Set Free Read Free

not just my head. The worst of it originated from somewhere on the left side of my torso. My eyes moved to the spot, the effort triggering excruciating jabs of pain. A small splotch of red penetrated the fabric of my shirt: a pathetically inconsequential clue as to what had just happened to me, and what was about to.

Chapter 4
 
 
 
    When considering taking a trip, does anyone factor in the possibility of dying? Figuring out how many pairs of underwear to pack, selecting the right swimsuit, making sure you’ve got all the relevant travel documents—do people think to themselves, even fleetingly, I may never come back ?
    Maybe some people. Nervous flyers. Chronic pessimists. An article I once read estimated that every year, two hundred people die on cruise ships, and about the same number in plane crashes. In the United States alone, there are over forty thousand automobile-related deaths annually. Travel is not for the faint of heart.
    On the day I left for Morocco, pulling khakis from the closet and stuffing socks in my shoes, I never gave my lifespan a second thought. I’ve traveled all my life. My parents were—still are—travel enthusiasts. Some have gone so far as to describe them as modern-day gypsies. Even when my brother Sam and I were very young, they’d regularly bundle us up and whisk us off to faraway places.
    My first travel memory goes back to when I was five. It was a family trip to Africa. I don’t remember exact details of how we got there or how long we stayed, but I do remember seeing an elephant up close; so close I could smell its breath. I remember being surprised by how the Zambian scrublands looked nothing like where I imagined Tarzan would hang out, and spending hours enthralled by a family of baboons as they picked insects out of one another’s fur (an action my brother and I imitated with great hilarity for months afterwards). All the while, Mom and Dad would take trillions of pictures and fill copious journals with their observations, a habit I picked up and continue to this day. Ever since that first magical, mystical, long-ago adventure, I get antsy if there isn’t at least one planned trip in my future. Fortunately, when I grew up, I found a way to turn my travel addiction into a career.
    Although my primary reason for being in Morocco was work, it seemed a waste of a perfectly good foreign country not to pad the itinerary with some personal recreation. Then again, for a guy like me, the two are rarely mutually exclusive. The only downside was that Jenn was staying home.
    Generally, work trips are not holidays. But every so often, whenever life allowed, Jenn would tag along. God knows we both needed to get away. We needed time together, somewhere far away from what our day-to-day lives had become. But the law firm she worked for was struggling—eternally—and Jenn was perpetually working killer hours. She’d convinced me the trip would do me good. Getting back to work would do me good. Being on my own would do me good.
    How did I get so lucky as to score a woman like Jenn? There was certainly nothing special about me when we met. I was an English major, with aspirations of writing the great American novel: how original. I’d never had a real girlfriend before. Not because none would have me, but because all my free time and attention were spent chasing literary inspiration in whatever far-flung destination my habitually starving bank account would allow.
    Jennifer Flanders, on the other hand, was remarkable. The first time I laid eyes on her was at a campus pub. My buddies and I were drowning our sorrows after some no doubt less-than-stellar performance on the soccer field. She was our enabler. Yup, my wife was a shooter girl.
    From there our love story is standard stuff. Not to us, but to pretty much anyone else who hears it. I pawed her a few times that first night. She soundly rebuffed me. The next morning I was royally hung over, but nowhere near enough to forget how