Chapter Six
From Bad to Worse
Wednesday, Late Afternoon
"Come on, Grissom. Open your eyes, man. Please. You can't do this to me. You can't die on me here."
The words reached Grissom's awareness from what seemed a thousand miles away and reminded him why he had taken refuge in this dark, silent corner of oblivion in the first place. He hurt. Everywhere. His entire body felt squashed and mangled, and his head throbbed more intensely than the worst migraine he'd ever experienced. Sharp intrusions here and there highlighted individual pain loci too numerous to count. He seemed to be lying mostly on his left side, but couldn't be sure, because he could feel pressure from all around. His hearing was the only sense that seemed to be working normally, and he carefully catalogued the sounds: someone's rapid, ragged breathing; fabric rasping against fabric; sporadic thuds and cracks; a familiar voice, sounding strained and scared as it coaxed, cajoled, implored, even cursed.
Some of the crushing heaviness seemed to recede, taking small fragments of pain with it, and Grissom finally succeeding in peeling his eyelids apart. His vision blurred, and he blinked rapidly in an effort to clear the images. Everything remained smudged and indistinct, like a black-and-white print viewed through wax paper, and he closed his eyes again as a frustrated groan rise from within his chest to escape as a weak cough.
"Grissom?" The voice, Nick's, sharpened and grew louder, closer. Grissom sensed movement nearby, felt chilly fingers press briefly against the side of his neck, and forced his eyes open in response. "Ah, thank God!" Nick said on a shaky sigh. "I wasn't sure you were still with me." Nick's hand moved from Grissom's neck to his arm, patting it in a calming gesture – though Grissom wasn't entirely sure for whom that reassurance was intended. The younger man turned away briefly to grab a couple of gauze pads from the first-aid kit he'd carried in his backpack – now open on the ground nearby – and wet them from the small plastic squirt bottle of distilled water used for irrigating wounds. He used the damp cloth to wipe Grissom's face and eyes, and some of the fog cleared from his vision.
Light from one of the helmet lamps cast everything into sharp relief, washing almost all color from what it directly touched, leaving all else in abyss-dark shadow.
Grissom frowned at the horror-house apparition hovering over him and couldn't help wondering if he was as much as mess as Nick. Dust, sweat, blood, and probably a few tears, transformed Nick's pale face into a Halloween fright mask. Blood still oozed dark and viscous from a jagged laceration running diagonally up his forehead and into his matted short hair. His upper lip was swollen and split, and the jagged edge of a chipped tooth showed beneath it. Nick held himself awkwardly, right arm pressed close to his body, and his belt was now wrapped around his left thigh to hold in place a stack of more gauze pads and a thick wad of cloth that appeared to have been torn from the bottom of his shirt. The leg of his jeans and the makeshift bandage shone black where blood had spread from the wound and soaked the heavy cloth.
"You look like hell," Grissom observed bluntly.
Nick's answering laugh carried a thread of hysteria. "Yeah. And you've got my vote for Mr. Las Vegas, too," he said shakily. His lips compressed to hold back a groan as he shifted away, still kneeling, and turned to the pile of stones still half covering Grissom's legs. "I'll get the rest of this crap off you."
Grissom watched the muscles in Nick's back flex as he carefully hoisted each irregular clump of stone and heaved it aside. He couldn't help but notice the soft, pained gasps that escaped when he had to use both arms to shift one of the larger rocks. As the last one rolled away, Nick's body seemed to sag in on itself, and Grissom turned onto his back so that the rocks beneath him weren't jabbing quite so insistently into his shoulder and aching ribs.
He almost screamed when twin flares of pain erupted in his right leg and in his back. His choked exclamation ended on something suspiciously like a sob, and his eyes squeezed shut against tears of absolute agony. He lay completely flat, his hands clenched against the stone floor so rigidly that he could feel individual dust grains digging into his skin.
"Don't move…don't move!" Nick's hand rested lightly but insistently on Grissom's right knee and slowly moved downward in a series of careful probing touches. He hissed faintly between his teeth, and removed his hand. "Oh, man, this is not good."
Grissom forced his eyes open and found Nick frowning at him with grim worry. "What?" He was shocked at the unsteadiness of his own voice.
"Your leg is broken," Nick told him. He looked around, eyes a bit wild, then scooted back within reach of his backpack. "Not much to use as a splint," he muttered, dumping the pack's contents before he opened his utility knife and began slicing through the padded straps, "but it's the best I can do."
Grissom bit his lip as Nick carefully folded the pack to curve around the back of his calf and used the straps to secure it in place. Both men were breathing a little unevenly by the time Nick was done. Grissom winced when Nick carefully slid his folded jacket under his head; he hated to think about the size of the knot growing above and behind his right ear where a rock had smacked his skull. He could feel the itch and pull of dried blood in his hair.
Nick snagged the bottle of spring water he'd stuffed into the backpack before they first entered the mine and helped Grissom take a small drink from it. The moisture eased the dryness in his throat, and he uttered a soft "thanks." He frowned up at Nick and asked, "How's your leg?"
"Hurts like hell," Nick admitted, the wry twist of his lips looking more like a grimace. "It's not bleeding much now, though, and the bone doesn't seem to be broken, so…"
"And your arm?"
What was intended as a dismissive shrug ended in another grimace and a sharp intake of breath. "Banged up my shoulder some," he said, then dismissed the subject of his own aches and pains by gesturing around them and summarizing their current situation. "We should be able to hold out for a while," he said with forced optimism. "At least we didn't get caught in that dead-end tunnel, so our air supply isn't such a problem. One helmet and both our flashlights survived, so we'll be able to see until the batteries go dead. We only have the one bottle of water; we'll have to go easy on that. No food. Kinda wish now we'd had a bigger breakfast."
"How long have we been in here already?" Grissom asked at the same time he sought to answer his own question by cautiously lifting his arm for a quick look at his watch. He found the crystal spider-webbed with cracks, but the hands still marked the passing seconds in measured increments.
"Near as I can figure, it's been about three hours." Nick's expression clouded. "You were out quite a while, man. I was gettin' really worried."
Grissom felt a flash of sympathy for the younger man. His colleagues might see him as dispassionate, even emotionless, but he could easily understand how frightening it must have been for Nick to envision being trapped in this stone hell with only a dead or dying man for company. If nothing else, the sense of helplessness would have been almost intolerable for someone of Nick's temperament. "I'm sorry, Nick," he said sadly, knowing that he was probably about to make matters worse for him. "Can you walk on that leg?"
Nick drew himself up straighter, a small frown marring his bruised and blood-crusted forehead. "If I have to, yeah." His tone said that he wasn't sure he liked whatever Grissom was leading up to.
"Good." Grissom met his gaze almost reluctantly. "The next decision – whether to wait for someone to come looking for us when we don't show up for work tonight, or try to find a way out before then -- is yours, Nick," he said. "Moving when I did was not a smart thing to do. I think my back may have been injured. I'm losing the feeling in my legs."
To be continued…