Ghosts of Florence Pass Read Online Free PDF Page A

hoped for the best regarding the two outside whatever the best outcome in this situation was.
    Parents are DOA, he said. What about the kids?
    The man assigned to the plane stepped outside and the plane rocked and creaked on the rocks with his shifting weight and he took his kit from inside and went to where his partner was. The partner was bent over the one that was lying on a sleeping pad by the canoe and the partner had placed a mask over his nose and mouth that was attached to a canister of gas and the partner had pulled the sleeping bag away that had covered him and was putting a needle into his arm.
    This one’s still with us, the partner said. But his vitals are weak. We’ve gotta move. The other one’s DOA.
    The man assigned to the plane looked at the one that was DOA and sitting up against the side of the plane. He saw that he was holding a metal bottle that was open and that he had a tourniquet around his leg and that his arm was broken with a compound fracture and he thought about what had happened and tried to comprehend it. He went to where they had set the litter on the snow by the upright and broken pontoon and he picked it up and carried it over to his partner and by then the one assigned to the plane had worked out that the one that was DOA and sitting against the plane had saved the life of the one that was still alive.
    Christ this is something isn’t it, he said.
    Hell of a thing, the partner said.
    Is he responsive?
    No, the partner said. The coma probably saved his life.
    Among other things.
    Among other things, the partner said.
    The partner looked at the one that was DOA and sitting against the plane for a moment and then he looked at the one that was still alive and went back to work on him and spoke to the man he had assigned to the plane in a low voice.
    You believe in ghosts?
    What?
    I asked if you believe in ghosts.
    The man assigned to the plane thought about that and said I guess a man has to believe in something now and then.
    The partner nodded and said that he concurred on the point.
    While the partner attached a bag of intravenous fluid to the needle he had inserted the man assigned to the plane saw that there were tears coming from the corners of the eyes of the one that was still alive and they were running down the side of his face and then he sat back on his heels and said oh fuck.
    The partner wiped away David’s tears with the sleeve of a shirt that John Parker had put under his brother’s head for use as a pillow. He was finished with his work of connecting the intravenous fluid and they were ready to put David on the litter and carry him to the helicopter but they didn’t. Instead the partner looked at the man he had assigned to the plane and shook his head and the two rescuers looked in silence at each other for some time. As if in shock from thinking about what had happened on the mountain where John Parker and his mother and father and a pilot who was drunk had died.

 
    Also by Brian J. Anderson:
    The Ascent of PJ Marshall
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