Walk on the Wild Side (Part 2)

Week #4
(D is for destiny and dolmen)

Gingerly, Chris used his weight to push against the rock that held his foot but stopped with a yelp of pain. The left ankle seemed sprained. He was in a double bind: a trapped right foot and a bum left one. Is this my destiny? That I die on this lonely scrap of earth? He shook his head and laughed out loud. “Get a grip, Chris.” He pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket and called the B&B.
“Pam, it’s Chris, your guest.” He described the rocky ridge, the boulders, hoping the details would help her – or her husband – find him. “I’m almost out of water, too. I just didn’t think it’d be this dry.”
But Pam, despite her earlier concern, was tied up with other guests, and Roger, the husband, was out on an errand.
“Don’t you understand?” Chris held up his water bottle, eyeing the dwindling contents. His voice bounced and echoed against the granite that penned him in. “I can’t get out of here. I’m stuck. I need help.” He hung up and called 911. Once again, he tried to describe his surroundings, which seemed more remote and forbidding with each added detail. Panicky that rescuers might be hours away, he repeatedly jerked his right foot to free it, but the boot would not give. If the boot wouldn’t fit back through the crevice, perhaps the foot without the boot would. He worked to loosen the laces. Now able wiggle his ankle slightly, he took a breath, said a silent prayer, and pulled. “Yes!” His foot was free.
Satisfaction turned to dismay when he saw his feet side by side. The right ankle was swollen, and the left, still in the hiking boot, felt as fat as a loaf of bologna. He could not walk out of there. He pulled himself upright and yelled for help. He cupped his hands and shouted for several minutes, then listened to the silence that settled back down around him. He slumped against the boulder that still held his boot and drank the last of his water. He remembered the sense of unease he’d felt just before he slipped. Absurdly, what he now felt was peace. The rocks would form his tomb, a dolmen of sorts for the buzzards to discover.
He was dozing, with his pack behind his head, when he heard the helicopter. It was distant but coming closer.