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Noah had been a skilled cliff diver, but something had gone wrong. One of the local divers speculated that Noah had mistimed the dive; the water was too shallow, and he struck the back of his head on the rocks that littered the ocean floor. He was taken to the local Naval Hospital and later flown to UCLA, in a coma all the while. Every one of these articles declared he wasn’t expected to live for a week, let alone survive the surgery that would replace the back of his shattered skull with a metal plate.
I dug deeper, my heart aching for what I was reading.
Noah remained in a coma for twelve days. When he finally awoke, he was blinded and hardly able to speak. Two weeks later, he was declared well enough to begin the grueling series of surgeries on the skin and muscle tissue of his neck and back. Apparently, the rocks had bit at him like a shark, tearing the flesh from his body. He’d needed a grand-total of six surgeries—including skin grafts—to repair the damage and then nearly died again as the grafting site on his leg became infected. All the while, he remained blind, though the doctors were hopeful that, as his brain healed, his sight would slowly return.
It never did.
I found my hand on my heart as I read, and I was more than a little sick to my stomach.
The poor guy, holy shit.
The latest articles spoke of Noah being moved to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York about a month after his last surgery and then to a rehab facility in White Plains. There, he underwent physical and cognitive therapy. He had to relearn even the most basic of tasks: walking, talking clearly, holding a spoon, making a fist. But his progress on these fronts was swift: his doctors were shocked and frequently mentioned being impressed by his determination. “Especially,” one rehab therapist was quoted as saying, “given the fact he is simultaneously coping with blindness.”
The last article about his accident mentioned Noah had finished his rehab sometime in January of this year—just three months ago, I marveled—and was holed up somewhere out of the public eye.
I sat back, my heart bruised for what I had read. What a horrible thing to endure. No wonder he was bitter. I thought I’d be too.
I went back to Google and typed in ‘Noah LakePlanet X.’ Another slew of articles came up. Happier, more exciting articles from before the accident, all of them written by Noah himself.
Planet X, I learned, was a successful magazine—both in print and online—dedicated to documenting extreme sports all over the world, with an intense focus on geography, history, and local people. A cross betweenNational GeographicandSports Illustrated. Noah Lake had been their most popular journalist and photographer and a talented extreme athlete in his own right. He participated in many of the sports himself and then wrote first-hand accounts of the experiences. His own breathtaking photographs or Go-Pro videos accompanied the death-defying events. Everything from skydiving to base-jumping to windsurfing, he did it all. Or had.
And each article seemed to come from a different corner of the world—France and South Africa, Thailand and Hawaii… He’d been a nomad. A thrill-seeking drifter, welcome among the wealthy elite and the poorest of villagers, and at home with all of them. The entire world had been his home, and I knew then why Lucien had me google Noah’s story instead of telling me himself. Because everything Noah had suffered was bad enough, but here in front of me, in full-color glossy photos, was everything he had lost, too.
Here were his photos of lush rain forests, black-sand beaches, frothy white rapids, and scarlet deserts at sunrise. I stared at a picture Noah had taken in Nepal as he hiked to Mt. Everest base camp. The entire world was spread out before him in breathtaking color: white snow glowing with sunset orange, mountains that stretched into forever, brown faces of smiling Sherpas and their multi-colored flags. I felt tears spring to my eyes despite myself.
And then I clicked one more time, on Google Images, and my heart plummeted somewhere to the vicinity of my stomach as I got my first real glimpse of Noah Lake.
“Oh…my…God,” I said aloud to no one. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Most of the images were of him wearing various protective headgear: goggles, ski masks, or plain old sunglasses. He was always bulked up in snow clothes, climbing gear, or wet suits that highlighted what I thought had been a rather attractive athletic build: tall and lean. But one photo…
Planet Xhad a promotional headshot of him that looked like it could have come straight out of a men’s fashion mag, and it made my heart flutter ridiculously just looking at it. Noah Lake was stunning. There might have been a better word for him, but my brain wasn’t quite able to cough it up. I just stared.
In the photo, he wore a black shirt under a black jacket. His hair was dark brown, almost black, and cut short but for a cute flyaway mop on top. His face was angular, chiseled, shadowed with just the right amount of light stubble. He had thick, dark brows, a straight nose, soft mouth. I’d gotten from some of the other photos that he was tall, and somehow his gorgeous, somewhat narrow face confirmed it in my mind.
But it was his eyes that seemed to defy nature. Was that color real or some kind of crazy Photoshop trick? Hazel was the precise color: brown but flecked with green and gold, like brown velvet strewn with crushed emeralds and gold flakes. I’d never seen anything like them before or since.
And to think, those astounding eyes are now useless.
Almost reluctantly, I kept scrolling past that picture to others, photos of him walking European city streets with his arm slung casually over some stunningly gorgeous woman or another. Just before the accident, he had taken up with a French model named Valentina Paquette. Tall, blond, stunning.
Valentina, for crying out loud.I realized I was clenching my jaw.
“Don’t be stupid,” I scolded myself, still scrolling, and then gave a little cry, flinching away from my screen.
Below all the photos of Noah on some ski slope or hanging from a rock (with taut, lean muscles straining with exertion) there were three photos, illicit ones judging by the crappy quality. Cell phone photos taken quickly in a hospital room.
Two were of Noah apparently before he’d had any surgeries for the damage done to his back. He was lying face down, his head all but completely swathed in white bandages. Tubes and lines ran from all parts of his body, as if he were bionic. But his back…I’d never seen anything so horrific in my life.
On the right side, three jagged gouges—as if some lion had scratched him—ran down his neck to mid-shoulder blade. On the left, I honestly couldn’t understand what I was seeing: a striated mess of blood and torn flesh and pools of white liquid…or maybe that was bone? I couldn’t tell, but it was repulsive. I quickly averted my eyes. The third pic was of his leg, his inner thigh, where a long, rough rectangle of skin had been removed. The skin graft.
I quickly scrolled back up to thePlanet Xpromo shot, marveling that this beautiful man had endured so much horror and pain…and that Lucien had inflicted a fraction of it on me, so I’d feel sorry for him. Tears welled in my eyes for what I had seen; I couldn’t help it. “A big softy” my brother had always teased me, especially when he caught me wiping my eyes over a sentimental commercial.
I thought about calling Lucien and giving him an earful when a knock came at the door.
“Char? It’s Em.”
“Yeah?” I called, glad my voice sounded mostly normal.
