It took me all day to cross the distance to the lake as I grew more exhausted and dehydrated. The pain was my constant companion, deep aches and radiating hurt and throbbing agony. I only didn't limp because the rest of me hurt so badly that the pain in my feet hardly seemed to matter. The bruises had come up on my skin, red and violet and puffy. I had a blistered burn on my left arm where the belay device must have hit me, hot enough from the friction of the rope that even that glancing strike had been enough to sear me.

My vision narrowed and blurred, exhaustion making me drag my feet and the headache ruling my world, leaving me dizzy and dazed. I lost snatches of time, coming-to in different places, my body moving robotically forward through the woods. Whatever karma I'd accumulated through my suffering protected me; I didn't fall, and I didn't step on a rattlesnake or pass out. If I fell down, I didn't think I would be able to get back up again.

I reached the lake as the sky first started to head towards sunset, staggering down the rocky scree slope with zombie-like determination. My thirst possessed me, driving me forward, and I made it the last few steps onto a flat-topped boulder jutting into the lake before I fell to my knees and then to my belly, scooping up the frigid water in my left hand and drinking it out of my palm. I wanted to keep drinking and drinking, but I remembered from my horseback riding days how you had to be careful with horses after a lot of exercise, because they would drink too much and then die.

Hand shaking, I made myself stop, rolling over onto my back and sobbing without crying. I'd made it. I was going to live. I'd be here, by the lake, and they'd come to the lake and see my pink shirt, so unnaturally bright against the evergreen and pale gray of Yosemite, and they'd come get me.

I laid there as the sun set, waiting until I couldn't bear it anymore before drinking more water, enough that I could feel the cold of it deep inside of my body. Exhaustion and pain still held me in their grip, but the water cleared some of the fog from my mind, and I remembered that I still needed to stay warm through the cold mountain night.