Fix My Feet When They're Stumblin'

Chapter 11

   Ronnie was shaken from his fitful sleep by a man's voice calling weakly in the distance. He lay there for a moment, not quite realizing what was happening, and then suddenly his eyes snapped open and hope blazed to life in his chest.

     Was that...? He tried to scramble to his feet and was reminded of his broken ankle with a wave of agony through his previously numb leg, crying out as he sank once more to the ground. Ronnie leaned forward and squinted through the darkness, desperate to see him - were his ears just playing tricks on him in the starlit silence?

    He caught sight of the dim, diffused glow of light and a familiar slight figure hunched in the distance near the flat rock he had spent hours resting on the previous day, looking around the mountain anxiously.

     "Ron?...R-Ronnie?" The voice called faintly again, a lot hoarser than Ronnie was used to, but unquestionably his, and he'd never heard anything more achingly beautiful. Relief and joy exploded in his heart at the sound of the voice he'd heard every day for nearly half his life.

    "Brandon!" He tried to call, but his voice came out strangled and too quiet from disuse. He coughed and cleared his throat and tried again. "Brandon! Brandon! Over here! I'm here!"

    Brandon didn't appear to hear him - he was looking around wildly now, clearly agitated. "Ronnie...Ronnie?"

    Taking a deep breath, Ronnie screamed at the top of his lungs: "BRANDON!!!" The little figure by the rock jumped and looked in his direction. He took a couple of hesitant steps forward and Ronnie noted with alarm that his gait was...laborious, stilted and off-balance, almost like a newborn fawn.

     "BRANDON! I'm here!" He yelled again, and this time he had definitely been heard.

    Brandon headed toward his resting place in earnest, bringing his light with him and Ronnie's heart sank a little as he watched him draw slowly closer. He was moving so strangely, as if he were walking through water, and every few steps he stumbled or fell to his knees completely and had to struggle back to his feet, walking in a loose, wavering zig-zag pattern instead of a straight line.

     He looked like hell. He was covered in mud from head to toe, and dried blood splattered the front of his shirt around the neck and shoulders. His face was a mess of fresh bruises, covering his cheeks and, oddly, underneath his eyes, but relief and happiness were written incongruously across his battered features.

    "You...o-okay?" Brandon asked softly as he finally came to a swaying halt in front of Ronnie. He seemed to have difficulty finding even those simple words, his brow furrowed in frustration in the long pause between words.

    "Fucking hell, Brandon," Ronnie spat, anger rising up abruptly like fire in his chest. "You show up after hours off God-knows-where, you look like death warmed over and you have the balls to ask me if I'm okay? Where have you been? What took you so long? What happened?"

    Brandon opened his mouth to reply, but stood silently for several seconds and finally just dropped the jacket he had been carrying to the ground and collapsed against the cliff face with a wispy sigh, his head bent to his knees.

     The flashlight he had been carrying rolled out of the jacket, its beam unencumbered. Brandon flinched and turned his face away from the light with an agonized hiss, and Ronnie reached out and hastily draped the jacket over the light, dimming it once again. He felt something hard inside the jacket and felt around inside it, careful to keep the light covered.

    He retrieved half a dozen protein bars and Brandon's water bottle and piled them neatly near his own backpack, then felt the jacket again - there. He fumbled for the last item, unzipping the chest pocket and reaching inside to find - "My phone! You found it!"