Fear itself

11

By the fifth or sixth time Dorie awoke that day-or evening, or night-the swelling had gone down enough to enable her to open her eyes. Not that it made any difference-you can’t get blacker than black. It was also slightly easier to breathe, but otherwise nothing had changed, except in degree-she was thirstier than ever, and needed to pee even more desperately. If she hadn’t been hog-tied, she might have been tempted to solve both problems at once by sipping her own urine-Dorie knew a famous photographer down in Big Sur who claimed to drink a glassful every morning-but as it was, even that unpleasant expedient was denied her.

Dorie had read or seen enough hostage and POW stories to know what she had to do to survive. Keep alert, stay oriented, maintain a positive attitude. Yeah, sure. Ha, ha, and ha. But difficult as she was finding it to keep awake, much less alert, or to stay oriented in total darkness and virtual silence, the real challenge was to avoid giving in to despair.

You can lie here feeling sorry for yourself, waiting to die, she told herself, or you can use every waking minute and every ounce of energy figuring out how to get out of this…predicament was the second word that came to mind; the first had been nightmare. But since for the moment words were the only thing Dorie had any degree of control over, she chose the less charged one. Predicament was a good word, the kind of word you could use to stave off panic. Because predicaments, after all, were things you figured your way out of, she told herself, closing her eyes again. All you could do with a nightmare was wake up from it.

Or not.