Part 9: I Know it Ain't Right, But It's All In My Head
When Echo woke up she was alone, she could barely move because she felt like she had been hit by a truck. The fire was still burning, but Mathias was no where in sight. She almost wondered if she had imagined the whole thing somehow, but then as she snuggled back into the sleeping bag she could smell him all over again.
"How are you feeling, Red?" Mathias said as he came back in with some more wood in his arms.
"Like I fell off a cliff."
Mathias chuckled, "I think our rescue should be here soon. We'll get you out of here and patched up, you'll be back to chasing bad guys in no time."
"Don't make me laugh, it hurts." Echo groaned while trying to sit up, "Wait, Mathias...how did you get here?"
"I walked."
Echo stared at him for a second, he paid her no mind as he stoked the fire. "Mathias...how did you walk up here in a snow storm...on a mountain?"
He laughed, "I don't know what to tell you Red, but I walked here."
Echo just kept staring at him, "You're a fool then."
"A fool that kept you alive." Mathias still wouldn't look at her at this point. Echo finally gave up trying to sit up, everything hurt so much there was no way she was going to do it without help so she just snuggled back down into the sleeping bag. Mathias sat there for a minute and stared at the fire before he suddenly stood and took a couple steps towards the opening of the cave, "I'm going to go out and watch for our rescue party, alert them where we are." With that he was out of the cave and gone.
Echo wasn't sure how much time had passed, because her eyes were so heavy that they'd shut. She wasn't sure how long she had dozed off, whether it had been an hour, or just a few minutes, but she woke up to the sound of Mathias coming back into the cave. She couldn't help but get excited, but when she opened her eyes, it wasn't Mathias that stood before her, but the man that attacked her the day before.
"Thought you got rid of me, did ya?" he grinned this terrifying grin at her, "Yeah, you dumb bitch, I'm still here."
Echo struggled to try and push herself up to get away from him, but it was really no use. Her body wasn't in any shape to help fight him off, so instead she tried to scramble away on her hands and knees, but he caught her anyway. It took him two steps to get to her, he grabbed her by her hair and raised her off the ground before he back handed her across the face and let her fall with the blow. She looked wildly for Mathias, where was he? The blow had made her land on her side that she was already sure had broken ribs, so she pushed herself off of them with her good arm and once again tried to crawl away from him. The man took this as an opportunity to kick her as hard as he could in those ribs.
Echo landed flat on her back gasping for air, the man stood above her smiling down at her, Echo knew this was it. He was going to finish her off finally. As she laid there looking up at him, trying so hard to push past the pain and just breathe, all of the sudden the man just collapsed beside of her onto the ground like a bag of potatoes.
There stood Mathias with a large stick in his hands, slightly out of breath. He had done it, he had saved her again. As happy as she was to see him, she still couldn't catch her breath. Breathing seemed like the hardest thing in the world to do at this point, and all she wanted to do was take a breath of relief he was there.
Mathias fell to his knees beside of her and put her head in his lap, "Red, I am so sorry, but you need to stay with me ok? Help is coming down the cliff now, you just need to stay with me."
Echo tried to smile, but it just came off as a grimace instead.
Mathias was staring down at her, she couldn't breathe and she had started turning a pale blue color. "GODDAMNIT LONGMIRE, COME ON!" he yelled.
That's when she started coughing, a deep hack of a cough and some blood sprayed down her chin. Mathias felt his heart drop into his stomach, so he reached down and lifted her shirt. Everything was black and blue, and now he realized what he was witnessing was internal bleeding and he wasn't sure how long it had been going on.
"Red, stay with me ok? You're going to be just fine, you have to stay with me." Echo rolled her eyes up to look at him, she had started to have sweat bead up on her forehead. "No Red, don't look at me like that. You have to stay with me. We have too many fights left to have, I want to spend my whole life figuring you out. You can't go."
Mathias wasn't even sure what he was saying to her that she could hear at this point, that's how bad she looked. "Goddamnit, Deputy, don't you leave me."
"ECHO! MATHIAS!" Walt came bustling into the cave with several men to help at that point. He came running to where she laid and stuck his hand on her forehead.
Echo tossed her head to the side to smile up at him, "Bout time you got here, Boss."
But as soon as she got that out, the hacking started again, and more blood came from her mouth. "She'd dying, Longmire, do something!"
The rest of the rescue crew sprang into action and lifted her onto the stretcher easily, strapping her in and running from the cave, leaving Longmire and Mathias alone. Walt walked over and started putting the fire out as Mathias turned and kicked the man still laying on the ground. "I hope I killed him."
Walt turned and looked down at the guy, "I've never seen him before, I'd be fine if you wanted a few more kicks before we drag him up."
Mathias stood there and thought about it but just took the cuffs from Walt and put them on the man. "Go, I know you want to be at the hospital with her, Ferg or Vic will give you a ride, I'll take care of this."
Mathias looked at Walt, and instead of denying it, he just took off from the cave and scrambled back up the side of the cliff to get to a car and to the hospital.
When he rushed into the emergency room he ran into Henry waiting on him. "She is currently in surgery. They said they would come out to update everyone as often as they can and asked me to see everyone into a room to wait on news." Mathias couldn't even speak, just nodded his head and let Henry show him to the room.
The minutes were ticking by like hours and he was pretty sure he was going to pace a hole in the floor, even Henry had said so at one point. After about 30 minutes Longmire, Ferg, and Vic shuffled into the room as well, but still no news came.
"I thought they would have been in here by now, what's wrong? Is something wrong? This is ridiculous!" He said and rubbed both his hands over his face while Vic eyed him suspiciously.
Two hours later the surgeon came into the room, "Who here is Deputy Aven's family?"
"She doesn't have any as far as I know, we're the only family she has." Walt said turning to point out everyone in the room.
He looked at the bunch of them and then decided to speak, "She's come through surgery and in recovery now. She's very lucky she survived this, she had 3 broken ribs that at one point punctured the lung. Her left arm had a slight break in it, we casted it. Her right knee is badly bruised, but no breaks anywhere. No frostbite, she's kept all 10 fingers and toes. It was really the internal bleeding that was the biggest battle to face, but she's going to pull through and be just fine."
Mathias let out a breath that he didn't realize he was holding, and almost passed out with relief.
"Can we see her yet?" Henry asked.
"I can have one guest in there with her right now while she is in recovery, and then once we have her in a room and she feels up to it, we'll let the rest in to see her. Who's going?" He looked around waiting.
Mathias didn't have to look around to know that all eye's were on him, "I'm glad to hear she is going to be ok, I have to get back to the Rez. Call me if you guys need anything." With that he pushed his way out of the room and headed out of the hospital, his hands shaking and his throat dry.
As soon as he got into his car and shut the door, he let out a loud shaky breath and squeezed the steering wheel with both hands and choked down the knot that had been living in his throat for the past several hours. She was alive.