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a feeling of emptiness overwhelms me.
    I look back toward the tail of the plane, but it has disappeared behind a swirling veil of white. Then I look ahead toward what I thought a few minutes ago might be the main cabin of the plane, but I can’t see beyond the blinding ice darting at my eyes. My heart sinks. I turn back and forth a few times hoping to see either tail or cabin, but they’ve disappeared behind the storm.
    I’m lost. I’m going to die. On this godforsaken mountain, I’m going to die. Well, isn’t that what I wanted?
    There’s no easy answer on my lips or in my mind.
    Is it what I wanted? Is it?

Chapter 12
    A lump rises in my throat. Tears well up and freeze on my face. I feel dizzy again and my legs buckle. I fall to my knees. Snow swishes around me, burying me, like a heartless killer shoveling dirt on top of a still-breathing victim. I’m alive, but as good as dead. I look up to where I believe the sun is, but all I see are patterns of gray and white dancing before my eyes.
    A huge sob heaves up, and I let out a primal scream that emerges from the darkest part of my heart. It is as if some part of me has been tied up and gagged since my father died, and now it has been let loose to be heard before it dies.
    “Oh God, oh God!” I hear myself holler to the sky.
    A river of uncontrollable sounds follows, cascading up through my chest and out of my mouth. My voice has no words for what is bursting forth now. It is wild and guttural. It is life sounding off against death, before death. As I kneel and gasp, inside my head I can hear that old angelic voice whispering:
Let yourself go, Jane. Let it be. This is what you’ve wanted for so long. Let the clean white snow wash over you. Don’t fight it; let it be joyous; let it take you and bury your sad, black heart once and forever
.
    A big gust of icy air slaps my face. I tuck my head to my chest to protect myself and then, as if I have become two people, I hear my own voice dancing on the wind. And then I hear it again, but my mind knows it can’t be me. Distant, clear, familiar. It keeps coming, and more clearly now, as the wind momentarily dies down.
    “Help! Is somebody there?”
    I start to cry for a moment and then scream back, “I’m here! Help! Help me!”
    “I’m down here! Down here! I’m stuck!” the voice calls back.
    “Help me!” I scream again.
    Then I realize that, as desperate as I am, I am not stuck. I can move; I can act. Old Doctor’s voice is echoing in my head: “It is a matter of stasis, Jane. You can wither away or help yourself. That’s the only path to wellness.”
    I slowly lift myself out of the snow and try to steady myself. My legs wobble. My face is caked with snow and dried blood and old vomit, now beginning to freeze.
    “Where are you?” I shout. “Where are you?!”
    “Hello!? Hello!?” the voice shouts. And then, “Down here! Down here!”
    I know that voice. I know that annoying, but now so incredibly beautiful, voice. It’s Paul Hart. I start moving through the deep snow. My legs pump like adrenaline-fueled pistons, slashing through the drifts with urgency and purpose. My head and heart fill with hope and my body takes flight. I feel like I’m almost running on top of the snow.
    I look up and I see the sky opening up below my feet and I jam my heels hard into the snow. My feet skid and then I fall on my butt, sliding to the very edge of a crevice.
    I nudge my head over the side, careful not to slip in the process. I look down, and it is black and bottomless. It must be hundreds of feet deep. My heart stops for a second, and then my stomach wrenches when I think how close I came to running right off the edge of the world.
    I lean back and inhale deeply, then peer over the side again and see that Paul, a good twenty feet below me, is still strapped in his airplane seat, which is lodged into a tree that is growing out of the side of the mountain.
    “Are you all right?” I shout.
    He looks up at me from