“What do you think, Robert?” Mark whispered to Robert.
“I think your new beard, wrestling shoes, and plaid printed shorts suck,” Robert replied back.
“No. No, dumbass. Not my clothing. This. This. Everything here,” Mark replied, waving his arms around at the room. “Emily isn’t here. We need to have a serious discussion. It’s been two months now, and not a clue of them. They are gone. Done.”
Emotionless Robert shifted his body weight, looked down at the floor, then across at the digital clocks. He glanced at the same wall Mark was just referring to. “What are you thinking?”
“Shut it down,” Mark told him. “I’m thinking that we are well past search and rescue, well past recovery. We can’t just keep the Ops Center here open with no leads. We have nothing. These guys disappeared. What else can we do?’
“I’m thinking we have to plan on a funeral. Burial at Arlington for both of them. Close this down.”
“Agree. Let’s go see Mr. Burns,” Robert said, as they head for the door.
“OK. We have to tell Emily first,” Mark announced.
Country music artist Kenny Chesney’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” was playing in the background as Emily sat alone on her couch. Her knees up and near her chin, only wearing a long sleeve T-shirt, pink underwear, and socks, she sat and cried, mourning the loss of Ford. Her black lab, Daisy, was sleeping in the corner.
Emily’s pain from the loss was intense, as she felt the pit in her stomach ache day and night. More tears streamed down her cheeks as she cried and cried. She felt as alone, as her loss was difficult to comprehend, and if she had to have closure on this, it wasn’t happening any time soon. Emily wanted her mum there, or her sister, even her close girlfriends in London. But she was a career woman, and at the moment, her position assigned her 3,674 miles to the west of the UK. Wiping her mascara on her white sleeve, Emily looked out at the Iwo Jima Memorial outside her apartment window, then out across the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall. She sipped more Chardonnay as more doubt crept in.
How am I going to make it? How I can I go on without him? I am so numb to… work… life… my heart hurts…
Emily had not eaten for the last two days, only moving off her couch or bed to use the bathroom. She had bottomed out in anguish and sorrow.
PART 11
WATER
The United Nations in 2011 stated that “any imposition of solitary confinement beyond fifteen days constitutes torture.” Even as far back as 1842, Charles Dickens wrote that isolation was something very few men were capable of handling. He once wrote about isolation that “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”
His mind continued to fight him as he was constantly attempting to keep it busy. Sometimes he conducted math problems in his head, like adding multiple numbers or calculating compound interest, return-on-investments, and one-person debates on index funds versus real estate. He even remembered specific plays at the Notre Dame versus Michigan football game he played in years ago, replaying movements from the field in his mind. At other times, he wondered if the mishap was his fault, perhaps something he missed in the cockpit. He felt abandoned and lost and was embarrassed thinking that he may have been partly responsible for Pinky’s death. The reflection on his life was constant, and he made note many times that the happiness in his life was in living for others, helping others. He had to live.
Physically, Ford barely had an ounce of fat on him and may have looked chiseled at an outward glance, but he was thirty-three pounds lighter over the past nine weeks of isolation.
Reaching a bit lower in the mountains that were dirt covered and full of wildlife, Ford was able to make a variety of animal and fish traps to aid in sustaining himself. During one capture, he made trail snares with his bootlaces and ate rabbit. Using his survival knife from his backpack, he was able to clean the rabbit somewhat, cook it up on a fire, and eat like he hadn’t eaten before. But it was temporary, and he didn’t capture anything else for a while.
Ford was also able to capture some fish in the icy streams he came across by making a hook from Pinky’s jacket zipper. By twisting a portion of her jacket fibers, he made a line. Because he could not find a suitable worm as bait, he used Emily’s engagement ring after breaking the band with a rock. With the flashy metal of the ring, he was able to make a fish hook to catch the fish’s attention. Not sure if I will tell her this one, he said to himself. But she’ll find out.
He was also able to find plenty of edible plants, from wild onion to nut grass to bark. The wild onion was especially tasty if he cooked it, and to Ford, it tasted like just like old-school onion. He also noticed more moss, Indian tortoiseshell butterflies, and purple Himalayan primrose in bloom, all good signs that he was descending in altitude.
What Ford did not expect for the past week was his severe case of the diarrhea caused by all the wild food and unclean water he was drinking. The water looked clean and fresh, but it definitely was not.
At first, he would go, then have to wipe himself with any leaves he could find. Then it was a few times an hour. Now, it was nearly uncontrollable. His body was full of viruses, bacteria, and parasites, and the intense agony he was feeling had him buckled over and holding his gut. Ford was having so much pain and diarrhea that it left him severely dehydrated, weak, and destitute.
If Ford were able to get a blood test, we would see that his white blood cells were on the hunt for the viruses, bacteria, and fungi. His white blood cells, or leukocytes, knew enough to destroy the aggressive foreign bodies before they caused him harm. Some white blood cells directly attack the foreign bugs, while others go after cells that are infected by viruses. Either way, his body could not keep up with the infections.
“God, I made it this far out of the mountains. Don’t take me this way. I can… I can… I want to live,” he slowly said out loud, struggling to talk coherently.
Drinking tainted water was the downfall of millions of the earth’s people. Ford drank contaminated, dirty water. The World Bank had estimated that 21 percent of communicable diseases in India were water related. Diarrhea alone killed over seven hundred thousand people in India each year, with the highest mortality under the age of five. Ford was feeling every one of the bad organisms eating away at his immune system, and it wasn’t promising. He looked and felt absolutely awful.
Ford’s very unhygienic water collection and zero hand washing added to the transmission of his diarrhea-causing germs. His infection was riding the highways of his body and spreading through his tissues and lowering his blood pressure, leaving him at the beginning of shock. His body’s organs, specifically his lungs, liver, and kidneys, were at the early stages of shutdown.
Ford was going to die.
“Hi Aunt Michelle, this is Rex,” said a young Rex Miller into the telephone.
“Rex who?” replied Michelle Boyd, clearly teasing her nephew.
Rex was silent and didn’t know how to answer, and he looked at his Dad standing next to him.
“I’m just kidding, Rexy! How are you, buddy? Doing well?” Michelle replied.