Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Settling In 129the tears started. My arm was still around his shoulders and it startedtwitching up and down with Marc’s heaving shoulders. There was nothingelse we could do or say at that point except sit there with him.After a few minutes, he told us that what the Frenchman had saidabout being there for a long time had just leveled him. He’d also had adream that night. He was with his father and Destiney. Destiney was inhis lap and Marc was looking at her braids. He said it was so real. Hecould smell the Johnson’s baby shampoo in her hair, see where eachstrand of hair was knotted in her braids. And that was when he wokeup. He wasn’t with his daughter; instead he was in a box in the junglein Colombia.We stayed with Marc as long as we could before the guards pushedus out of there.A night or two later, the three of us were standing at a spot in ourclearing where we could see through the trees. The guards would letus stand there, and since we were a pretty good distance from their station,they couldn’t hear us if we whispered. We were all just checkingin on one another. I looked up, and the sun was going down, and Marcpointed to the sky. A bit of rainbow was arcing across the opening.“Maybe it’s a sign,” Tom said.We’d all been looking for signs and indications just about everywhere;I supposed this one was as good as any. I looked at Marc, and Icould see he was deep in thought, whether it was about what Tom hadsaid or something else I couldn’t say, but he seemed at peace. I wasn’tabout to step into those calm waters and disturb them. I just stoodthere enjoying the moment of communion with them.From the beginning, we developed a shorthand way of checking inwith one another to see what mental state we were each in on any particularday. If you were in your bubble, that was a good thing. You weresafe, secured, and protected. If you were out of the bubble, you wereagitated and anxious. I liked the metaphor because I visualized it asa level—the tool a carpenter uses to measure if a board or an entire