Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [99]
But for all the physical signs of my body’s dire need for hydration, nothing, nothing compares to the anguish of my thirst: unslakable…unquenchable…unsatisfiable…insuppressible…inextinguishable.
I find myself wishing to get this all over with simply to bring relief to the thirst. As my end comes, it will be in cardiovascular collapse, but I wonder if the thirst won’t take care of the job first.
Two hours later, it is five A.M., and time for my hourly water ritual. I place the water bottle in my crotch and again single-handedly unscrew the lid. I ease my legs’ grip on the bottle and begin to raise it to my mouth. But the lid unexpectedly snags on my harness, and the bottle slips, falling to my lap. My sluggish brain responds too slowly for my hand to catch the bottle before it tilts almost horizontal, and a splash of the sacrament darkens my tan shorts, turning the red dust to a patina of shining mud.
Fuck a nut, Aron. Pay attention! Look what you did!
Water is time. With that spill, how many hours did I just lose? Maybe six hours, maybe ten hours, maybe half a day? The mistake hits my morale like a train, destroying my protective walls of discipline and meticulousness that had been keeping despair at bay. Regardless of what I thought earlier, losing half of my remaining supply of water makes me realize how psychologically attached to it I am. Even if I have so little water left that, physiologically speaking, I might as well not have any, emotionally, I feel like I’ve given away half of the rest of my life.
I have been shivering in my wrappings, with my head in my rope bag, trying to push away the nagging cold, when I hear a shout in my sleep-deprived brain. It is just after six-fifteen A.M., Tuesday.
“Larry!” My mom yells out my dad’s name. I see her in her bathrobe, bolting downstairs from their bedroom to tell my dad some terrible news she has just received. The image ends before I see her reach my dad. Different from a memory or a dream, the clip was more like a TV set involuntarily switched on in my mind, broadcasting from my parents’ house. Was it something that already happened? Or a premonition of something yet to come? Either way, I’m fairly sure that I am the reason my mom was rushing to my dad. But was it to say she found out I’m in trouble, or that I’m found, or that I’m dead? It could have been anything.
Gradually, light resurrects the dimensions of the canyon, and I feel buoyed by the knowledge that I’ve survived another night. Now that there’s enough visibility, I decide to update the record of my situation with another round of talking to my video camera.
Wiping at my left eye, I smear my hand across my brow and face, then sigh. I check the framing to make sure I’m at least partially on-screen, but I avoid looking at the camera as I talk.
“It’s six-forty-five in the morning on Tuesday morning,” I repeat to myself.
“I figure by now that Leona has missed me, hopefully, since I didn’t show up at the party last night. Another hour and a half, they’ll miss me for not showing up for work. I keep thinking about it. My best-case scenario is that maybe they notify the police, and they put ’em on a twenty-four-hour hold to officially file a report, a missing person’s report. Which makes it, like, maybe noon tomorrow that it even gets official that I’m gone.”
My frustration mounts, and I’m on the verge of tearing up. “Goddamn. It’s really sinking in, how dumb this is. So many things about it. So many things. It