Chapter 5

Sam held onto me the entire ride, steadily wiping the cracking skin of my lips.

"Stay with me, Ethan! We're almost at the county line!"

I don't know how long it took. The truck finally stopped in front of the county hospital.

Sam and the driver carried me out together. The ER team came rushing.

"Comminuted fracture of the femur, severe ischemia in the affected tissue. Prep for emergency surgery immediately."

The ER doctor's voice rang through the corridor.

The consent form was handed to Sam. The doctor looked at him urgently.

"Where's his family? Why is there only a coworker? We need a signature right now. We can't delay any further!"

"I'm just his colleague. His family isn't here." Sam was wiping his face with the back of his hand.

I was lying on the gurney, fighting the vertigo that came in waves with the fever. With my right hand shaking, I reached for the pen.

"Doctor. I'll sign it myself. I'm an adult. Whatever happens, that's on me."

I said it one word at a time and wrote my name at the bottom of the form: Ethan Cole.

The anesthetic moved through me slowly, and then the world softened.

In the last second before everything went dark, I thought about the helplessness of lying in that hospital bed in my last life.

This time, I had taken the first step back.

When I opened my eyes again, sharp sunlight was pouring through the window.

The ward was quiet. The air carried the faint, clean bite of antiseptic.

My left leg was elevated and wrapped in thick white bandaging. It still ached distantly, but the burning was gone.

Sam was slumped over the edge of my bed, asleep.

"You're awake?"

The door opened. My attending physician walked in with a glasses and a thick stack of charts.

He looked at my leg, then at me, and let out a slow breath.

"Surgery went well. You're alive. The leg is still there."

His tone was even, but what came next hit the quiet ward like something heavy dropped from a height.

"That said, the fracture was severe. More critically, you were dehydrated for too long in extreme heat. The muscle and vascular tissue in that leg were compressed under that rock for too long. A significant portion of the tissue was completely necrotic. We had no choice but to remove it."

"Going forward, that leg will never function the way it did. You'll walk with a limp. You'll need a cane permanently. And you absolutely cannot return to any kind of high-intensity fieldwork. You need to prepare yourself for that."

Inside, I was surprisingly calm.

Sam had woken when the doctor started talking. He sat there, stricken, unable to hide the grief in his face.

"You're twenty-eight years old. You love being out there in the field. What are you going to do now?"

I looked at my bandaged leg. The corner of my mouth lifted, just slightly.

"Sam. Don't cry."

I put my hand on his trembling shoulder. My voice was quiet, but there was nothing unsteady in it.

"I made it out of the wilderness alive. That's more than enough. If I can't go back to the desert, then I won't go back."

In my last life, I left everything in that desert. My health, my time, my life. All of it spent for Amanda and Stellan.

This time, I traded one leg for my life back.

That was the best deal I had ever made.