All That We Carried Page 23

  “If it started at a particular campsite and they can narrow down the time, it’s easy enough to figure out who stayed there and left a fire burning. As long as they registered.”

  “So at least justice could be served?”

  “Right. But that doesn’t get the trees back.”

  What’s done is done and can’t be undone.

  Someone had started a fire. Olivia had fallen off a cliff. Justin had killed her parents.

  None of them could be undone. All of them were accidents. If there was a God, he had allowed all of them to happen. Didn’t it follow then that he must have let them happen for a reason? That, as Olivia had said, he must have wanted their parents to die? Or even if he hadn’t arranged the accident specifically, that he hadn’t cared enough to keep them alive?

  Did he care enough about Olivia?

  Melanie leaned back and looked down at Olivia’s face, which was beginning to bruise beneath the abrasions. She didn’t believe in God. Certainly hadn’t believed in more than a decade. Yet, just a couple hours ago she had let slip that she was entertaining the notion. One day she was an atheist, the next she was questioning that. Why? What had changed?

  Olivia stirred beside her, tried to speak.

  “We’re almost to the hospital,” Melanie said.

  Olivia mumbled something.

  Melanie stroked her hand. “I can’t quite understand you.”

  “Josh,” Olivia managed.

  “He’s okay,” Melanie said. “He stayed to help find some missing hikers.” Hikers who might have been the ones to start the fire.

  “Josh,” Olivia said again.

  “He’s not here right now. I’m sure he’ll come by the hospital though. Just relax.”

  From the front seat Serena said, “We’re here.”

  The next several minutes were a blur of gurneys and nurses and doctors and questions Melanie couldn’t answer. What was Olivia’s blood type? Who was her primary care physician? Was she allergic to any medications? Had she had any previous serious injuries or surgeries? Melanie didn’t even know her sister’s current address—Olivia’s license, along with her insurance card, was in her pack in the middle of a forest fire.

  Melanie’s hand was cleaned and bandaged, and she was checked over for injuries and smoke inhalation. Then she waited as Olivia was poked, prodded, scanned, x-rayed, and sewn up. She haunted the front entrance, looking for Josh. She ate a garden salad from the hospital cafeteria. She texted Justin to let him know they were out of the woods and in Ontonagon in case he saw news about the fire and began to worry. Then she walked out to the parking lot to get her phone charger before she remembered that, of course, her car was still back in the gravel lot at the trailhead. She wanted to consult the map to see if her car was in the path of the fire, but she’d given it back to Olivia. Who knew where it was now? Probably at the bottom of a cliff.

  A couple hours later, a doctor updated her on Olivia’s injuries. A concussion, three cracked ribs, a fractured kneecap, multiple scrapes and abrasions, and a puncture wound just an inch away from her left lung.

  “That in itself is a miracle,” the doctor said. “As is the fact that she seems to have suffered no traumatic brain or spinal injury. But there’s something else you should know.”

  “What?”

  His face was grave. “Is there any family history of osteosarcoma? Bone cancer?”

  Melanie felt her stomach drop. “Our great-uncle died of bone cancer.”

  His frown deepened. “The nature of Olivia’s injuries concerns me. Anyone might crack a rib or two in that kind of accident. But the injuries to her legs are different. The patellar fracture—that’s the kneecap—is odd because she doesn’t remember hitting her knee during the fall.”

  “That wasn’t from the fall. Or, not from that fall. She tripped earlier and landed on her knee. But that was when we were rushing because of the fire, so maybe she didn’t remember it.”

  “Mmm. And the damage to her hip was not a result of anything during your hiking trip. It seems to have been giving her trouble for a while now, judging by the scar tissue there.”

  “She was limping. Even before the hike.”

  The doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Osteosarcoma is an aggressive cancer. If it’s caught early enough, the survival rate is around seventy percent. But if it spreads beyond that localized spot, the survival rate drops to thirty percent. I’m not certain she has it, but she needs to make an appointment with her primary care physician as soon as possible after she gets home. And that’s another thing. When she is cleared to leave, she can’t drive herself. I assume you can drive her?”

  “Of course,” Melanie said without a thought. She would drive Olivia to East Lansing even if it meant she’d have to hitchhike back home afterward.

  “And she is likely to need some help at home for a while. She won’t be walking right away. She’ll need the dressing on her wounds changed. Won’t be able to lift things, not even a gallon of milk.”

  Melanie nodded, letting the magnitude of the situation sink in.

  “Does she have a family?” he asked.

  “I’m her family.”

  He pursed his lips. “Could be a big job for one person.”

  “Whatever I need to do.”

  He stood up. Though she was physically and emotionally exhausted, Melanie followed suit.

  “Doctor . . . what do I tell her? About the cancer?”

  “Tell her she’s lucky she ended up in the hospital with a bunch of broken bones. Otherwise, it might have gone undetected until it was too late. Someone must be looking out for her.”

  twenty-nine

  OLIVIA OPENED HER EYES, then shut them again immediately. She had hoped she’d wake up in her bed at home. More than that, she didn’t want Melanie to realize she was awake. She wasn’t ready for inane questions like “How are you feeling?” and “Can I get you anything?” She wanted to be alone and quiet and just there. To revel in the joy of being there instead of not being anywhere. Instead of being dead, which she was sure she should have been.

  “Olivia?” came Melanie’s voice anyway. “Everything okay?”

  No, everything was clearly not okay. This stupid trip. Why did it have to be such a nice day when Melanie had called her? This never would have happened if it had been crappy and depressing like it was supposed to be in March.

  “Are you in any pain?”

  Where should she start? Her head throbbed, her side hurt, her arms stung, her hip ached, her knee felt like electrodes were being applied to it. The pain must have registered on her face, because Melanie left the room and came back with a nurse, who fiddled with an IV.

  “When can I leave?” Olivia asked the nurse.

  “Tomorrow morning, most likely.”

  “It’s not tomorrow yet?”

  The nurse smiled. “Not quite. Anyway, we can’t let you go until we’re satisfied that you won’t conk out on us, can we?”

  Olivia scoffed. “I just survived a forest fire and a fall off a cliff. Clearly I cannot be killed.”

  The nurse laughed, but Olivia knew what she’d just said was a smoke screen. Between the fire and the fall it was clear that if God was real, he was after her. She didn’t know what to do with that.

  “Any news about the fire?” she asked.

  The nurse hung in the doorway a moment. “There were some other people brought in—smoke inhalation—but I think they may already be gone.” She disappeared, off to some other patient.

  “I wonder if it was those three,” Olivia said. “Did Josh ever show up?”

  “If he did, I missed him,” Melanie said. “And it wasn’t because I wasn’t watching for him.”

  “Guess they need all the help they can get out there.”

  “News said they’ve got planes dumping water from the lake on it. And the coast guard is spraying it from boats. And it did start raining.”

  Melanie handed Olivia her nearly dead phone so she could read an article about the effor
ts to contain and extinguish the fire, which had burned through a swath of secondary-growth forest on the shoreline but had so far spared the old-growth hemlocks and pines. It was cautiously optimistic in tone, anticipating containment by the following day if the weather cooperated. Thinking of that cathedral of trees that had so unexpectedly moved her, Olivia felt like maybe she should pray they’d be unharmed. But really? Pray for trees? That was something she’d laugh at Melanie for doing. And did she really think anyone was listening? Or cared?

  Olivia rested the phone on her leg above the apparatus that was stabilizing her knee. “Hey, did anyone ever bring in my pack?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m just now realizing that it has my wallet and my car keys in it. I’m not going to get very far without those.”

  “Look at yourself. You think you can drive like that?”

  Olivia sighed. “How long is this thing supposed to be on?”

  “I don’t know. Weeks, probably. But I’ve figured out a way to get you home.”

  “How?”

  “I can get someone to meet us in Indian River so they can pick up my car there. Then I’ll drive you home in yours.”

  “And then how will you get home from there? Fly?”

  Melanie scooted closer. “Let’s not worry about that until the time comes.”

  “I think the time is coming tomorrow if that nurse is right.”

  Melanie took her hand in a motherly way.

  Olivia tugged it away. “That’s weird.”

  “Olivia!”

  “It is! It’s weird to grab my hand like I’m a six-year-old. Just say what you need to say.”

  Melanie crossed her arms. “Fine. The doctor told me you’d need help when you got home, so I’m going to stay with you and help you out.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a great idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you kidding? Think of everything we’ve argued about in the last few days. Do you really want more of that? Do you really think I’d be a good patient? I’ll be horrible and you’ll drive me crazy, and you know it.”

  “But you need help,” Melanie insisted.

  “Let’s let me be the judge of that, shall we?”

  “But—”

  “Ms. Greene?” came the nurse’s voice from the door.

  “Yes?” Olivia and Melanie answered in unison.

  The nurse chuckled. “I meant you, Miss Melanie. Can you come out here a moment?”

  Melanie stood up. “This conversation is not over.”

  “I can’t do even one more day of this, never mind weeks,” Olivia said aloud to the empty room when the door had shut.

  She swiped at Melanie’s phone still in her hand. The lock screen appeared. Olivia thought for half a second and then connected the dots to make an M. It didn’t work. She switched the phone over to her left hand and tried again, making the M backwards. Bingo. She began swiping back through Melanie’s photos. Several of various waterfalls and colorful fall leaves and mushrooms. The one from after Melanie fell in the river. The one where they were lost in the woods. One of the tent. Some of Olivia’s back as she led the hike. The one from the beginning of the trip at the Government Peak trailhead.

  But none of Josh.

  Melanie came back into the room carrying Olivia’s pack. “Special delivery.”

  “Who brought it?”

  “Serena.”

  “Who’s Serena?”

  “She’s the park ranger who brought us to the hospital earlier.”

  “Oh.” Why hadn’t Josh brought it? “Hey, did you not take any pictures with Josh in them?”

  “Huh? No, I took a picture of him.”

  Olivia waved Melanie’s phone at her. “I don’t think you did.”

  Melanie snatched the phone and started swiping furiously. “I know I did. I took a picture of him at those Overlooked Falls or whatever.” She swiped the other way. Slowly her face fell, and she sat down hard in the plastic chair next to the bed. “Where did it go?” She kept swiping, unwilling to give up.

  “Maybe something got messed up when the phone got wet. Or maybe you took it with my phone?” Olivia offered, even though she knew it was absurd. “Speaking of mine, can you get it out of my bag for me?”

  Melanie looked at first like she hadn’t heard her. Then she came to. “What?”

  “My phone. Can you get it for me? It’s in the right-hand pocket there.”

  Melanie did as directed, then settled back in the chair to swipe through her pictures once again. Olivia powered on her phone and blanched at all the notifications. Emails, appointments, task reminders. She had to be in court on Monday. She thought of the kinds of notifications Melanie would have after so long off the grid. Were people still sending positive thoughts to the man in the motorcycle accident? Were they still sharing the video of Melanie rescuing the turtle?

  She tried to imagine how Melanie would put a positive spin on their hiking trip for her blog. Wrong turns, lost trails, bear encounters, forest fire. A fall in a river and one off a cliff. Near-constant bickering. There was not one part of this ill-fated trip that was redeemable. Not one reason for it to have happened at all. A total waste of time, energy, and resources. It hadn’t really fixed anything fundamental in her relationship with her sister, despite Melanie’s best intentions and their conversation among the hemlock trees. It was a start, but not much more than that. It had not gotten Melanie to leave her alone as she’d hoped it would. Indeed, Melanie now seemed determined to move in with her for an indeterminate amount of time.

  “So,” Olivia said, “I’m happy to pay for your flight back if someone can pick you up at the Traverse City Airport and drive you back to Petoskey.”

  Melanie put down her phone. “Olivia, we need to talk.”

  “We are talking.”

  “This is serious.”

  “I know. I’m seriously offering to pay for a plane to take you home so I don’t end up killing you.” Olivia smiled to take the sting out of what she said, but when she saw Melanie’s eyes tearing up, the smile faded from her lips. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Melanie took a deep breath. “The doctor thinks you might have cancer.”

  She paused as if to give Olivia a chance to talk, but Olivia found that speech was quite beyond her at the moment. Even putting one coherent thought together felt like a skill she’d never mastered, like playing the cello or speaking Portuguese.

  “He’s not sure,” Melanie went on, “but you need to get tested when you get home.”

  “Cancer?” Olivia managed finally.

  “Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer.”

  “Why?” The word sounded like nothing more than a wisp of air coming out of her mouth. “Why would he think that?” she said, stronger now.

  “Your hip.”

  “Oh.” Olivia relaxed. “It was just sore from hiking.”

  “No, you were complaining about it in the car on the way up.”

  She was? Olivia thought back. How long had her hip been hurting?

  “He said they saw scar tissue built up in the X-ray. And your knee fracture bothered him.”

  “I fell off a cliff!”

  “That’s not what happened to your knee though. That was just you tripping and landing on it. That shouldn’t fracture the knee of a woman your age.”

  Olivia’s mind raced for another explanation. Not enough calcium or vitamin D or something. Didn’t everyone in Michigan suffer from vitamin D deficiency because of the cloud cover?

  “He said you were lucky,” Melanie said. “That if you hadn’t had to come in for X-rays from that fall, it could have gone undetected until it was too late to do anything.”

  Olivia felt like she was going to throw up, but she also couldn’t remember the last meal she’d eaten. “How old was Great-Uncle Gordon when he died?”

  Melanie’s face turned ashen. “Forty. I think. Maybe forty-one.” She rushed on, “But he doesn’t know you have cancer. He just thinks you shoul
d get checked out as soon as possible.”

  Olivia worked to regulate her breathing.

  “I know you’ll pooh-pooh this,” Melanie said, “but clearly this is fate. If you hadn’t come on this trip, you’d never have known.”

  “We don’t even know if there’s anything to know, Melanie. Maybe I injured it previously and it didn’t heal correctly. Maybe I have early-onset osteoporosis. If that’s a thing. And until we know if there’s anything to know, we’re not going to talk about fate or cancer or any of it. All we’re going to do is get out of here as soon as possible so we can get me home as soon as possible, so you can go home as soon as possible.”

  “Fine,” Melanie said.

  “Fine,” Olivia said.

  Melanie stood up and dug her keys out of her pack. “First I have to figure out how to get to my car.”

  thirty

  OUT IN THE hall, Melanie glanced at the large clock above the nurses’ station. 1:17. In the morning. She’d never find someone to take her to her car at this time of night. Still, she walked down to the lobby to see what options might be open to her. The little gift and flower shop near the entrance was closed. Other than the woman sitting behind the information desk typing away at a computer, the place was empty and quiet.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the woman. “Do you guys have, like, Uber up here or anything?”

  A pained smile spread across the woman’s face. “Not really, no. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

  “My car is at a trailhead in the Porcupine Mountains. I need to get it before I can drive my sister home tomorrow. Well, today, I guess.”

  The woman nodded, still wearing that smile that said I can’t help you. “There’s a shift change at seven o’clock,” she offered. “Perhaps it would be better to wait until morning. Maybe you could find someone to take you to your car then.”

  Melanie tried to remember if she knew anyone in the western UP. Where was Josh? Maybe trying to get back to his own car at Pinkerton Creek.

  “Hey, can you tell me whether or not someone came in here tonight?”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Josh— Oh. I don’t know his full name. He was tall, early thirties, brown hair, beard, in a plaid flannel and maybe fishing waders?”