We were halfway through the gorge trail when it happened.
The air was thin and sharp, the river a silver ribbon far below. The path was narrow, no more than two feet wide in some places, with sheer drops that punished carelessness.
Tomas had been in front, humming under his breath, joking with Maya who walked just behind him. His laugh was still in the air when the rock gave way beneath his boot.
The sound of stone cracking echoed like thunder. Then Tomas was gone—sliding down the slope, arms flailing, dust exploding behind him.
We shouted, scrambled forward, helpless as gravity claimed him. He hit an outcrop ten feet below with a sickening crack, then rolled until a cluster of brush caught him.
Silence.
“Tom!” Maya screamed, dropping to her knees at the cliff edge.
We stared down. He was moving—barely. His leg bent at an impossible angle, blood seeping dark from his scalp. Alive, but broken.
The gorge walls made climbing down slow and dangerous. By the time we reached him, his skin was the color of ash.
“Don’t move him,” Jakob warned immediately. He was with us again—old teacher, steady voice, the kind of man who seemed carved from the same stone as the cliffs. “Neck and spine could be damaged. We stabilize first.”
But stabilization wasn’t enough. We were deep in the gorge, far from roads or signal. Rescue would take hours—if it came at all.
“He needs a hospital,” Maya whispered, voice shaking. “We can’t just sit here.”
Jakob looked at the narrow trail winding back along the cliffside. “Then we carry him.”
The words dropped into silence like a stone into water. Carry him—six miles of uneven rock, steep climbs, switchbacks, and no proper stretcher.
But there was no other choice.
We stripped branches, lashed them with belts and shoelaces, made a crude litter frame. Our jackets became padding, our backpacks stripped of straps to bind the structure together. It looked like a child’s drawing of a stretcher—but it was all we had.
Jakob crouched by Tomas, speaking low. “This will hurt, son. But it’s the only way.”
Tomas groaned, his lips cracked. “Just… don’t leave me.”
“Never,” Maya said fiercely, clutching his hand. “You’re coming with us.”
And with that, we slid him onto the makeshift stretcher, every jolt drawing a moan from his throat.
“Two at the front, two at the back,” Jakob ordered. “Rotate every ten minutes. No heroes. If your arms fail, you drop him. And we don’t drop him.”
We nodded, terrified and determined.
And then, with the weight of a man’s life straining our shoulders, we began the slow climb out of the gorge.
The stretcher creaked with every step, leather belts straining against branches, shoelaces biting into bark. It wasn’t pretty, but it held. Tomas lay bound within, pale and drifting in and out of consciousness.
The trail was cruel—narrow, rocky, every few feet a new obstacle. One slip and the stretcher would pitch sideways into the gorge.
Jakob set the pace. “Slow. Always slow. Don’t think about the miles. Think about the next three steps.”
I was at the back with Maya. She carried more than her share, her jaw clenched tight, eyes fixed on her brother’s face. Sweat ran down her temples, but she never loosened her grip.
Every ten minutes Jakob called for rotation. “Switch! Set him down, carefully!” Four others stepped forward, sliding under the branches, lifting as one. We moved like a relay team, but slower, more desperate.
The physical strain was brutal. My shoulders screamed, my hands blistered. The stretcher seemed to grow heavier with every step, as if Tomas’s weight absorbed all of our fear.
At one point Malcolm—sweating, red-faced—snapped, “We’ll never make it. We’re going too slow. He’ll die before we get out.”
Maya’s eyes blazed. “Then die trying, but don’t you dare stop carrying him.”
Jakob’s voice cut through before anger could explode. “Fear wastes strength. Save your breath for the climb.”
We obeyed. Not because we weren’t angry, but because Jakob’s tone left no room for splintering.
Midway up a switchback, the stretcher lurched. Erin’s foot slipped on wet rock, and for a terrifying second Tomas slid sideways. His scream tore through us like a blade.
“Hold him! HOLD!” Jakob barked.
We froze, bracing the stretcher against our thighs until balance returned. Erin’s face was chalk-white. “I—I almost—”
“You didn’t,” Jakob said firmly. “He’s still here. That’s what matters.”
We set him down gently. Tomas whimpered, clutching at Maya’s hand. “It feels like fire… my leg…”
She smoothed his hair, whispering, “I know, Tom. Just breathe. We’ve got you.”
I knelt, trembling, watching the blood seep slowly through the bandage. For a moment the helplessness almost crushed me. But then I saw the others—blistered hands, bent backs, tear-streaked faces—and I realized we were no longer just hikers. We were lifters, bearers, carrying not just a body but the thread of his life.
The trail stretched on, merciless. Hours blurred together: lift, step, switch, set down, lift again. Every time I thought I had no strength left, I looked at Tomas—pale but breathing—and found one more step.
We all did.
By late afternoon, we reached a plateau where the air thinned, and Jakob finally allowed us to rest longer. We lowered Tomas onto a jacket bed. His chest rose and fell shallowly, but his eyes flickered open.
“You’re… still carrying me,” he whispered.
Maya gripped his hand. “Always.”
And though none of us said it aloud, the truth was clear: it wasn’t one person carrying Tomas anymore. It was all of us, every hand, every step, every ounce of will.
The stretcher was crude. The trail was merciless. But teamwork—sweat-soaked, blister-handed, relentless—was keeping him alive.
By the time the sun dipped low, exhaustion wasn’t just in our muscles—it had sunk into our bones. Every step felt like dragging a boulder. Hands trembled, knees buckled, shoulders burned raw beneath the weight of the stretcher poles.
Tomas groaned weakly with each jolt. His pain was constant, a reminder that we couldn’t stop.
But human limits don’t negotiate with good intentions.
It was Malcolm who cracked first. His grip slipped, and when Jakob called for a switch, he didn’t step forward again.
“I can’t,” he panted, dropping to a rock. “I’m done. My arms are dead. If I lift again, I’ll drop him.”
Maya’s face twisted with fury. “He’s my brother. If I can keep going, so can you.”
Malcolm’s eyes shone with something uglier than fatigue—fear. “You don’t get it. If I collapse, I take him down the cliff with me. Better I sit out than kill him.”
The group wavered. He wasn’t wrong. But his words cracked the fragile thread of unity.
“If he won’t carry, then what?” Erin snapped. “We’re short-handed already. We’ll never make the ridge before dark.”
Jakob knelt in the dirt, silent for a long moment, then spoke low and firm. “We don’t shame the weak. If one falls, the rest adjust. That’s how teams survive. Malcolm sits, fine. The rest of us rotate tighter.”
“That’s not fair!” Erin shouted.
“It’s survival,” Jakob replied.
The silence that followed was heavier than the stretcher itself.
We adjusted. Four became three, then two, then four again when someone caught their breath enough to step in. The rotations grew shorter, more desperate. Every time we lifted, Tomas moaned, and Maya whispered encouragement like prayers.
But the breaking point wasn’t just physical. It was emotional.
At dusk, when the trail curved along a sheer cliff, the stretcher snagged against a rock outcrop. We stumbled, nearly pitching Tomas sideways into the void. His scream tore through us, raw and animal.
Maya dropped to her knees beside him, sobbing. “We’re killing him! Every step is killing him!”
Her words froze us in place. Even Jakob’s face went hollow in the fading light.
Tomas, pale as death, forced his eyes open. His lips moved. We bent close to hear him over the wind.
“Don’t… stop…” he rasped. “I don’t care… the pain. Just don’t… leave me.”
The plea cut deeper than any scream.
Maya pressed her forehead to his chest, tears soaking his shirt. “We won’t, Tom. I swear.”
And Jakob, voice hoarse but steady, said, “Then we carry. All of us. No one sits out. No one walks empty.”
Even Malcolm, trembling and ashamed, nodded. “I’ll try again.”
And so we lifted, blistered hands wrapping the poles once more.
That night, under a bruised sky, we moved like ghosts along the trail—bodies broken, spirits frayed, but bound by a promise.
Because in that moment, carrying Tomas wasn’t just about his survival.
It was about proving to ourselves that we could still carry one another.
By dawn we were shadows of ourselves.
Hands blistered and bleeding, shoulders raw, legs shaking with every climb. The stretcher no longer felt like wood and cloth—it felt like fate itself, heavy and unrelenting.
Ahead, the trail rose toward the ridge. Beyond it lay the ranger station, a two-hour hike if you were healthy and unburdened. For us, carrying Tomas, it might as well have been Everest.
Jakob stood at the base of the incline, staring at the winding path. His lips moved silently, as though counting the switchbacks. Then he turned to us, voice hoarse but unyielding.
“This is it,” he said. “One last climb. We stop, he dies. We fall apart, he dies. But if we move together—slow, steady—he lives.”
The words weren’t a command. They were a covenant.
We lifted again.
Every step was agony. The stretcher dug into our palms like hot iron. Mud slid under boots, rocks bit into ankles. Wind lashed us from the cliff face.
“Left foot—together,” Jakob murmured like a mantra. “Right foot—together.”
We moved in rhythm, a broken choir keeping time with sweat and breath.
Halfway up, Erin stumbled. The stretcher tilted, Tomas cried out, and panic rippled through us. Jakob barked, “Hold!” We froze, bracing with all our might until balance returned.
“I can’t,” Erin sobbed. “I can’t do another step.”
“You already did a hundred you said you couldn’t,” Maya snapped, eyes blazing through tears. “So do one more. And one more after that. For him.”
Erin met her gaze, trembling. Then she nodded, jaw set. And we climbed again.
The last switchback was cruel—steeper, narrower, the earth crumbling beneath our boots. We moved in silence now, beyond words, beyond fear. Only effort remained.
Tomas drifted in and out, sometimes groaning, sometimes whispering fragments: “Don’t… leave me…”
“We’re here,” Maya whispered each time. “We’ll always be here.”
Finally, the ridge crest came into view. And there—like a vision—stood a ranger truck, orange vests flashing in the sunlight.
For a heartbeat none of us believed it. Then shouts carried across the wind, and rangers ran toward us.
We didn’t cheer. We didn’t even weep. We simply laid the stretcher down, hands trembling too badly to lift again, and stepped back as professionals took over.
Tomas was alive. And somehow, so were we.
On that ridge, I realized something: the stretcher had never just carried Tomas.
It had carried all of us—our fear, our exhaustion, our will to keep going when everything said stop.
We thought we were carrying the weight of one broken man.
But really, we were carrying the proof that a group can become more than the sum of its parts—when survival hangs by the grip of blistered hands.
The ranger team took Tomas from our hands with quiet urgency. Their stretcher was real—aluminum frame, webbing, straps designed to hold a body steady. Watching them secure him felt almost surreal after the crude lattice of branches and belts we had sweated over.
“His vitals are weak,” one medic said, “but he’s stable. You kept him alive.”
We nodded dumbly, too drained for pride. Our arms ached, our shoulders throbbed, our knees were swollen. Every muscle screamed. But the words sank in slowly: You kept him alive.
The helicopter came within the hour. Its blades whipped dust across the ridge as Tomas was lifted inside. Maya clutched his hand until the last moment, whispering something only he could hear. Then he was gone, carried toward real medicine and clean white sheets.
For the first time in two days, we weren’t carrying him. And the absence of his weight felt stranger than the burden had.
At the ranger station later, warm blankets on our shoulders and mugs of broth in our hands, we finally spoke about what had happened. Not about the fall, or even Tomas’s pain—but about the carrying.
Malcolm stared at his blistered palms. “I thought I was useless when I sat down. But when I got back under that stretcher… I don’t think I’ve ever done anything harder—or more important.”
Erin, her voice soft, said, “Every time I wanted to quit, I just looked at him. And then at all of you. I didn’t want to be the link that broke.”
Jakob sipped his broth slowly. “It wasn’t about strength. It was about rhythm. You found it together. That’s why he lived.”
We sat in silence, letting the truth of that settle.
Days later, when we visited Tomas in the hospital, his leg in traction and his head bandaged, he grinned weakly. “You carried me,” he said, wonder in his voice.
“We all did,” Maya whispered, squeezing his hand.
And in that room, it was clear the stretcher had carried more than Tomas. It had carried us all through doubt, anger, fear, and exhaustion. It had taught us that survival isn’t just about knowing knots or muscle strength—it’s about refusing to let go when someone’s life hangs in your grip.
I still feel the phantom weight sometimes—the rough wood digging into my palms, the sway of a body depending on me. It’s heavy, yes. But not unbearable.
Because I know now that the weight of one life is never carried alone.
It belongs to the whole team.
Step by step.
Hand by hand.
Until the ridge is crested, and survival is no longer a question, but a memory.