Heroic Measures (continued)

Carefully, he lowered his foot again. It seemed to be a lot further to reach the next rung than he thought it would be. He breathed an audible sigh of relief as he felt it firmly underneath his boot and lowered the other leg to meet it. Pausing for a moment, he adjusted his grip on the vertical rails and wished for his head to stop pounding. It did not happen and his brain continued to feel as if someone had installed an overpowered subwoofer into his midbrain.

Hoping to distract himself from the agony that hovered just beyond the edges of his control, Walter focused his attention on simply locating the next step on the ladder. He was surprised at how much of his concentration such an otherwise simple act actually required. The strategy, though, seemed to work. At least it did until he found himself with one leg dangling downward far past the point where it should have encountered a ladder rung.

He swung experimentally, hoping to encounter the missing step somewhere along its arc. All he managed to accomplish, though, was to bang his knee against the vertical support. Gritting his teeth, but still managing to swear through them, he waited for the sharp pains to stop shooting through his kneecap. When they eased, he looked down, only to find a featureless darkness below him.

Adjusting his grip on the ladder, he turned his head upward. His eyes followed the lines of the ladder until they too disappeared into darkness. He knew that he must have descended more than halfway to the ground, cursing himself silently for not keeping count.

As if it would have mattered . . . How many rungs would it be to the bottom anyway?

If his brain was not threatening to explode with light, he might have managed a rough estimate based on the gaps between the rungs. As it was, though, he could only guess. He had a brief image in his mind of being suspended in mid-air, surrounded on all sides by endless dark.

That’s not too far from the truth . . . he considered sourly.

He looked downward again and then turned his head to the left, seeking out the beam from the fallen flashlight. He located it quickly, seeing its bright white-yellow beam shining across the asphalt like a distant lighthouse. Its beam, though, was not strong enough to reach his position. Nevertheless, he still found its presence comforting.

As he stared at it, though, a part of his mind snapped back into operation. The degree at which he tilted his head to view the flashlight beam was not as great as he had originally thought. That meant that he was fairly close to the ground, assuming that the darkness was not misleading his perceptions of the angle and distance. He tried to recall what the ladder had looked like when he had shone the flashlight on it from above, but finally conceded that he had been more interested in establishing its existence and location than in determining its length.