They Left Me Behind on the Road Trip, So I Got on a Better Ride novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: They Left Me Too

Her eyes opened again after a terrifying pause.

It felt like the longest moment of my life.

"Don't you dare," Dot said, to both of us. "Don't you dare call anybody."

I was already calling.

Sawyer knelt in the dirt beside her with two fingers on her wrist, counting under his breath, his lips moving.

"It's fast," he said. "It's very fast. And it keeps skipping."

"It does that," Dot said. "It's showing off too."

A hiker with a first-aid kit came down the trail. Then a ranger. Then two more rangers with a wheeled litter.

Dot complained the whole way down.

She complained about the litter, and the straps, and a ranger's hat, and the fact that nobody would let her keep her own hat on.

I carried it. The red felt was damp with sweat.

The ambulance took her to the hospital in St. George.

Sawyer rode with her. I followed in the Audi, driving it very carefully, under the speed limit, my hands sweating on the wheel.

The emergency room was bright and cold.

They took her through two doors, and then they took Sawyer through them too.

I sat in a plastic chair holding her hat in my lap for an hour and forty minutes.

When a doctor finally came out, Sawyer was with him.

"She's dehydrated," the doctor said. "And it's an arrhythmia flare. Her cardiologist in Denver has already sent over her records. We'll keep her overnight on fluids and a drip."

"Then what?"

"Then two days of rest. No hiking. No heat. After that, if her rhythm settles, she can travel by car." He looked at Sawyer. "Not on a trail."

"Thank you," Sawyer said.

The doctor went back through the doors.

Sawyer turned to me.

His tie was crooked. His face was white and hard, and there was a smear of trail dust across his cheek.

"Why did you let her go up that trail?"

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