—-

Thanks again to QBMaja for test reading every chapter in this story. She's the best!

CHAPTER 7

By Wednesday afternoon, Amy is more than ready to return to the comforts of her Glendale apartment. It is unlike her to shirk her responsibilities or hide from her problems, and even though the break from the stresses of her life was much needed, she feels a strong pull to return to reality. Besides all of that, she misses the simple indulgences of hot running water, cool drinking water, and the softness of her own bed.

She is approaching Agua Dulce again, and this stop should provide her with the opportunity for a much needed shower. She will also get a chance to mail her final letter to Sheldon, which finally contains the information about her probable infertility. It also contains encouragement for him to move on and try to find someone new, to not get stuck in the past due to habit and routine.

The idea of him with someone else is nauseating, and every once in a while, she wonders who that person will be. Is it someone she has already met? Hopefully, whenever that time comes, she will be able to pretend that she's happy for him. It will be difficult, but more than anything else, she does want him to have a wonderful and fulfilling life. It's not his fault that he doesn't want that with her, nor is it anyone else's. Sometimes, she supposes, life is just one mean old bitch.

As for her, it's not clear what her life will be like when she returns. So much of her existence revolves around Sheldon that when she tries to envision the future without him, all she can see is a blank slate of nothingness. She hopes that she won't lose his friendship, or the friendship of the rest of the group for that matter. They were friends before she arrived on the scene, and it's hard to know where she will fit in to that dynamic now.

A lot of that will come down to how Sheldon responds to the breakup. He could be very upset and decide he doesn't want her around at all, or he might be okay with it, more interested in trying to keep things as close to normal as possible. She's not sure which scenario would be worse, hard feelings or attempts at indifferent feelings. She suspects that Penny and Bernadette will remain friends with her regardless. Still, the thought of being cut off from the guys or being unable to sit in 4A to share meals with the whole gang makes her sad.

All of this time alone has been useful to think, but it hasn't helped her come to any conclusions. She is lonely, tired of her own company, and tired of dwelling on things she can't change. Thankfully, as the day wears on she becomes worn out by her exertions, and the physical tiredness takes over, helping her mind become numb to further emotional thoughts.

Amy yawns. It's been impossible to get enough sleep or enough food to keep up with the intense energy demands of full days spent hiking. The monotonous plodding of her footsteps only adds to her growing sleepiness. The early afternoon sun is bright, but that doesn't help keep her awake. Having just eaten lunch, her body's growing urge to nap is difficult to fend off. She should stop and take a break soon.

Her attention is drifting with each extra long blink of her eyes, but she startles to full alertness and her feet come to a halt when she notices movement only a few feet to her left. The suddenness of it causes her breath to catch, and she brings one hand up to cover her heart.

The brush rustles and a small, furry animal emerges. It bounds into the middle of the path and then freezes, its head cocked and one dark eye staring at her. She recognizes the cuddly critter as a desert cottontail. Feeling foolish about her overreaction, she is pleased that at least no one was here to witness it. The thought of crossing paths with a bunny after Sheldon's dire warnings makes her smirk. There's nothing frightening about this little guy, with his twitchy nose and fluffy white tail.

She takes a hesitant step forward, and even this tiny movement is enough to spook the rabbit. It darts off the trail so fast that she loses sight of it in an instant. There's a sharp drop-off into the canyon on her right, and Amy hopes that she didn't scare the stupid thing straight off a cliff. Maybe it is just hopping off to join its group. She can't think of what the proper term is for a group of rabbits. Sheldon would probably know.

As she takes her next steps she is startled again—this time by a terrible squealing sound. It's an obvious cry of distress that sounds almost human. Without a second thought, Amy steps off the trail and peeks down the sharp slope to her right.

About twenty feet down, she can see that the rabbit is lying near the edge of an even sharper precipice. She glances around, but there is no safe way to get down there to try to help the poor thing. Just as she starts to wonder how a wild animal could have tumbled down there, she feels her own footing give way beneath her.

She flails, trying to grab hold of one of the small trees that line the edge, but the closest one slips out of her grasping fingertips. Weighed down by her pack, there's little she can do to try to halt the slide. She goes down hard on her right wrist, and her head bounces off the firm, rocky earth.

There's no time to pray that she can stop her momentum before the even steeper ledge appears in her peripheral vision. Desperate, she claws at the slope, scrabbling to get a hold of anything at all, but everything whizzes by so fast.

She's uproariously lucky when her left foot wedges into a small outcropping of rocks, halting her downward fall. It doesn't feel so lucky when she hears the popping sound of soft tissue giving way as the ankle joint twists.

Amy hugs the steep hill and cries out in pain. Terrified, she pants and tries to catch her breath, wondering what the hell just happened.

—-

Tater tot day at the cafeteria is one of Howard's favorite things about Wednesday. He asks for an extra helping from the cafeteria server before he makes his way over to sit with his friends. His steady steps halt for a moment as he catches sight of Sheldon at their table. Howard hasn't seen him since Saturday when he tried to give the clueless wonder some helpful advice.

As he takes a seat, he notices that Sheldon is sitting with a contented expression on his face. It's kind of creepy.

"You're in a good mood," he points out, wondering what strange sorcery might be at work today.

Sheldon smiles. "Of course I am. My life is an endless expanse of excellence."

"Um, sure. That is a good bit of alliteration, if not otherwise accurate. But what about your relationship with Amy? I thought you were experiencing a brief flash of humanity and missing her."

"Oh, I do miss her, but she will be back by Sunday night."

Howard sighs.

"I think he means the breakup," Raj points out the obvious.

Sheldon finishes chewing a bite of salad. "As I told you before, the breakup is essentially a nonentity. I've assessed the matter and formulated a plan."

Howard shoots Leonard a questioning look, but Leonard only shrugs in return. Sheldon continues, "You see, I finally got some correspondence from Amy that allowed me to figure out the problem. But it's not so much of a problem as it is a misunderstanding. By my estimation, I'd say that we can have the whole thing worked out in about five minutes."

"Oh? Do you think so?" Leonard asks. Sheldon won't be able pick out the skeptical tone in Leonard's voice, but Howard certainly can.

"Indeed. Of course, women can be difficult to predict. It could take up to an hour if she's stubborn."

Howard tosses another tater tot into his mouth and savors the deliciousness of not only his food, but also of Sheldon's tasty naivety. He hopes that the guy really has discovered a way to salvage his relationship. However, it's more likely that he is deluding himself once again. It's juvenile, of course, but Howard can't resist taking some enjoyment out of the little moments when he knows his arrogant friend might wind up humbled.

He swallows and leans in to ask, "So let me get this straight. You, Sheldon Cooper, believe that you have figured out what women want?"

"My toes were a bit nippy this morning. Perhaps hell did freeze overnight," Raj says.

Leonard smiles. "And I seem to recall having a dream about flying piglets."

"I awoke from a nightmare where Donald Trump became an actual, viable presidential candidate," Howard adds, figuring that his is the most improbable statement of all.

Sheldon scoffs and folds his arms across his chest. "Very funny, gentlemen. I'm not talking about all women, just my woman."

"Still not likely," Howard says. "If you think five minutes is enough to give Amy what she has obviously been lacking—"

"Don't get vulgar," Sheldon interjects.

He interrupts him right back. "You must be the only guy on earth who would consider it vulgar to have terrible, virgin sex with your five-year, monogamous girlfriend. If you want vulgar, I can send you a link to some of my web browser history."

"As if I would ever click on web links from you, Howard." Sheldon looks at him with extreme distaste. It's a look he is familiar with. "The five minutes that I'm referring to is not about any particular actions, but rather the length of the conversation necessary for her to stop misinterpreting my intentions."

Howard smiles and succumbs to the temptation to be sarcastic. "I'm sure you'll win her back with your sparkling conversational skills."

Raj speaks up in a more direct manner. "I'm pretty sure it's action that you should be focusing on, dude."

Dismissing them both with a wave of his hand, Sheldon insists, "You all do not know Amy as well as I do. My plan is foolproof."

That's an interesting way to put it. Sheldon is as much of a fool when it comes to love as the rest of them are. Howard wants to tell him that his plan can't be foolproof when it is birthed from the mind of a fool, but that would be needlessly cruel. Besides, sometimes Amy is every bit as looney as Sheldon. Maybe he really will be able to patch things up with her.

—

Amy can feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she can hear her own frantic breathing. It takes a moment for her mind to catch up to the reality of the situation. She closes her eyes and tries to control her panic.

There's not much hope of calming herself under these conditions, nor is there time to waste on the endeavor. She feels dizzy, and her arms and legs are burning both from injury and the effort of trying to hold on. Her face is inches away from the dry, dusty earth, and instinct compels her to dig her fingernails into it to get a better grip.

Looking up, Amy can see the edge of the trail. The ground slopes sharply, about twenty feet from the ledge to her current precarious position. The rocky surface of her surroundings as well as a few bushes and scraggly trees might prove useful by providing hand and footholds to aid in an upward climb. Unfortunately, she has another problem to deal with before she can even attempt such a thing.

It has saved her life, but Amy now feels trapped by the tight grip of the rocks around her foot. She has to plant her healthy leg firmly against a boulder and hold on for dear life with her good arm just to keep from sliding even further down the slope. With no other appendages available, she is forced to try to free her ankle with the hand attached to her battered wrist.

That hand doesn't seem to want to obey her commands. It takes several fumbling tries and innumerable curses before she is able to wiggle her left foot free. No longer compressed, her thankless ankle throbs in complaint at its freedom.

With that first hurdle cleared, Amy reassesses her situation. She knows she is only a few feet from an even steeper drop-off, and she tells herself that she should not look down under any circumstances. It won't do her any good, and if anything, it will only scare her more.

She does it anyway. A short distance below her feet the angle of the slope increases, becoming almost a straight drop. Trees still cling to it here and there, and jagged rocks jut out, the pointy edges promising her a speedy end if she lets go. The bottom of the canyon lies far below, a peaceful sight from the safety of the trail, but terrifying from her present locale.

For an instant, she wonders what it would feel like to loosen her grip from the side of the hill and complete the rest of the fall. If nothing else, it would be quick. She closes her eyes to shake off the unbidden thought. As a neurobiologist she's familiar with the phenomenon—the call of the void, that strange pondering of what it would be like to throw oneself at death.

The errant thoughts are fleeting. Amy has no intention of giving up. Even faced with the likelihood of a lonely life, there are still many things that she wants to accomplish. Feeling determined, she tightens her left hand's grasp on the rocky slope. Her relationship with Sheldon may be doomed, but she can't stand the thought of never seeing his face again. She blinks back the rush of tears that threaten to make her coming task even more difficult.

Her mind feels fuzzy, making it tough to think clearly. Her phone is in the front of her pack, but there is no hope of retrieving it to call for help. She doesn't have enough limbs to secure her hold and get a hand into her gear at the same time.

Other hikers are few and far between, so it is unlikely that anyone will have heard any of her vocalizations for help. The burning in her arms and legs intensifies with every passing minute, reminding her that she cannot stay down here and hope to hold on indefinitely. She is going to have to find a way to haul herself back up onto the trail on her own.

Forcing herself to think logically, she decides that her best bet is to drop the weight of her pack. Even if she can get back to the trail, she doesn't know if she can get help without her phone. Still, there's no other choice. The fingers of her injured hand fumble at the task as she tries to unlatch the strap around her waist. When it finally gives way, she shrugs out of it one arm at a time. Amy tries not to think about the distant thudding sound that her gear makes as it slams into the rocks, over and over on its journey to the earth far below.

Her thoughts are still jumbled, and the scientific part of Amy's brain calculates the time from her initial release of her pack to the final thump of its landing. Taking into account the Earth's gravitational force, she can estimate the distance that she is at risk of falling. It's not a helpful thing to be thinking about.

Frustrated, Amy wonders just how hard she hit her head. She can feel warm liquid running down her chin and hopes that it is nothing worse than sweat. It would be so much easier not to think at all right now, but she can't allow herself the luxury of passing out, not if she wants to live. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself up to a new foothold.

The searing pain is enough to clear her mind of anything else. She tries to keep her weight more onto her right leg and to pull herself up with her left arm. At times, though, there's no choice but to bear weight on her injured limbs.

Amy cries out with each upward push. It's an involuntary response to the pain that she's enduring, but perhaps it's for the best. Maybe someone will be hiking close enough that they will be able to hear her. About halfway to her destination, she has to pause and swallow hard against the urge to vomit. She can't afford to lose anymore hydration when her drinking water is at the bottom of the canyon with her phone.

Even though she is getting closer and closer to salvation, she can feel her body wanting to give up on her. Her arms and legs feel shaky and weak, like the muscles are about to quit on her. She decides to take another look down, not to give in to the temptation of failure, but to scare herself on purpose, hoping that the resultant surge of adrenaline will be enough to give her one final boost.

It works, and the dizzying vision etches itself into her brain. If she survives, she suspects that the memory of the sight will haunt her dreams, but for now it drives her to push through that final distance.

Within reach of the scrubby brush that marks the edge of the ridge, Amy finds that the ground is dry and eroding underneath her fingertips. It's so crumbly that she understands how both she and the rabbit could have slipped so easily from the edge, and it taunts her yet again by being a useless area to grip and pull herself up.

She spots an old, dead root that appears to be firmly embedded in the earth. It is close, about six inches away from her stretched out arm. With no other reasonable option, she knows that she will have to risk lunging at it. Missing would be fatal, but trying to hold on any longer will soon have her tumbling to her doom anyway.

Unwilling to think about the potential consequences for even one more second, she takes a deep breath and shoves off from both foot holds. Her hand gets a good grip of the root, much easier than she suspected, and after a brief bit of scrabbling, her feet manage to find new supports as well.

With one last burst of strength, Amy lunges again, hauling herself onto the flat earth next to the trail. Desperate to get farther away from the edge, she crawls on her elbows and knees until she reaches the area next to the path.

Feeling safer now, she knows she has done as much as she can. Her breathing and her heart rate begin to slow, and even through the pounding pain in her head and her limbs, she is overcome with gratitude to be alive. The adrenaline is leaving her body, making her shiver, and she feels chilled in spite of the warmth of the day. Unable to stop herself this time, she soon loses the contents of her stomach onto the nearby grass.

After crawling a few more feet to the center of the path, Amy finds that she can't make herself go any further. Lying facedown, she can't even muster enough strength to flip herself over. Her left arm is cradling her sore head, and she looks down to see red droplets drip slowly onto the flat, worn stone beneath her head. That can't be good.

Her thoughts drift one final time, and she wonders what ever happened to the rabbit. Sheldon was right. Goddamn bunnies.

—

When Leonard returns home on Wednesday night, he is happy that it is an evening scheduled to be spent at 4B. Sheldon's optimism is better than his incessant pouting, but Leonard can't help but feel wary on behalf of his friend. He hopes everything will work out as well as Sheldon is predicting.

Remaining quiet, he hangs up his coat and comes to sit on Penny's couch. She is seated next to him with her phone pressed to her ear. After a half a minute or so, she sets the phone in her lap and thumbs the button to end her call.

"Amy's not answering her phone," she answers his unspoken question.

He shrugs and stretches down to untie his shoes. "Oh. Well, maybe she is in an area with poor reception."

Penny's eyebrows are scrunched up with worry. "I don't think so. Coverage is good in California, and she's not that far out there."

"Maybe her battery ran out of charge."

"Maybe. She's so careful about that, though. I mean, you know how absurd of a planner Sheldon is?"

Leonard nods, and she continues, "Well, Amy is every bit as obsessive about certain things as he is. She's never missed one of the times that she's supposed to check in with me. Besides, she helped me install a tracking app on my phone that has her GPS coordinates. When I look her up, it still shows her location, so her phone can't be dead, can it?"

"No, I don't think so. Is her location showing that she's where she's supposed to be?"

"Yeah. She's making good time, actually."

"Look, I know that it's easy for us to think of them as kids sometimes, but Amy and Sheldon are both grown adults. There could be any number of reasons why she hasn't called." He smirks. "Maybe she fell victim to some dreaded trail bunnies."

Penny giggles. "Sheldon's such a weirdo."

"If Amy doesn't check in by morning, I'll drive you out to the section of trail where you know she's supposed to be. If we go out right now, it will be dark by the time we get there, and it would be nearly impossible to spot her."

"You're probably right that she's fine," Penny says. She flops her head onto his shoulder, and Leonard pulls her in close.

He begins to tell her about his day at work, but he can sense that she isn't listening. That's not unusual. His wife isn't exactly captivated by experimental physics. Still, she's a good actress, and she is capable of feigning interest better than this. He suspects that she remains distracted by her concern for Amy. He stops talking and sits in silence with her for a moment, stroking her upper arm in the hopes that she will find it soothing.

Eventually, Penny pulls away from him and looks at her phone display once again. She bites her lip and turns her head to look at him. "But Leonard, what if she's not okay?"

—-