Unknown by Unknown Page A

there he was, some ten feet above her, calling down.
    ‘Not too hard,’ he yelled, ‘but maybe you’d do better to let me take the picture for you. Tie the little camera on to this string.’
    She reached up for the wavering end of the twine he was lowering. It would have to be the Minolta, of course, with the telescopic lens. She fastened the camera securely in its case, and tied and twine carefully around the carrying handle. ‘Don’t let it bounce against the side,’ she yelled up at him.
    He waved in acknowledgement, leaning out from the top so the line would fall straight and unencumbered. Katie, standing directly under him, could see it all happen, but was unable to do anything about it. One of the loose rocks under his foot slipped. He backed off from it to regain his balance, but the stone, some ten pounds of igneous rock, broke loose, bounced once or twice on its way down, struck hard at the base of the pillar, and bumped over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.
    It all happened so quickly that Katie did not notice, until seconds later, that the rock had struck off her left foot. And then the pain came. Sharp, insistent, piercing. She screamed once, and then darkness closed in.
    When she drifted back to consciousness she was in the back seat of the Jeep, with her leg propped up on a folded blanket. Harry had just collapsed on to the front seat when some small noise she made alerted him.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously.
    ‘Yes,’ she muttered between clenched lips. ‘Give me a few minutes. It’ll all go away, I’m sure.’
    ‘Like hell it will,’ he returned. ‘As soon as I can catch my breath—I think I almost broke my back carrying you down here—we’re headed for the hospital. You’ll have to hang on. It’s all the way over to Erwin.’
    ‘I can make it,’ she assured him, wondering if it were true. He drove like a madman, down the mountain, through Ernestville, slowing only when he crossed the corporate boundary of Erwin. Even there he was somewhat over the speed limit as he wheeled down Sinasta Drive, behind the Unicoi County Memorial Hospital, and squealed to a stop at the emergency entrance. He left her in the car while he dashed inside, but moments later was back with help, and a rolling stretcher.
    ‘I’m not hurt that much,’ she told them feebly. She really believed it. They didn’t. Tender hands moved her on to the stretcher. All she saw of the hospital interior was a series of high green-painted ceilings. Several unseen hands touched her swollen foot. She heard a murmur of consultation, and then they wheeled her away from the bright lights of the emergency room into the relative darkness of the X-ray section. Much to her surprise Harry stayed by her side all the way, holding her hand. No one in authority made any objection.
    An hour later the doctor was back at her side, a satisfied smile on his face. He gestured, and a nurse appeared on her other side with a hypodermic needle. Thoroughly cowed by officialdom, Katie presented her arm on command.
    ‘A small problem,’ the doctor told her. The smile he wore looked artificial, as if he were tired from a long list of other ‘simple’ problems. ‘You have a cleft in your left metatarsal,’ he beamed at her, ‘and a considerable oedema.’ She was already feeling the effects of the injection, and felt as if she were floating about two inches above the rubber mattress. Obviously he was congratulating her for some outstanding accomplishment.
    ‘That’s nice,’ she muttered sleepily. ‘Is it catching?’
    ‘What he means is that you’ve got a broken foot,’ Harry interpreted. ‘Come on, Henry, put it into English.’
    ‘Ah, yes,’ the doctor replied. ‘When are you going to come help with that problem I told you about with the CAT scanner?’
    ‘Right after I get my girl back,’ Harry snorted.
    ‘Oh! Your girl. I didn’t understand. Okay, here’s what we have to do. The foot has to go into a cast,