And then, mercifully, she passed out.
The next few hours were hazy. Someone from the campground had summoned a ranger, who found them on the beach. Stevie partially noted the conversation that went on, the questions about whether she could walk. She must have failed that test, because someone put her on a backboard and secured something around her neck. There was a strange journey through the woods, bumping along on a board held by two people who had appeared out of the ether. Then she was in an ambulance with Nate.
“The diary . . . ,” she said.
“Forget the diary,” he replied, shivering in his metallic blanket.
Everything hurt—a dull, allover ache that penetrated the depths of her bones. She kept trying to close her eyes, only to have a paramedic wake her and shine a light in them. Why wouldn’t anyone let her sleep? Maybe if she slept, she could read Sabrina’s diary in her dreams. . . .
The thing she was resting on suddenly popped up and she was wheeled into a bitterly cold and obscenely bright emergency room. She watched the ceiling tiles go by as she was wheeled along, watched the fluorescent lights, the signs over doorways. She was taken to a curtained compartment, where a nurse asked her questions like what her name was. People kept appearing, not looking urgent or alarmed, but refusing to let her be. They wanted to see her pupils, listen to her chest, move her arm . . .
That got a little scream.
She kept trying to close her eyes and recall Sabrina’s writing, hold the diary in her mind. But then she got something better. A face. That face, with the wide brown eyes and dark brown hair. Sabrina. She couldn’t quite see her, but she sensed her nearby, whispering something she couldn’t make out.
“Hold it right there, Stevie. You’re doing great.”
She opened her eyes to find that she was not speaking to Sabrina, but to a member of the hospital staff who was inserting her head into a massive machine. It was a brief stay, then she was removed.
God, this place was freezing. She shivered uncontrollably.
“I’ll have the nurse get you a blanket,” the person said.
Back out in the hall, a nurse came along with the promised blanket and tucked it around her.
“Is that too tight?” he said. “Do you want it loose?”
“Moose?”
“Loose.”
“I saw a moose once,” Stevie replied.
The nurse frowned, but she settled Stevie in and wheeled her to her next destination, which was the X-ray department. From there, she went to a small room where her left arm was put in a cast. Finally, her journey through the hospital complete, she was returned to the emergency room. For a few minutes, she was alone, then the curtain scraped back and Nate appeared, shuffling in in a voluminous pair of purple yoga pants and a Box Box fleece.
“Hey, stupid,” he said. “Let’s never do this again.”
He came closer, standing by the edge of her bed.
“You’re okay,” he said. “They think it’s mostly shock. They weren’t sure if you hit your head, so they’ve been watching you. You had a CAT scan. Do you remember?”
“Vaguely.”
“They think we were messing around and jumped off Point 23,” he said. “They think we’re two assholes. I didn’t explain that we jumped because someone shot at us. I thought about it—because someone shot at us. But we had broken into a house, so . . .”
Stevie nodded wearily.
“I told them to call Carson. Which is why I’m dressed like this. Since he owns the camp, he has access to all the parental consent forms our families had to sign and copies of our insurance information, stuff like that. And he’s irresponsible enough not to call our parents, so we might get out of this night in one piece.”