Blackout

Chapter 18

Imaia Island

Max

Present

I soon realized there were two types of people in this world.

The ones that never got lost and the ones that couldn’t help but to get lost. It should have bothered me the fact I belonged  to the second classification, but at the time I was too busy trying to read a f*****g map to care much about anything else. I squinted at the blue lines marking the road we were driving through and pushed the map closer to my eyes, to be completely sure what I was looking at.

“It appears as if we should have seen a right curve somewhere,” I said to the guys in the front and Rosie groaned.

“We had been driving for hours and we hadn’t seen a single thing in this rain. I vote for stopping the car, sleeping for a couple of hours and going back to the road at dawn,”  it made sense to wait until daylight but we risked the chance of getting stuck in the mud if we parked our car for too long. Not to mention, time was of essence and we needed to save enough gas to reach our destination and get back. 

“I’m not stopping until we reach that damned clinic,” said Nathan and Rosie looked over at him with a frown.

“Why not?”

“I’m hating every second of this trip, so excuse me for trying to be done with it as fast as I can,” I smirked, still trying to make sense of where exactly we were supposed to see a right turn. Was it 10 km ago? How much was that in miles? Callan said I needed to multiply...Wait. Oh God, why did everything make me think back on Callan? Was it possible that even lost in the middle of a hurricane I could be thinking about him?

“Hold tight ladies!” exclaimed Nathan, holding the steering wheel harder, “Those cars are coming on us at full speed!”

I looked up from the map and saw three large humvees passing us in the opposite way. Military rovers with huge tires and powerful headlights. Man, they were going fast, like bats out of Hell. I would love to be so sure where I was going that I could hit the gas like that. It was still a mystery how anyone could see the road in this weather though. I tapped Nathan’s shoulder, watching him brace the steering wheel and drive with his eyes narrowed. 

“How are you holding on Nathan?”

“This is by far the worst night of my life,”he said right off the bat, making me smile.

“Yeah, mine too.”

“Me three,” said Rosie, jumping on her seat suddenly and slamming her palm against the window, “Right turn! Right turn! Right turn!”

“Aww s**t! s**t! s**t!” Nathan pushed the steering wheel to the right and we all got suspended in the air while we zoomed through a gravel road and irregular terrain. I bumped my head against the roof of the car and Rosie cursed when she hit her shoulder against the window. It felt like an entire lifetime passed between the moment Rosie found the right turn to the moment Natahan managed to push the car back to the main road.

“Is everyone okay?” asked Nathan and we all nodded between grunts and murmuring affirmatives. I groaned on my seat, nursing a sensitive spot at the top of my head and staring at the map on my knees. Where did that turn come from? I swear I was sure we had passed it. I narrowed my eyes trying to see under the dim light of my flashlight the details of the map.

“I have no idea where the hell we are,” I informed our group and Rosie exhaled a long sigh by the front  seat.

“And I have no idea if I need a hug, ten shots of vodka or two months of sleep,” she said over her shoulder to me. Nathan nodded, eyes narrowed on the road, but slowly he pushed a fist up and they both bumped fist making me smile.

“At least we are all lost together,” I offered them as a cheap consolation prize and they both started shaking their heads at me.

“We are in this because of you!” said Nathan, lifting a finger in the air, “you already volunteered once Max! Why did you have to volunteer twice? This is not what doctors and nurses do. We save lives in comfortable rooms where there are no maps to read, nor hurricanes trying to blow us into the sky and definitely no bumpy roads that end suddenly...Aww s**t! s**t! s**t!” we all screamed at once. The lights of the car brightened the end of the muddy road and a dark, very dangerous cliff  appeared right in front of us, exactly where we were heading. Nathan slammed on the brakes and we were all catapulted by the inertia to the front. The car halted sideways, with the back tires an inch shy of being in the open air. 

For a second, no one said a word. Rosie had her arms covering her head, and Nathan was holding the steering wheel so hard that I could see his arms trembling from the exertion. They both looked at me, their eyes opened wide and circular, and their jaws dropped in shock. My flashlight had rolled over the floor all the way to the side, brightening the right door that opened to the cliff. I swallowed, feeling my entire body go tense when I stared down at the black precipice by our side. It looked to me like a wide, dark mouth, waiting to snatch us in the air. I couldn’t see much under the rain but there were several feet of free falling and from that far up I couldn’t see what was at the bottom. Not that knowing what was at the bottom could help us relax, but I preferred if there was water down there rather than rocks. 

“What do we do?” whispered Nathan, as if the mere sound of his voice could unbalance the car and make us fall. I was about to advise us to move all at the same time and reach for the left doors when the car groaned, rolling further to the cliff. The entire metallic structure moved only a little but just that had us screaming again. I lifted both hands, ordering everybody to be quiet. Breathing slowly I moved gently, reaching for the radio phone I’d hooked to my belt. I pushed the on button and for a moment I only heard the static on the other side. I had no idea if this was going to work or not, but I had to try reaching out for someone that could help us.

“Hello? Is anybody there?...” Static was our only answer. Outside the rain had started falling harder and the sound of the wind hitting against the car managed to give me a bad case of gooseflesh. If we didn’t do something fast we were all going to die. Our car was almost all the way to the open fall and the terrain was too muddy. It was just a matter of time before we slipped. I took a deep breath and tried again, “Hello? My name is Max, can anybody hear us?”

A heartbeat later I heard a deep voice through the speaker. It was a voice I knew too well, deep and low, a baritone through and through. Just the sound of it made me feel ten times better. I closed my eyes, smiling against any logic. We were about to die, there was a hurricane literally pushing us down a precipice and still the sound of Callan’s voice made me smile. It had been too long. Yeah, that was why I was smiling.

“This is Major Jameson, over. What is your location Dr. Cruz?” I opened my mouth and then smacked my lips, staring through the window to the dark cliff and the precipice behind it. Nathan and Rosie nodded for me to keep talking and I nodded back, pushing the phone closer to my mouth so he could hear me over the sound of the heavy rain.

“I’m with Nathan and Rosie,” I said, as if that could help us somehow. I rolled my eyes at myself and went with it, “we took a right turn somewhere down the main road and drove to a cliff. Half of the car is almost suspended in the air.”

“Copy that, over,” I heard static and then he spoke again sounding very calm and cool, as if we weren’t about to die at all, “Do you remember seeing anything before turning right?”

I shook my head and then frowned, remembering something, “We saw three military rovers passing by our side and after that we turned right.”

“I got your location,” he said right away, making me open my eyes very wide. How the hell could he tell where we were? We didn’t even know where the hell was that! Seriously, there were people in this world that knew where they were going and people like me that wouldn’t ever know. Callan kept talking to me as if we had all the time in the world, “Good to see you have kept yourself busy while I was away, Dr. Cruz.”

Nathan and Rosie stared back at each other with twin looks of amusement. Rosie even went as far as opening a hand and simulating the action of eating popcorn while we were just there, about to die and pass over. I couldn’t believe this situation. Right away I started getting angry, because the Lord knew I didn’t have the patience for Callan’s games right then, “I will take a-are you f*****g kidding me- at a time and ignore you, Major Jameson.”

“That’s more like it,” he said, smooth as Tennessee whiskey, “ I was starting to get worried for a second here. I thought you sounded a little scared a minute ago and needed my help, Dr. Cruz, but it’s nice to hear you are back.”

“You are about to exceed the limit of my coffee intake and nobody wants that Jameson,” I warned him and I swear I could hear his smile through the fragile phone connection. He clicked his tongue, the sound clear through the static.

“If that coffee tasted like cardboard I’m sorry to say that wasn’t coffee at all, doctor,” he said, making me smile.

“You are saying I was tricked into thinking I was in a good mood?” There was the sound of static and some other background noise I couldn’t place and then he was back, speaking to me calmly through the speakers. If men could feel like warm, cozy blankets then Callan was my own personal snuggie, keeping me grounded and steady.

“Hold that thought, beautiful,” I heard the sound of wind, car doors being opened and closed and then we all felt the clicks of metal against the front of our car. Neither of us dared to move but a second later we were all propelled to the side, hard, the tires groaned against the mud. They were pushing us in, like pushing our entire car and us included, back to the road. Through the sound of the rain I heard Callan’s strong voice, “Hit the gas!”

Nathan acted fast, flooring the gas pedal and making the front wheels pull harder enough for us to gain more terrain. I looked back and, sure enough, we were moving to the front. Yes! Yes! We were being saved! Oh my God, we had almost died and...the car died suddenly and the whole weight of it fell on the back of the car, which wasn’t being lifted and had begun to fall due to the natural inclination of the cliff. I heard a gentle groan, something metallic, like the car losing momentum and then we were falling...fast.

The doors to our left opened fast. I saw by my peripherals Connor and Jordan giving orders to Nathan and Rosie. My heartbeat started to sound louder and louder in my ears. I swear that everything started happening slower around me, movements got blurry and sounds were distorted like a broken record. The car was going down, I could feel the heavy drag and how we were moving back inch by inch. My entire life passed before my eyes. From the moment I was born, to where my mom abandoned me, the arms of my grandma hugging me the day grandpa died, hard work in med school and then Callan. From all the images that passed before my eyes, the one face that stuck was Callan’s. 

I saw only him. Callan’s face when he saved my life. Callan smiling, right before kissing me. Callan’s amusement. The way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he thought that something I'd said was funny. And Callan right there, standing strong in the rain with his black clothes and his black baseball cap. He was saying something to me, words to reassure me that I would be fine and that I only needed to stay still and let him do his job. He asked me to nod if I was listening and I nodded, but I really wasn’t listening to him because I was too damn distracted contemplating one life-changing thought.

It might have taken one too many life-or-death situations to guide me to this revelation, but I was finally seeing things clearly. This was my thought while I was about to die. You might be sixteen, twenty-nine or sixty-four years old, but at some moment in your life you are going to find a person that is going to make you feel like you are really living. With one kiss they are going to tell you things they might not be able to say with words. Without knowing how, you two are going to slip into a pact to be reckless and passionate about the present. And the future will become irrelevant because true lovers live in the moment. And that’s sad, because true lovers are not always the ones with whom we spend our lives.

Callan was that person to me. The one that could make me feel alive and whole. If I had one more second to live, then I wanted to live it with him. This second was everlasting. This feeling was eternal and this man was real. I didn’t need anything else. Just him, right there and then, touching me.

I was falling to my death when I saw all the slow movements around me go faster and faster. It was as if somebody had hit play all of the sudden. The car started falling but Callan jumped after me, a climbing cord firmly secured to his belt. He reached me before the car could go airborne and hugged me tightly, maneuvering cords around my waist and fastening knots so fast that I couldn’t follow his movements with my eyes. The cord tensed and right away we were pulled back. I looked down and over my shoulder in time to see the car hit the base of the mountain we had been traveling through. The impact made the entire land structure shake and a gigantic explosion made the night look bright, as if it was the middle of the day. It was then that I realized how high we were suspended in the middle of the air and nausea kicked in. 

“Ay por Dios,” I snaked my arms around Callan’s neck and hid my face on his chest, closing my eyes hard and sending a thousand prayers to Jesus. Callan laughed under his breath, patting my head gently and then caressing my hair.

“I’m not going to let you fall, firecracker,” he said in my ear, and then whispered closely “Don’t worry, I’m not letting you die a virgin.”

I groaned but held on tighter, crossing my legs at his back and hugging myself to him so hard that I could feel every single one of his cordoned muscles. He chuckled, but hugged me too and for long minutes we were just like that, holding each other silently. It felt as if time hadn’t passed, as if he hadn’t been gone and I hadn’t made the decision to let him go. It was Callan, right there, with me and that was all that mattered. I felt Callan moving but I still didn’t move a muscle away from him and kept my eyes closed. I was planning on hugging every single one of those muscles until the world stopped moving and I couldn’t care for anything else.

Someone cleared his throat and I felt Callan push his face abruptly to the side. Frowning, I looked up to Callan and found him scowling at someone by our left. When I followed his eyes I realized we were surrounded by his men, together with Nathan and Rosie. The rain had diminished considerably so everyone could see us, hugging...especially me, holding him so tightly that the man could barely move. Nathan had been the one to clear his throat, I knew that because he seemed paler after Callan had sent him a murderous look.

“Sorry,” he said lamely, arching his eyebrows, “but we are kind of on a tight schedule here, remember Max? Prednisone? Albuterol? People dying? A hurricane?”

“Right,” I nodded, feeling my face blush so hard that it was a miracle my cheeks couldn’t start a fire. There I was, getting Koala style on Callan when people needed my help. The shame had me staring at my feet and praying for the land to swallow me up. I disentangled myself from Callan but he held my hand tightly, keeping me to his side before turning to Nathan looking all business like.

“Where were you headed?” he asked, already guiding me to one of the large military rovers. I noticed it was the same military convoy that had passed us on the road. That’s why he found us so fast! They had been only a couple of minutes away. Thank God for that. Callan sat me on the front seat of his car, fastening my seatbelt and then taking my face in his large hands. He inspected my face, presumably searching for any possible wounds before kissing the crown of my head and closing the door of the car. He exchanged some quick words with Nathan and then everyone was moving like a well tuned instrument. Jordan and Connor slipped in the back of our car and then Callan was taking the wheel. In a matter of seconds we were back on the road and this time I felt safe, as if nothing could possibly happen to me. And Callan was the one reason for me to feel like that.

In silence he took my hand and placed it on top of his muscular thigh.

I smiled and looked out of the window, to the dark storm raging outside.

My hand never left his thigh.