237 Ks Zero Fs Chapter 04
Three years ago, Hailey had taken leave to go to Coachella. That was why I’d been forced to take her half-finished geological sketches and enter the deep mountain worksite in her place.
The rain that day fell like it wanted to drown Seattle.
There were barely any workers on site. I wore heavy waterproof gear and followed the path her markings indicated, step by step through the muddy pine-needle forest floor.
I trusted Hailey’s data too much. My head stayed down, verifying coordinates. I didn’t even notice I’d wandered into a Level One restricted hazard zone.
Boom—
A deafening roar. The sudden mudslide buried me, along with tons of slurry, completely.
The only thing that saved me was a section of abandoned reinforced concrete pipe that blocked the worst of the falling rock. It let me keep my life by a thread.
My vision was wiped out entirely. The only things in my ears were my own ragged breathing, my frantic heartbeat, and the horrific sound of mud seeping through the gaps. I couldn’t tell where the pain was coming from anymore.
My right arm had snapped into a grotesque angle.
Unable to move, I fumbled desperately in my pocket with my blood-slicked left hand. I finally reached my phone. The space was so tight only my thumb could move.
In the faint glow of the screen, I stabbed open the pinned conversation on instinct. Blind-typed a message to Conor.
The oxygen was running out. My body heat was draining fast.
I sobbed. Fear made me bite through the tip of my tongue. The metallic taste of blood and tears slid down my throat. My mind was full of him. I chanted his name, using it as the only thing holding me together while I hit send over and over.
“Conor… I’m so scared. Save me…”
“I don’t want to die here…”
Every second in the darkness was a slow execution.
I passed out from the pain. Woke up screaming. Kept crying and sending messages. I didn’t even know when my phone had automatically shut off.
I’d believed, with absolute certainty, that Conor would see the messages and come for me like a superhero with a search-and-rescue team.
I was still hoarsely calling Conor’s name when I slipped into deep hypovolemic shock.
Seventy-two hours later, the rescue team’s excavator scraped away the last shovel of earth and pulled me out. By then, I was severely hypothermic. Only a faint heartbeat remained.
In the ambulance, the paramedic dialed my emergency contact—Conor. The phone rang eight times before someone picked up.
A young woman’s voice answered immediately, thick with sleep-heavy irritation: “Why the hell are you calling this early?! He’s still sleeping! God, leave him alone!”
The paramedic called back.
“Hello, this is the Seattle Harborview Medical Center emergency department. I’m Maya’s—”
The line cut off again. This time it went straight to voicemail.
My life hung by a thread. No family member to sign consent forms. No one dared operate.
The lead surgeon eventually looked at my pupils, saw they were nearly fully dilated, and activated the hospital emergency protocol. They forced me into the OR.
When I woke up in the ICU, I was intubated. My right arm was immobilized with steel plates, wrapped in layers of bandages.
I stared at the Harborview ceiling. My mind was a blank wall.
During that time, Conor had been kept busy by Hailey, who’d claimed she needed support for “post-traumatic stress.” He hadn’t bothered to ask where I’d gone at all.
They’d set my right arm, but the severe nerve damage was permanent.
I went through a long stretch of rehab before I could barely grip a stylus to draw again.
To this day, my hand still shakes uncontrollably when the weather turns cold.
After I was discharged, Conor and I nearly tore the house apart.
I lost it completely.
I went hysterical. Smashed every insanely expensive Williams Sonoma plate in the kitchen. Almost took a lighter to his precious architectural models.
I clawed bloody scratches across Conor’s face. His tie was ripped to shreds.
I screamed through my tears. Why did he set my messages to driving-mode auto-reply? Why did he trample my life like that?!
Faced with the wreckage, his reaction was textbook American upper-middle-class “poise and stability.”
He straightened his shirt collar and looked down at me from a height.
“Because I didn’t want to read them.”
“You send too much pointless crap. All day it’s pictures of latte art from some café or a dog you saw on the street. I handle multimillion-dollar projects at the firm every day. I don’t have the energy to reply to your meaningless messages.”
My heart died in that exact moment. It shattered alongside the ceramic shards scattered across the floor.
The distance between us stretched wider and wider, until we became strangers living under the same roof.
Until I finally admitted that marriage counseling couldn’t save us. I couldn’t waste the rest of my life with this self-righteous, selfish bastard.
My deepest regret was letting him pull me back with his emotional manipulation, making me doubt myself, giving him chance after chance.
I should have had a lawyer slap the divorce papers in his face while I was still in that ICU bed three years ago.