A Party Trick at Thirty Thousand Feet Chapter 06

Caleb drops to his knees.

His knees scrape against the sharp rocks as he crawls toward me, inch by inch.

He wants to touch me, but he doesn’t dare.

With trembling hands, he reaches around my back and feels the bright red parachute pack marked

with the number 04.

There’s really no handle on the left.

He reaches into a tear in the canvas and pulls something out.

All he finds is a mangled wad of cheap yellow foam, stained with blood.

A howl escapes him, like a wounded beast taking its final breath. He clutches his head with both

hands and curls up in the snow.

A few feet away, my brother Will stands frozen.

His legs suddenly give out, and he drops hard onto the sharp rocks.

He stares at my impaled body, at my eyes still open in death.

Then, without warning, he raises his hand and starts slapping himself across the face, over and

over again.

The sharp smacks echo through the woods until blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

Jonathan grips a tree trunk and starts vomiting uncontrollably.

He throws up everything he has eaten, until there’s nothing left but bitter stomach acid.

Between heaves, he lets out heart–wrenching sobs.

Rebecca is helped over by the rescue workers.

The moment she catches sight of me, she lets out a shrill, broken scream. Her eyes roll back, and she collapses.

The rescue team begins cutting through the tree trunk, their expressions grim.

They’re trying to free my body from the branch.

“Careful,” the team leader warns in a low voice.

“Her internal organs are completely ruptured. If we move her too roughly, her body could fall

apart.”

Caleb suddenly springs to his feet.

He rushes forward and shoves the rescue workers away.

“Don’t touch her!”

“You’re going to hurt her!”

He takes off his own jacket and carefully tries to slide it beneath my wounds.

Then he attempts to hold me in his arms.

Blood smears across his clean clothes and stains his cheek.

I look down at him from above as he falls apart.

But I feel nothing.

Not a flicker of satisfaction. Not even the slightest trace of emotion.

The pain is long gone.

Watching their tears now, I find the whole thing painfully ridiculous and exhausting.

My body is transported back to the city to the medical examiner’s office.

Caleb stands guard outside the morgue, refusing to let the staff put me inside the refrigerated

storage unit.

“She hates the cold.”

He repeats the words over and over, his eyes vacant as he grips the edge of the gurney.

“If you put her in there, she’ll cry.”

The doctor eventually has no choice but to give him a sedative.

Only after the medication takes effect and he collapses onto the floor do the staff manage to pry his fingers away from the railing.

At last, my body is placed inside the cold storage unit.

Three days later, the medical examiner’s detailed report is released.

Cause of death: Multiple internal organ ruptures and massive internal bleeding caused by a fall from a great height.

But at the end of the report, there’s a particularly cruel finding:

[The deceased did not die immediately upon impact.]

[Based on blood spatter patterns at the scene and evidence of muscle spasms, it is estimated that

the deceased remained conscious for approximately two hours after landing.]

[The deceased ultimately succumbed to hemorrhagic shock after enduring extreme cold and excruciating pain from the penetrating injuries.]

Caleb stares at the report.

Those few lines hit him harder than anything else.

He clutches his chest and suddenly vomits a mouthful of blood, staining the white medical report.

Meanwhile, Will goes to my apartment.

He wants to find a clean set of clothes to dress me in.

He opens the safe in my bedroom.

He expects to find expensive jewelry or other valuables, but instead, there are only a few old metal

boxes inside.

He opens the first one.