Page 73 of Ring Rust

“Not just for me. For anyone on a ladder. You know I’m not actually uptight about this, right? This is just a normal safety precaution.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Ryan rubbed his eyes and moved back to the tree, wrapping a bungee cord around the trunk, securing the tail end of the final string of lights.

Logan yelled again, forcing Ryan to close his eyes and breathe deeply so he didn’t climb down the ladder and strangle him. The screaming didn’t stop, though, and Ryan felt the ladder jostle slightly, like Logan’s hand was hitting one side of it repeatedly. He looked down to find Logan flailing. Again. But it was legitimate flailing this time, which freaked Ryan out enough that his footing slipped off the rung he was standing on. Panicked, he reached out to grab both sides of the ladder and steadied himself.

“Holy shit. I’m sorry, I swear I wasn’t joking around. A spider fell on me! I don’t know where it went. I think it’s gone? God, that was disgusting. It touched my eyelash.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan muttered. “Okay, I’m coming down. I have to get to my niece’s dance recital.”

Before Ryan could secure his foot on the rung below, Logan let out another loud scream about spiders and flicked his arm, hurling something black and fuzzy directly into Ryan’s face. Ryan reacted on instinct, slapping the spider against his cheek before thrashing so violently the ladder lost its balance and began to topple. One second, he was braced against the tree, and the next, he was airborne, staring straight at the ground before crashing into it in a tangle of limbs and metal.

“Oh shit,” Logan said, running to crouch by Ryan’s side. His face was directly over Ryan’s and painted with panic.

“I’m okay,” Ryan choked out. He tried to move his arm to lift the ladder off his body, but instead, he screamed from apreviously unfelt pain radiating all the way from his chest to his fingertips.

“Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit. Oh my God. Okay, shit.” Logan was upright now, pacing back and forth with his hands tight against his scalp. “There’s a lot of blood. There is so much blood.”

Ryan tried rolling to his side, but the pain was so intense he let out a miserable howl. “Oh, fuck.”

“This is not good.”

“No,” Ryan groaned. He would have glared at Logan if he’d had the mental capacity, but all he could think about was the pain.

“Ohh, man, I’m gonna puke. There’s so much blood. I’m gonna puke. Oh, God.”

Ryan wasn’t sure how Logan could even see it, since his hands were covering his face as he paced around in the dirt.

“Can you help me up?” Ryan asked. “If you grab my left arm, you can help me sit. Or can you at least lift the ladder off me?”

“Yeah, um, okay.”

Logan made his way back towards the top of the ladder and accidentally kicked it, which jostled Ryan’s torso, causing him to cry out again.

“Sorry!”

“Logan, I’m begging you to just get the fucking ladder off me. I can’t breathe and it really fu—God,” he whined. With the shock of the fall wearing off, the pain was increasing, and fast. “Oh, it really fucking hurts.”

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Logan said, reaching to lift the ladder.

The relief of the pressure leaving his chest lasted all of half a second before Logan unleashed another sound that curdled Ryan’s blood—a mix of frantic whimpers and mumbled words that triggered panic as Ryan realized things were worse than he’d let himself believe.

“Logan, sit down.”

Finally, Logan stopped pacing, took a deep breath, and did what he was asked. He sat cross-legged by Ryan’s uninjured shoulder and grabbed his hand, but pressed his eyes shut tight. “I’m here.”

“Okay, can you?—”

“It’s just really hard to look at you right now because I can see your whole bone. I have to keep my eyes closed, or I might throw up. Or pass out.”

“Okay,” Ryan said. “Please don’t do that, because I’m getting a little dizzy from the pain. I feel kind of sick. Can you please call an ambulance? And hand me my phone so I can—ah, fuck. Just call the ambulance, please?”

“Yes, I can do that,” Logan said, squeezing Ryan’s hand. “You’ll be okay.”

Ryan was too afraid to laugh and move his arm, but he would have if he’d been uninjured—Logan somehow falling into the role of caretaker while Ryan bled out on the forest floor after a day of fixing up the theme park of a man who couldn’t promise he wanted him? It was as pathetic as it was unbelievable.

“I can’t find your phone. I don’t know where it is.” Logan patted Ryan’s pockets. “Maybe it flew into the woods?”