Baffin Island: Day 9

Word Count: 57,003

Summary of Events:

The wind continued to blow, leaving them no opportunity to stop and eat because starting a fire would be a waste of effort, which led to Ryan and Kyle complaining of hunger. When they stopped for the night Yukon gave Ryan and Kyle a talking-to about their griping. The next morning the wind continued and Josh unfortunately lost his sleeping bag to the more intense wind. Later on in the day the wind was still blowing when they had to go around a small fjord, unfortunately though, Ryan got swept into the ocean when a wave hit him while crossing, prompting Yukon and Ben to go after him in the water; it took awhile before they even found him, but they finally did . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

"Once he was on shore JT hauled him to his feet, where he staggered, in part under the weight of Ryan's backpack, which caused pain to shoot through his ribs, and in part because he still didn't have enough air in his lungs.

Ben soon emerged from the water with Ryan, who was limp and actually deathly pale. Yukon felt sick.

Josh appeared shortly and helped Ben haul Ryan away from the water while JT guided Yukon after them.

Yukon kept his gaze fixed on Ryan as Ben started doing compressions. Brackish seawater spewed out of Ryan's mouth in the rhythm of Ben's compressions, and it looked disgusting, but that wasn't why Yukon felt sick. Ryan was unmoving, unresponsive. He looked dead. Yukon could only hope he wasn't.

JT turned him away from Ryan and guided him toward where Kyle and Alex were sitting, both of them looking pale and ill.

Without a word JT removed Ryan's backpack, which he tossed at Kyle. He then peeled Yukon's soaked pants off of him and unfurled his sleeping bag, which he wordlessly ordered Yukon into.

Numbly, Yukon climbed in and huddled himself deeply inside it, burrowing in the warmth of its thick minus-forty-degree-rated insulation. He felt like some of the trembling was because of the fact that he was freezing, having been swimming in the Arctic Ocean — which was cold at the best of times — on a windy day, but also that some of it was fear.

A deep, dark, dreading, sickening fear. A fear that wouldn't let him think of anything else — even the fact that he was freezing: but that Ryan might possibly be dead.

He couldn't hear anything, and the longer the silence remained, the more ill he felt.

Even though he was thoroughly sure his stomach had nothing in it, having not eaten for the better part of two days, but he still felt like vomiting nonetheless. He had never felt so sick with fear in his life; even the uncertainty of life after his mom's death and the fright at having to travel alone to a place he'd never been to meet a man he'd never known were pathetic in comparison to the abject fear of this moment.

If Ryan was dead it was his fault. He'd chosen the route, he'd even insisted that they head for home in the first place! The last thing he wanted was to actually, really lose one of his friends, and even if the rest of his friends refused to blame him, others would surely, like Marc and Carolyn, much less Ashley, Dylan, and Kelsey — Dylan especially, considering he and Ryan were quite close.

Suddenly the sound of vomiting reached his ears; Yukon shot his head out of his sleeping bag and looked around frantically.

Ryan was sitting half up and turned toward the ocean. The vomiting sound came again and Yukon saw some rather brackish-looking water flow away from Ryan.

Yukon was about ready to collapse with relief. Ryan was alive."