathers us together and checks each person’s gear. By now everyone else is carrying their possessions in a backpack they’ve made themselves, shaping it with branches and holding it together with strips of rawhide. The backpack is crucial to survival because there’s no other way to carry the supplies that keep us going.
It takes most people a day or two to make a backpack. I’ve been working on mine since I got here, and it’s still not holding together enough to carry much. Until I make it better, I’m hand-carrying some of my stuff, which partly explains why I keep losing certain items over and over, like my gloves.
As the sun comes up from behind a nearby mountain, everyone assembles with their gear. One of the counselors tells us about the day’s activity plan.
“We’re going on a little hike today, nothing too hard,” he announces. “Just a few miles, straight up the mountain.”
He conveniently forgets to add,
in knee-deep snow.
DAY 12
Since that first time we climbed up the mountain, we’ve made a big trip every single day. Now we’re going to stay in base camp for a while, so we’re digging ditches that will serve as latrines and will ensure that we don’t contaminate the area around us.
The only tools we have are the jagged stones we’ve been able to pry out of the frozen ground. Using them to dig is backbreaking work, and it takes several hours to show very little in the way of results.
We are also completing a clearing in the woods for a future campsite for another group. We’ve found a patch of land rising above the snow that doesn’t have much growing on it, and we have to figure out how to cut down what’s left.
One of the tics I’ve feared the most has suddenly returned — the need to twist my ribs back until something hurts inside of me. I’ve been doing it all day and have either torn something in my chest again or pulled a muscle.
I’m having trouble breathing, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse to stop working. I’m part of the group now, and they’ve accepted me, so I want to do my share.
I’ve also had to make my rope belt tighter again; my pants have dropped to my ankles a few times because I’ve lost so much weight. I still miss at least one meal a day because I’m usually too frozen or tired to prepare it, and I’m burning calories from working and trying to stay warm in the freezing climate. I’m even burning calories because of my tics.
Despite the extreme cold, the bottoms of my layered shirts get soaking wet from sweat. It’s no wonder I can feel myself getting thinner. I imagine what I would look like in a mirror. But of course there are no mirrors.
For some reason the skin on the back of my hands is turning black. I don’t know if I’m just dirty or if that is an early sign of frostbite. I’ve lost so many gloves that they’ve stopped giving them to me sometimes. They think that this will make me learn to keep track of them better, but I’m just too disorganized. Or maybe too forgetful. It usually takes a lot of mistakes, and suffering a lot of consequences, before I learn any lesson.
DAY 16
We’re halfway up the mountain. Today, we’ve been walking for six hours with only short rests for water and a break for lunch that took longer than planned. I finally get to eat some cooked soy and cornmeal, which tastes like the best steak I’ve ever had. I still haven’t finished making my backpack strong enough, and carrying some of my supplies in my arms has been almost impossible, especially in the rougher terrain.
Part of the trip is over bare rocks swept clean by a strong wind, and part is in waist-deep snow. My famous hopping tic is severe today, and when I hop in the deep snow, I often fall and there’s no one to pick me up. But at least the snow softens the blow.
“We’re way behind schedule,” one of the counselors tells us halfway through the day. “If we get any slower, we won’t reach our camp and you won’t like where you have to sleep tonight. You won’t like it at all!”
This is not the greatest threat in the world. We already don’t like where we sleep.
But lying out in the open is dangerous at this higher altitude, where it’s much colder. Before dark we have to get to a level place much higher up that will serve as our campsite for the night and that will be safe from the big snowstorm that’s supposed to be coming.
Another serious problem arises around four o’clock. The water we’re carrying has frozen solid, and because we’re so far behind, there’s no time to stop and thaw it out. A few mouthfuls of snow every now and then keep us from getting dehydrated.
When we get to the campsite it’s almost dark, and by the time I’ve laid out my sleeping bag and set up my tarp, my hands are too frozen to work on a fire. As hungry as I am, I’m too tired to eat. I take my boots off and crawl into my sleeping bag, missing a second meal in one day.
I have to sleep within view of two counselors who are watching from about fifty yards away. I pray they don’t ask me to get out of my sleeping bag, and they don’t. But in the morning they tell me that if I don’t get my act together and finish the hike, I’ll be in the wilderness for a long time.
Or be kicked out.
With all that I’m going through, I’m once again astonished to find myself thinking that this is the worst that can happen.
DAY 20
Miraculously, I’m at the top of the mountain as the sun is setting. I’m the last to arrive, but I got here.
The backpack, which took me more than two weeks to assemble, isn’t anything to brag about, but it actually holds together pretty well, and all my supplies have made it with me. Tonight I will sleep in this frigid air with a smile on my face and food in my stomach.
The beauty of the place is amazing, especially the light and the quiet peacefulness. I feel like I’m at the top of that tree again, the one I climbed back at my house years ago. Maybe that’s the way I have to find the answer — I need to be on my own like this, and to push hard in order to relax and be myself. Now I can spend hours looking at the patterns of the nighttime shadows in the snow, the way the white-coated treetops are lit up by the sun and the moon.
As tired as I am, being here is exhilarating.
I am living life on a very basic level. Its calming effect is stronger than any medicine I’ve ever taken.
I haven’t wanted a drink . . . or my medicines . . . since the very first night. The air is so pure here that the idea of putting cigarette smoke into my lungs seems outrageously dumb and disgusting.
The worst of my wrenching body movements have also lessened, either because I’ve been so distracted or because the exertion has tired me out. I deal only with the rituals of survival and the simple jobs that make it possible.
I’m making it.
I think of nothing else.
In some ways, my past life seems like it was a hundred years ago and happened to a different person. When I do think of my friends, I feel sorry for the smallness of their average days and wish they could experience what I have. I’ve been able to put aside threatening intrusive thoughts, like the idea that something has happened to my parents. I’m going on faith that it is just my mind trying to trap me in a bad loop again.
As I’ve grown stronger, I’ve become thinner and thinner. My clothes are practically falling off me and the rope is tight around my waist to keep my pants on.
My depression is lifting, too. I’m learning that I’m able to endure terrible hardship. This is an amazing feeling of power that I know will help me fight whatever comes at me after I leave. I’ve always believed I had inner strength, but I never thought it would be tested in such a profound and crucial way.
There is no doubt that this has been the worst thing I’ve ever had to do, the worst place my parents could possibly have sent me to.
And the best thing that has ever happened to me.