Free Survive by Alex Morel

he kisses the top of my head, in a brotherly way, nothing further.
    “See, I wanted to do that, but I was thinking about it too much.”
    “Clever,” I say.
    “Night,” he whispers.
    I sit for a moment in the dark, thinking about the day. It’s been endless and utterly exhausting—like a lifetime lived in twenty-four hours. I can hear a soft snore coming from Paul. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Chapter 18
    I wake. Light splinters in from under the door. Paul’s arms are draped around me: his right arm snakes around my body, and his left circles above and around, cupping my waist, his hand gripping my side just above the hip bone.
    I’ve read about the wilderness and I know that you can experience hallucinations in extreme cold. Because there’s a twenty-ish guy spooning me, I question whether this is indeed a hallucination. Am I losing my mind? I consider the possibility that I am actually dead and that this is the beginning of an unexpected afterlife. Could I have conjured up a more conventional scenario than to wake up in the arms of a beautiful boy?
    I don’t want to move, for fear of waking him. I listen to his breathing, which is full and deep. His breath is warm on my neck. Maybe somebody will come today and find us and it will all be over. I wish I had a close friend I could tell. There’s nobody at the institution but the Old Doctor. He’d love it. I can imagine him saying, “Jane, don’t you see now? You were alive up there, face-to-face with death. Things happen when you’re alive in the world.”
    “Are you awake?” Paul’s voice is deep and rusty.
    “Yes, why?”
    “You were talking to yourself. I thought maybe you were dreaming.” He shifts around a bit, moving his right arm up to stretch it.
    “What was I saying?” I ask.
    “You don’t want to know.”
    Oh my God.
    “Tell me, please,” I say.
    “I’m kidding.”
    Thank you, God.
    “My hands feel better,” he remarks as he flexes his bruised left fingers. “But my head is killing me.
    “Mine hurts too,” I say.
    “We’re dehydrated. A headache is the first sign from the body. We need to find water.”
    That’s true, no doubt, but what I’m thinking is I really have to pee badly. The bizarre nature of this situation dawns on me. I’m sharing a bathroom, literally, with a guy I met, in real time, maybe three hundred words ago. Sure, we survived an airplane crash together and I saved his life and I guess we have slept together, which may have created a bond so profound it will transcend time, but the thought of peeing in front of him still feels way out of the question.
    “I hate to break this up,” he whispers.
    “Why are you whispering?”
    “What do you mean?” he says.
    “You’re whispering and we’re alone in the middle of nowhere, in a bathroom.”
    “Right,” he agrees, and then shouts loudly: “Nobody can hear us, can they?”
    Not a hallucination: he’s just as annoying now as he was when I first met him. But I can’t help finding some of his antics charming.
    He reaches over and pulls the zipper down on the sleeping bag.
    “We need to do some investigating. And I actually need to use the toilet,” he confides.
    “Me too. The bathroom.”
    We both stand, he hunched over and me leaning against the sink, and look at each other for a minute.
    “I’m not peeing in front of you,” I say.
    “Right.”
    He steps into his boots and laces them up. He pulls the door open and looks back out at me. “Don’t take too long; it’s freezing out here.”
    He steps out into the light and pulls the door shut. I know he can still hear me and hearing is almost worse than seeing. Either way I have stage fright, so to speak.
    “Start singing,” I shout.
    “What?”
    “I said start singing so you can’t hear me pee.”
    “That’s ridiculous.”
    “Start singing or I won’t pee.” I start kicking the door with my foot. “And I won’t let you in.”
    He clears his throat and then breaks into