With the dead battery tucked into my shoulderbag (and about a dozen bruises pressed along the way) I was finally able to install the replacement. With all the pains, and in the total darkness, it took about- well I don’t know how long, but it was a lot more involved than it usually was. Mark was the watch-wearer in the group, without him, and having been unconscious twice already, I had no way of knowing what time it was. Did the Park already know if I was hurt? Was a crew on their way? Did Mark and Mary get help? How long did it even take for a rescue operation to get down here? These were questions only Mark could answer, so I steeled my nerves and clicked on the red light. I had to find him, if he was still here.
My eyes stung from even that dim light. The red glittered off the cloudy, still water like a thousand tiny sniper scopes pointed straight at my eyes. Strange. Lake Draconis was usually perfectly clear, deceptively clear even. When looking between the calcite rafts you couldn’t normally tell that the water was really 40-50 feet deep; the floor just looks like it’s right there. Now I couldn’t even see 4 or 5 feet in before the turbidity got too high. I squinted my eyes and instead looked up towards the vaulted ceiling of the Dragon’s Den (look, I didn’t name this shit, scientists are just like that sometimes). At least the air above Draconis was clear. The 30 feet of headspace didn’t have much, if any, dust, but there was a new and enormous crack in the ceiling. It stretched all the way from the hole down to the Peanut Butter Passage, all the way across Lake Draconis, and disappeared into the Boxwork Chimney behind me.
I was lying on a sloped pile of rocks. A lot of them were sharp, and I don’t think they were at the shore before. I felt hazy, like I was wading through my thoughts instead of them rushing over me. It took me a minute to recognize marking tape on the wall just above the rocks. I was all the way over by The Bay, more than 10 feet from the chimney. I might have been over here when the shaking hit, but I’d say the betting money is that I was closer to the chimney, something happened up there, rocks fell, and I got “lucky” enough to ride a rockslide over.
Eventually, I had to look. I forced myself to sit up, doing the hardest abdominal crunch of my life. I checked my feet first. I couldn’t really check with the thick boots on, but those at least weren’t punctured or crushed. They looked scuffed, and absolutely covered in dust, but relatively undamaged. My jeans up to my knees looked fine too, a little roughed up by the stones, but pretty okay. The thighs were a different story. I must have fallen front first- or got some super rough rock caught between my legs. The inside of my thighs were a dark black in the pure red light. A patch on each leg about 5 inches wide was ripped from my jeans, and my skin had a good raspberry on each. It didn’t look too deep but stung like a bitch.
Then I saw my right arm. My eyes couldn’t reconcile what I saw at first. I mean, I knew what I saw, but my foggy brain couldn’t compute it. A 4-inch blade of broken boxwork calcite was sprouting from my forearm. When the sight sludged its way through my brain I started hyperventilating again. I saw my muscles tense and a small drop of blood ooze out at the base of the blade. I had to calm down. Pumping more blood would just kill me faster. I had to think, stupid.
It didn’t help. I panicked. I cried. I dry heaved. It must have been at least an hour, maybe a year. I tried to calm down, I tried doubling numbers to distract from the sight, but it was all some fucked up joke. All I could actually do was watch my life slowly leak down my arm. Eventually, I had no energy left to panic with. My tears dried and I slowly came back to myself.
“Right. Okay.” At this point, that dagger was all that was keeping me alive. If I just pulled it out I’d probably go into shock and bleed to death in a few minutes at best. Right now it was blocking most of the blood from leaking out. I was still alive; that was good. I had a light and helmet on my head; that was good. My pack looked undamaged, which means the medkit inside would probably be okay; that was very good.
At some point in my panic, I had crawled from the damp rocks filling the dish of The Bay to a flatter part of the shore and set my shoulder bag down. In moving I found I was super dizzy, probably concussed from whatever cracked my helmet. My left arm looked okay, and the rest of me was just bruised.
I dug into my shoulder bag and carefully pulled out my clamshell medkit. Mark insisted we all carry at least a small one. I reached back in and pulled out my flat pack of duct tape, one of my rags, and an empty water cube (or, when needed, a piss cube). My turbidity meter, tortillas, and multimeter came out too, but I stuffed them back in. Trying to keep my injured arm level and unflexed, I popped open the medkit with ol’ lefty. I hadn’t really looked at it back on the surface. I mean, it’s not like I’m trained in first aid anyway, and besides, nobody ever got more than a skinned elbow on one of these trips.
I stared at the contents for a good five minutes trying to identify them. I had a few bandaids, a roll of gauze, some iodine, a few packs of small gauze squares, a spray bottle of antiseptic, and a dark roll of tape (I still had the red light on, so who knows what color it was). Okay, that’s not bad, is it? I have no idea what the iodine is for, but the rest of this seems familiar, even to me.
I sat a few feet from the lake and thought through my stock. On TV they always talk about irrigating the wound. Why was that again? Was it just so they could see the cut or were they trying to get bits out? They probably used DI water, but surely some alcohol would be enough right? I scooted closer to Draconis, and carefully lowered the once-and-future-piss-bottle into it. I held it up to the lamp on my helmet. The water was cloudier than it normally was. Would that make it worse?
No. No it should be fine, right? That dust probably filled the whole room when the rocks fell and had just settled to the nearest surface. That probably included my lungs, my eyes, and my gaping hole of a wrist. The walls were mostly calcite anyway, literally just a normal antacid, so if it hadn’t killed me yet a little bit in the water probably wouldn’t either.
“Then again…” I said as I looked back at the giant shard of antacid currently sticking out of my arm. The words felt wrong, like I was hearing them from three feet higher than where they were spoken. I shook my head. It didn’t clear, and my ears stayed high above my head.
“Bro you are fucked up,” I heard myself say.
Okay. I’ve got to fix my arm. I don’t need my ears for that. If I can just get taped up, I can go sit and wait for Mark to come get me. Yeah. They’re probably back to Buffalo Gap by now. I can do this. I can last half a day.
I rinsed my left hand with the water bottle, shaking it onto the palm with a jerking motion. I wiped the wet blood and dust on the inside of my shirt. I rinsed until my left hand looked clean. Then, without thinking, I moved my right hand to pick up the antiseptic. My arm screamed from the turn, and I had to focus on breathing for several minutes just to calm back down. That was stupid.
Using my left hand, I picked up the antiseptic and popped off the cap, cursing as it fell to the floor and plopped into Draconis. I looked back and forth between my ruined hand, my hand holding the spray, and the lid in the water. I made this loop maybe a dozen times, feeling tears well in my eyes. It’s weird what can set you off in this sort of situation. Out of everything so far, that quiet plop broke me the most. I laid down and sniffled, tears running down my temples and pooling in my ears. I couldn’t even do this one thing right. I couldn’t even wash my fucking hand. How the fuck am I supposed to fix my own arm. Where the fuck was the rescue crew? Hadn’t I hurt for long enough?
I shook, and cried, and cursed for what felt like hours, the blade still stuck in my arm. Eventually, kicking the floor beneath me in pathetic tantrum #4, I jostled the rock, digging it around in my wound. The pain, and the feeling of muscles fibers and veins moving, snapped me back into focus.
Yes, I was fucked, I’d probably die before anyone got here. But if I’m going to die anyway, I might as well make it a few more hours. Maybe long enough to pick a god or something, I don’t know. Whatever happened, I was not going to die with that rock in my arm.
I picked up the bottle and sprayed the antiseptic onto my left palm a few times, set it down, and spread the alcohol around on my fingers as best I could. Tiny pinpricks of fire piped up when the alcohol touched them, a reminder that even my “good” hand was still pretty rough.
Using my now “clean” hand, I unsealed the big roll of gauze and started pulling it apart. You’re supposed to stuff these types of wounds, right? I unrolled the whole pack and ripped open three of the small squares of gauze. Using my teeth, I ripped off a few strips of medical tape and carefully arranged them on the perimeters of two of the squares. Then I took out a few lengths of duct tape and did the same with my rag. I spritzed all the bandage bits with antiseptic; might as well, right?
Okay, all my mise are en place: antiseptic, water, and bandages lined up on the lake shore. I used my teeth to undo the strap on my left elbow pad and shook it off. I lifted my right arm slightly and gently put it on as even a surface as I could make with the pad. Then, grimacing, I gripped the boxwork shard tightly, slowly breathed out while counting in my head, and yanked. The stone didn’t even make it an inch above my wound before it clattered on the stone. My scream sounded a thousand yards away, but I forced myself to grab the spray. No matter what, I’d want some of this in there. I spritzed the hole and forced myself to lean in close. Dark fire licked at the edges of my vision as the poison dehydrated and dissolved through my cell membranes, but I forced my watering eyes to focus and saw tiny shards of dirt and rock in there. I wish I didn’t have to, but, hoping the dust had settled a bit, I poured the water in the hole.
Strangely, the water of Draconis soothed the pain; not just the burning from the alcohol, but the pain of the hole itself was deadened. I cleared the gash and poured more of the cold water in. Again, the pain subsided immensely, like Draconis itself was apologizing for how I’d been hurt.
I washed it out two more times, the pain diminishing to the point that my arm stopped spasming. The wound was still deep, and I was still bleeding, but I wasn’t spurting anything any more. The frigid water must have numbed the wound and cleared my head. I emptied the gash one last time then pushed the untaped square of gauze into the wound, trying to dry out the cave’s water. I don’t know, I guess I figured the less water was in there the better the antiseptic would work. Immediately the pain rushed back. I gasped at how hard and fast it hit me. There’s no way the gauze was rough or warm enough to undo the numbing. I saw my hand start to shake. There was too much. The gauze blackened and a line of dark liquid slid down my arm. This was all too much. I looked around wildly for help, for Mary, or Mark, or fuck, even my Mom. All I saw with my shaky red spotlight were the walls and the water. Desperate, my breaths starting to shake, I pulled with all my will and plunged my arm into the water as the flames extinguished my sight.