Page 25 of Alluring Adventure

“Sorry, Hannah, Jake, this is Marisa. Marisa this is—”

“No need honey, we know each other. This is Fellside,” Marisa stops me.

“Oh of course.” I feel a bit silly.

“This is not how this works here,” a stern looking doctor approaches us. She points towards the door Marisa stormed in earlier. “You all have to wait in the waiting room.”

“Go to Oliver, I’ll be fine,” I assure Hannah.

“I’ll keep you posted,” Hannah assures me.

“My phone was lost, but you can call me at the hotel,” I sniffle and hold out Oliver’s phone to her.

“Hang on to it so I can message you. Ols won’t mind. Get sorted, get some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow. I know he’ll want to see you too, and you can give his phone back to him yourself.” She hugs me tightly, and I can feel the tears welling up again. I swallow hard and slide the phone back into my pocket, trying to keep my emotions in check.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Marisa gives my arm a squeeze and holds out the clothes. I take the bag and smile.

“You don’t need to. I can take a taxi.”

“Keeley, no. We might not be BFFs yet but I consider you a friend and I don’t let my friends take a taxi home after something like this.” She gives me a final hug and marches back out to the waiting room under the impatient glare of the doctor.

It took another hour of probing and prodding until they finally let me go. All they found was the minor cut on my head and a mildly sprained wrist.

True to her word, Marisa had been waiting for me. By the time I was discharged I was barely able to keep my eyes open and hadn’t bothered changing into the clothes she brought me. All I wanted was a shower, some sleep and to see Oliver. There was no news on him and the wait felt like torture.

Marisa drove us back to Greenview Manor and showed me to my bedroom. She was organising some soup and bread for supper when I left her to take a shower.

The hot spray is soothing, but I can barely lift my arms to wash my hair because I’m so exhausted. When I can no longer stand, I turn off the shower and get dressed, ready for bed.

Marisa watches me with concerned eyes as I almost fall asleep eating and eventually decides I probably have had enough. She tucks me in and I’m too tired to protest that I’m not a small child. And secretly, I kind of enjoy the pampering.

My eyelids feel heavy. “Marisa, I—”

Chapter 14

Keeley

The ground races towardsme. I turn my head to look for Oliver, but he’s not there and I’m alone hanging from the glider. The canopy suddenly rips free and I fall faster and faster towards the ground.

My eyes pop open and the semi-dark room comes into focus. I’m breathing heavily and the fear is paralysing every single muscle. It was just a dream.Just a dream.My gaze falls to the bedside table, and I grab the bottle of water and piece of paper leaning against it. Marisa must have placed them there after I fell asleep.

I slowly drain the bottle of water. I must still be dehydrated from yesterday. I move to get out of the bed to go to the loo and all my muscles protest. The doctor had warned me that I might have tense muscles in the morning but fuck me. I couldn’t hurt more if I’d run a marathon. In the glow of the bathroom light, a number of purple bruises are visible on my arms and legs. If I’m this battered and bruised, I don’t want to know how Oliver must be feeling.

Back in the bedroom, I unplug his phone from the charger (luckily my charger fit) and unlock it with the pin he gave me yesterday. The clock on the screen shows that it’s three in the morning. There is one message from Hannah saying that they won’t have to operate on him and that they’ll tell me everything in the morning.

They won’t have to operate on him. Surely that means it’s not that bad. Right?I open the search engine and type in “broken back” but as soon as the first articles come up I close the browser. The last thing I need is to drive myself crazy with worst-case scenarios courtesy of Dr Google.

Instead, I pull my laptop from the table and take it to bed. I open my writing app and just start typing—about what it felt like to fly, the accident, the conversations Ols and I had, and the rescue. Three hours later, I cut out the section about the rescue, paste it into a new document, add a short paragraph outlining the accident, and send it to my editor.

I don’t want to share all the details of what happened up there with the world. Our experience and the fears we faced are deeply personal—our story, and one that others might not fully understand. It’s something that belongs to just the two of us. But I do want to thank the incredible men and women of FMR. What they did was nothing short of heroic, and they’re all volunteers. At the bottom of the article, I included a link to a crowdfunding page I quickly set up.

With nearly two million followers on my blog’s social media accounts, if each of them donated even a pound, the total would be substantial. I don’t expect that kind of response, but I’m hopeful we can still raise a significant amount for FMR.

I’m not entirely sure if my editor will go for it, as it isn't what we usually write about, but I’ve added a bit more detail about the accident and how close we came to disaster, just for his eyes. I’m definitely pushing the guilt button here, but after everything that’s happened, I reckon I’ve earned that right. I want to make sure this post gets the attention it deserves, and I hope the editor will see how important it is to share our story, even if only to highlight the incredible work of the FMR volunteers.

Before I close my laptop, I save a copy of the full story in a private folder. As I do so, my attention is drawn to another folder. DCIM. That’s the folder where my phone syncs all myphotos to the cloud. I open it nervously and scan for the latest photos uploaded. And there they are. The two photos I took on the flight, one of the views and the selfie. We look so happy in that moment. I make another copy of that photo and save it in the same folder as the story. This is one photo I want to keep forever.

Closing my laptop, I snatch the phone from the bedside table.

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