Betrayed by My Fiancé: Left Pregnant in the Rainforest novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Seven Days

Lost for a week with a broken ankle, Hannah survives rain, hunger and a black bear until an old man in a blue pickup finds her, then sees the post Jared wrote the day after he left her.

I didn't wait to find out what it was.

I ran.

Away from the sound, across the ditch and into the ferns.

There was a gap between two trunks that looked like a path.

A service trail, I thought. Something the rangers used.

I followed it with my hands out in front of me.

When I finally stopped and turned around, there was no road behind me.

There was only black, and rain, and the smell of wet bark.

I sat down against a log and held my stomach and didn't sleep.

Sometime before dawn I stood up to find the road again.

My boot caught on a root.

My ankle turned all the way over, and I heard it before I felt it.

Then I felt it.

I went down so hard the world went white for a second.

"God, God, God."

I bit my sleeve so I wouldn't scream.

When it was light enough to see, my ankle had swollen up against the leather of my boot.

I couldn't think about the pain.

I couldn't think about Jared.

I couldn't think about Alyssa crying about paint.

Water first.

Then somewhere dry.

Then food.

Then the baby.

I caught rain in big leaves by the creek and drank from my cupped hands.

On the second day I found a clearing with salmonberry bushes along one side.

My dad used to take me hiking near Spokane every summer, and he taught me which berries were safe.

I ate only the ones I knew.

By the third day I'd stopped listening for his engine, and I'd stopped crying, because crying used water.

Every few hours I pressed my palm flat against my belly and waited.

Sometimes there was nothing.

Sometimes there was a tiny flutter.

"I'm sorry," I told her.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

It turned into a kind of prayer.

On the fifth morning a branch cracked.

I went still.

Another crack.

Something was coming through the ferns about twenty yards off.

Then I saw fur.

Black, wet fur, shining in the gray light.

A black bear walked out between the trees and put its nose down in the moss.

I put both hands over my mouth.

Don't run.

My dad's voice.

Don't scream. Don't run. Get big or get high.

The bear stopped.

Its head came up.

My heart was so loud I was sure it could hear it.

The bear took three slow steps my way.

There was a fallen cedar behind me, propped up on its own roots.

I backed onto it one foot at a time.

My ankle screamed.

I kept going.

I dug my fingers into the wet bark and pulled myself up the trunk.

A fingernail tore back.

Then another.

I climbed anyway.

Blood ran down my wrists with the rain.

Below me the bear snuffled around the roots.

I pressed my forehead into the bark and didn't move for a very long time.

At last it lost interest and wandered off into the mist.

When I looked at my hands, three nails were split down past the quick.

My palms were raw.

And out of nowhere I thought of Alyssa on the speakerphone, sobbing about paint on her door.

He'd left me out here for that.

He had looked at the woman carrying his child, and he'd chosen paint.

Something in me went very quiet up on that log.

I wasn't broken.

I was done.

On the seventh day I heard an engine.

I thought I'd made it up.

An old blue Ford pickup was crawling along a gravel road maybe fifty yards below the ridge.

I half fell down the slope toward it.

"Wait!"

It came out as a croak.

"Please!"

I waved both arms.

The truck kept rolling.

I ran on the bad ankle, and it folded, and I kept going.

"STOP!"

The brake lights flashed red.

The truck stopped.

A man in a green rain jacket climbed down from the cab.

He was older, maybe seventy, with a gray buzz cut and a face like a walnut.

He took one look at me and said, "Jesus Christ."

My knees went.

He caught me before I hit the gravel.

"Ma'am. Ma'am, where are you hurt?"

"I need to get to Seattle."

"You need a hospital."

"Seattle," I said again.

His eyes dropped to my stomach.

"You're pregnant."

"Five months."

His face changed.

"Who left you out here?"

I looked back at the trees.

Seven days of mud and cold and hunger.

"Someone who said he loved me."

He didn't say anything.

He put his own coat over my shoulders and lifted me into the cab.

His name was Ray Ridley. He'd worked on the park road crew for thirty-one years, and he still came out to clear storm debris.

He gave me a bottle of water and a sleeve of crackers.

When we hit the highway, his phone buzzed against the dash.

"Signal," he said. "Give me your name. I'll call it in. They'll have people looking for you."

"Hannah Ostrom."

He typed it with one thumb at a stop sign.

Then he stopped typing.

"Nobody's looking for you," he said slowly.

He turned the phone toward me.

It was Jared's account.

The post was from October 11, the morning after the road.

A photo of him with his arm around Alyssa outside her salon. The red paint on the door behind them.

"Hannah has decided to leave. Please respect her privacy while she gets the help she needs."

Two thousand people had liked it.

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