Crossing the Deep (23 page)

His determination kept him going until he rounded the corner down another stark white, sterile-smelling hallway. It looked like all the rest, but it led to Rachel’s room. Something inside him balked, and he felt his knees try to buckle. He’d walked up and down the hall numerous times in the past few days, but this time was different. This time, she was awake.

Rachel’s mom had said to let her rest, and what was he doing? Charging in like he owned the place? Like he had any right to go and see her. Truth be told, she might not even feel for him like she had on the mountain — solitude did weird things to feelings.

And what in the world would he say?
Hey
Rachel, glad you’re
alive. Sorry about your
toes.
Wish I could have gotten you down the mountain, but hey close enough, right?

By the time he made it to Rachel’s door, he’d almost talked himself out of going in. His hand shook as he reached out for the door handle, and he froze. He couldn’t do this. There was no way he could see her. Not that he didn’t want to, not that he felt any different toward her, but because who was he to trump her mom? What if she didn’t want to see him?

Heaviness fell on his chest, and he fumbled through a prayer to get the gloomy feelings out of his mind. He still hadn’t gotten the hang of this praying thing yet. He’d only been a Christian for about five days; not that he’d told anyone yet.

He couldn’t do this. There was no way.

Asher turned to leave when he heard a small sob coming from Rachel’s room. She was crying. Of course, she was. Why wouldn’t she be? She’d been through the wringer.

Taking a deep breath, he couldn’t just leave her there to cry alone. He plastered a smile on his face and opened the door.

****

Rachel wiped the tears away the instant she heard the door open. She didn’t want anyone to see her crying, to know she felt sorry for herself. When she saw it was Asher, she wiped them away faster.

Asher looked much better than she felt. His freshly shaven face had a few bruises on it, mostly around his cheeks, one little blue and purple one at his chin, and a small cut under his left eye. Nothing time wouldn’t heal. Nothing like, say, oh losing an appendage or two.

Asher sported the bed head look; she figured more from his hospital bed than from any styling product. When he walked toward her, she noticed he had a small limp, but other than that, he seemed fine. She knew he couldn’t really be — not emotionally anyway. How could he be after what they had been through? After all he had lost?

“Asher,” she said, trying to sit up. The tubes and blood pressure cuff made it difficult.

“Yeah, it’s me. Just lay still. No need to pull something important out,” he said, getting closer. His eyes were as wide as a deer’s in the headlights. It didn’t reassure her. What if he didn’t feel the same way about her now that they were back? She couldn’t blame him. Not after everything she’d taken from him.

“Oh, that’s why they gave me this.” She pointed to her nurse call button. “In case I get too big for my britches and try to do something stupid like… oh… move.”

“They know you so well.” He smiled, and sat down in the hospital grade, blue, squeaky chair beside her.

“Apparently. Does Carly know about all of this?” She wondered where her best friend was. She’d give anything to see her and talk to her. It would be nice to get her feelings out. Then again, Carly loved Sid even if they were on the outs. Maybe Carly hated her for killing Sid like Asher did.

“Yeah, she was here until yesterday, actually. Her dad made her go home for some kind of Thanksgiving thing.”

“I slept through Thanksgiving?”

“No… no. Today is Sunday. Thanksgiving is Thursday. But her family was having it early.”

“Ah.” As much as she was for family functions, she missed her friend. Maybe she’d call her later, if she felt up to it. She needed to apologize for her role in Sid’s death.

“So,” he said. “How long have you been awake?”

“Not long. Maybe an hour, I think. I don’t know. Everything feels funny.”

“Understandable. You’ve been through a lot.”

“How are you?” she asked, wanting to take the focus off of her. She didn’t deserve to talk about herself.

He shrugged. “I’m fine. A few cuts. Few scrapes. I had a little bit of frostbite on my fingers, but they were able to take care of it before it got too bad.” He looked down at her feet, well, her foot. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean — to bring that up.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine.” She tried to reassure him. No need for him to feel guilty for that. “It’s good they saved your fingers. My toes were just too far gone, or so they tell me.”

“I never should have made you walk in just your sock. How stupid could a person be?”

“You’re not stupid.”

“I meant you,” he said, shocking her. She hadn’t expected that. Her mom had been treating her so fragile: Asher, not so much. “Why didn’t you tell me how bad it was hurt? I kept asking. I could have helped you more.”

“I didn’t want you to help me,” she said, her voice raised. “I wanted to do it myself. I wanted—”

“God to help you.”

“Yes, Asher! I wanted God to help me. I trusted Him to help me — to help us. I prayed so hard, and sure, it happened. We got out of the woods, but Sid didn’t. And I’m like this. I’m so angry about it all — about Sid, about my toes, about everything I did; and everything God didn’t do. I still love God with my whole heart, but I do not understand any of this.” Tears rolled down her cheeks before she realized she was crying. She turned her head away from Asher, not wanting him to see, and wished he’d just leave. Some reunion this had turned out to be.

“God did help you,” Asher’s voice was compassionate, and he surprised her again by wiping her tears from her cheeks.

“You don’t believe in God.”

“I said that God didn’t believe in me. But I think that…”

“What?” What could he possibly have to tell her about God?

He acted like he couldn’t find the words, as if they were glued to his tongue and couldn’t come out.

“Did something happen I don’t know about?” she asked.

Asher opened his mouth, and then closed it. Instead he smiled and patted her shoulder. “I’ll tell you all about it later. On our date.”

“Our date?”

“You don’t remember? I’m hurt.”

“I have a traumatic brain injury. I’m excused.”

“You’ll use that excuse from now until the end of time, won’t you?”

She shrugged, then wished she hadn’t. Every muscle she had was sore. “Oh,
that
date. The one we planned when we were starved and dehydrated?”

“That’s the one.” His smile almost made her forget everything. “When can I pick you up?”

“Asher, don’t do this. You don’t have to take me out to prove anything to me. I won’t think less of you.”

“Hey,” he placed his fingers gently under her chin and turned her face toward him, “I’m not proving anything. I want to go on a date with you, if you still want to go with me.”

All Rachel could do was stare. How could he still have feelings for her? “How can you still want to go out with me after what I did to Sid? You should hate me.” Her lip quivered. She even hated herself for causing Sid’s death.

“You didn’t kill Sid, Rachel. The snake did, the elements did, God did. He decided that Sid’s time was up, and that was that.”

She wondered if he was as together on the inside as he portrayed on the outside.

“I heard David say that once. Didn’t think it would ever apply to Sid though.”

“Oh no, David.” She’d forgotten all about David and how he had to be dealing with his little brother’s death.

“Calm down, Rachel. David won’t blame you.”

“He should.”

“No, he shouldn’t. Would you stop saying that, girl! Listen to me. No, you shouldn’t have gone off the trail, but that doesn’t make you a murderer. It doesn’t mean that everything that happened after that point was your fault. You told me yourself that you didn’t even want to go on the trip. That your mom made you, right?”

She nodded slowly. Any big movements made the room spin.

“So is it your mom’s fault Sidney’s dead? No, no more than it’s yours. David won’t blame you. I don’t blame you. God doesn’t blame you. So please, please stop blaming yourself.”

Rachel couldn’t breathe. How could she not blame herself for what happened to Sid? Her heart monitors picked up on her panic and started beeping faster.

“Whoa,” he said, looking up at the squiggly lines. “I didn’t know my presence would cause your heart to flutter so fast.”

“Don’t,” she said, barely able to breathe. She didn’t know what was happening. Was she dying? Payback for killing Sid? Her chest hurt, and the room started to turn black again. She didn’t want to pass out but didn’t know if she could stop it.

“Rachel, I think you’re having a panic attack. Calm down. Breathe.” She heard him speak and tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. All she could do was grab at her chest to try to pull whatever weight holding it down off.

Asher sounded so far away. She couldn’t even make out his words anymore. Her breathing became shallow, and she wanted nothing more than to run away.

A few seconds later, light shined in the darkness. Her bed fell back, and people she didn’t know surrounded her. She couldn’t tell what they were doing, and she didn’t care as long as they got that heavy weight off of her chest.

Someone gripped her hand, and she clutched it hard. It felt comforting to have someone to hold on to. Like she wasn’t alone.

Asher hadn’t left.

That made her heaviness ease somewhat, but it was still hard to breathe. She looked over to Asher, using him as an anchor to keep her conscious.

But it wasn’t Asher holding her hand. It was her mom. “It’s okay, baby. Take it easy. It will be okay. I promise.”

Rachel let go and let the darkness take her. Asher was gone. Of course he was. Why wouldn’t he be?

****

He ran.

When the monitors went off and the nurses rushed in, he ran out of the door, and down the hall until he’d found himself in the dimly-lit chapel. The walls were a deep red, which matched the carpet. Six pews, three on each side, filled the space. On the altar at the front of the room sat a wooden cross. A few candles burned under it.

Asher paced up and down the aisle, running his fingers through his hair, then clasping his fingers behind his head. How could he have run like that? He felt like such a coward, but there was no way he could stay there and watch that.

Rachel had been yelling, having some sort of panic attack; and he couldn’t help her. The nurses were there and could take care of her, right? They were trained. He wasn’t. He was just in the way.

“Asher?” he heard from the doorway. He turned toward the voice and for a second, stopped pacing.

“David. What are you doin’ here?” His jaw clenched, seeing Sidney’s brother. David looked different than he had a week ago. Black circles lay under his eyes. His hair looked as if he’d given a half-hearted effort to style it, but it still was messy. He looked like a man who hadn’t eaten in a few days and probably wouldn’t for more to come.

“I came to see you and Rachel and saw you running in here. Is everything all right? Is Rachel de…”

“No,” Asher cut him off. “No, she’s not, at least not the last time I saw her. But man, she looked bad. She kept saying she couldn’t breathe and everything was blurry. The nurses came in. They’re working on her right now.”

“Oh man,” David said, sitting down in the back pew. “I hoped when she woke up everything would be better.”

“Nothing is better,” Asher spat. His feet couldn’t stay still any longer, and he started pacing again. “Nothing. Nothing is right. None of this was supposed to happen.”

“Obviously it was,” David said. “Or it wouldn’t have.”

“That’s pretty much what I told Rachel, but I’m having a really hard time with it. You can’t really believe that, can you, David? Cut the God crap for two seconds. None of this is right.”

“Look, Asher. I get it, okay? You don’t have to rub my nose in it. You don’t believe in God. I get it—”

“No!” Asher yelled, surprising himself. Even David flinched. “I do believe in Him, David. I prayed while I was up on that mountain. I prayed for God to save Rachel when she was dying, and I prayed for Him to save me too.”

“You did what?”

“Yeah, I did it. Asher Jenkins got saved, and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.”

As Asher paced back toward the doors of the chapel, he could see David staring down at the floor. There, he told someone. He didn’t feel any better about it though.

“I’m glad— I’m glad you got saved,” David said finally. “That’s great.”

“Yeah, it’s terrific. Now what, exactly, am I supposed to do with it? I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know how to help Rachel. I feel more helpless than I did before.”

“Asher, stop pacing and sit down… please,” he added when Asher didn’t stop right away.

Asher bit his bottom lip hard enough for it to sting, then turned and went back to David. He slammed down beside him, his hands clasped in his lap. “I don’t know what to do,” he said again. “I can’t help her. I couldn’t help… him.”

“Sid knew you loved him.” David’s voice cracked when he said his brother’s name. His posture mimicked Asher’s, slumped over with his hands in his lap. “You didn’t cause him to die.”

“I know I didn’t. Rachel blames herself.”

“And I’ll tell her the same thing when I see her. What happened… it’s neither of your faults.”

“It’s not yours either, David,” Asher said. He didn’t want David to think that anyone blamed him since he was the one who planned the trip in the first place. There were times on the mountain when he blamed David for the mess they were in, but it was no more David’s fault than Rachel’s.

“Oh, if any human could be blamed it should be me. I was in charge.” He hung his head.

“Don’t—”

“And I have to live with it. Just like Rachel does. We all have things in our lives we wish we could take back. But—” David hesitated as if trying to find the right words. Asher wondered, in a situation like this, what the right words would be or if they even existed. “But everything that happened was for a reason.”