Pathways - Jeri Taylor [44]
When he was fourteen, his life took an unpredictable turn that changed it forever.
“How much farther is it?” asked Harry, breathing heavily and perspiring in the hot August sun. The cloth he had knotted around his head was already damp.
“Not too far now,” replied his father, marching ahead of him on the foot trail, with pencils, charcoals, and sketch pad carried in a pack on his back. They had been hiking for almost two hours in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Harry was secretly wishing he hadn’t agreed to accompany his father on this expedition, though he would never have said so because such a statement might hurt John Kim’s feelings. Harry’s feelings had always been treated with delicacy and caring, and he tended to respond in kind.
“It’s a long hike, I know,” John was saying, “but you’ll agree it’s worth it when you see this little lake. I don’t think most people even know it’s there. It’s off the hiking trail and so small it’s not on most maps. But it’s the prettiest spot I’ve seen on this earth.”
Harry’s father had traveled extensively, and so this statement carried weight. Besides, Harry enjoyed his father’s company, and liked to see him sketch, even if the price was a long climb on a hot day. He carried his clarinet in his day pack, and looked forward to practicing on the shores of a jewel-like lake in the pine forests of the Sierra Nevadas.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached a ridgeline and John pointed downward. Below them nestled a pool of blue, completely surrounded by tall conifers. It seemed both magical and inviting, and Harry was glad he’d come along.
“That’s it, Harry,” said his father. “It’s only about a tenminute walk down to the lake. We can have lunch on the shore.”
He took one step and then disappeared from view as the trail collapsed beneath him.
It happened so quickly that it took a moment for Harry to absorb the event. He peered over the ridgeline and saw his father, far below him, tumbling downward, out of control, and finally slamming into a huge boulder and coming to a stop.
Then he didn’t move.
Harry’s throat constricted with fear and he looked around as though someone might have magically appeared to help. But he realized with awful clarity that he and his father were alone in this wilderness, and now his father was unconscious—or worse—at the bottom of a steep incline. Harry had to act.
He scrambled onto the trail past the point where it had collapsed and began hurrying down a long, snaking series of switchbacks, checking occasionally to see if his father had perhaps regained consciousness and was walking around, unharmed after all. But each time he peered downward, he saw the still form lying exactly as it had been since it had cracked against the boulder.
It seemed to take forever to reach him, and Harry could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he maneuvered his way toward his still-prone father. Again, he looked around through the trees, wishing someone would suddenly appear in the woods, someone older, who would know what to do about an emergency like this. But the woods were empty.
Fearful, he hurried toward his father, mind scrambling to remember some of the emergency medical procedures he’d learned in school. Don’t move him, that was foremost. You could exacerbate a spinal injury by moving someone.
What else? First see if he’s breathing, if he has a pulse. Harry could see his father’s chest rising and falling, but he extended his fingers to check for a neck pulse, anyway, just to follow the procedure he’d been taught.
Okay, he was breathing. That was good. But his eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. He must have hit his head on the boulder against which he now lay. Maybe he had a concussion.
Now what? Harry felt panic rising in him as he mulled over his options. He could start running, back along the trail they had taken this morning, and summon help. But that would take hours, even if he could run the whole distance, which he doubted. And it would mean leaving his father alone out here, which he was