Wolv

6 - Island

    There was heat. Lots of it. I was basking in a sticky, humid, heat, burning my face and arms. I was floating, carefree, in an endless white space.

    I would stay here forever, if it weren't so darn hot.

   Its just so...serene.

   In the distance, across the white space, I could make out a shore line. A single grey wolf stood there, looking back at me. It cocked it's head at me, and I smiled back at it. Everything was just as it should be; everything was okay. The wolf took a step backwards, threw back its head, and howled.

    My eyes fluttered open, and the dream vanished from my eyes. I was sitting in my water-logged boat, with my head hanging down. I lifted up my eyes and looked around: in front of me was a relatively smooth shoreline; everything else was obscured by the torrential downpour. Behind me was open water, and above me was the pounding rain. I drifted forward slowly, occasionally lifting my left arm and rowing forward with what was left of my paddle. After what felt like an eternity, I bumped into the smooth, granite shore. I fumbled around in the cockpit until I freed myself. I stepped out into waist deep water, and using my left arm, began pulling my kayak onto land. I couldn't move my right arm, and the skin was painted with red. I didn't want to take a closer look at it just yet--I knew something was seriously wrong with it, but I had enough to deal with at the moment.

    The bow of my kayak looked like it had been through a meat grinder. Fiberglass and wooden splinters shot out in every direction, and the deck had four large cracks running from the bow to the cockpit. My boat wasn't going anywhere soon. I knew that I had a roll of duct tape stuffed in the rear hatch, but I was going to need a lot more than just tape to make it seaworthy again. If I was still at home, I would easily end up using a liter or more of epoxy patching it up.

    This is bad.

    A numb pain began to set in in my ribs and arm as the adrenaline began to wear off. I could put off my injuries no longer.

    I left my kayak and sat down against a tree, and began cautiously examining my right arm. Half way between my wrist and elbow, it bent at an odd angle. White, pebbly bone jutted out slightly on the opposite side of the break, and the skin around the wound was dark and green, already bruising heavily. I tried moving my fingers, but the pain only grew the more I tried. I lifted my shirt up to inspect my chest where my paddle had impacted me. A dark purple bruise was forming across half of my rib cage, and a small trickle of blood ran from my right shoulder down to my waist. I began to panic.

    "Oh." I said the word again and again and again, unable to say anything else. A million things were racing through my mind, none of them good. I had no idea how to set a broken arm, much less one that was breaching my skin! And who knows whats all messed up behind my ribs!!  I'd taken quite a wallop to my chest; my insides felt like they'd been mashed.

    I dragged myself up, grunting under the pain, and hobbled over to my kayak. I undid the buckles on the rear hatch and pulled out my scrawny first aid kit, and looked drearily at its contents. Band aids. Hydrogen peroxide. Polysporin. A turniqy and a roll of gauze. A bottle of Tylenol and a pocket knife. That pretty much summed it up.

    I'm screwed.

    I dropped the first aid kit, and huddled my legs in miserably. Bandages weren't gonna fix broken bones, and painkillers wouldn't mend my damaged chest. I was on my own out here; I was gonna have to fix myself if I wanted to live.

    I flipped open the knife and began cutting at the bungee webbing on my kayak. Once I had cut through, I unlaced the line from the boat, and ended up with an eleven foot long elastic cord. Every time I had seen a movie, or a T.V. show that involved a broken limb, they always seemed to set the fracture by yanking it straight.