Reader’s Digest
82 july 2019
imee Spevak was supposed to be working. Actually, she
was supposed to be on vacation—she had rented a cabin
in the Pocono Mountains last August to get away from the
New York City heat. But no one can ever truly break away
these days and Spevak, a freelance medical writer, found
herself stuck inside on this lovely summer day, finishing
an assignment. She procrastinated a little, surfing the Web
now and then. When she checked her Facebook news
feed, she was delighted to see a notification from her friend Michael Lythcott.
Lythcott was an intrepid traveller. In fact, he and Spevak had trekked through
Nepal together a few years back. Spevak knew he was in Bali now and was glad
to take a momentary vicarious trip.glanced down at the GPS and back up
at the road—a curve ahead. Lythcott
tapped the brakes to make the turn.
He didn’t tap fast enough.
He awoke sometime later to the
babble of nearby water. He was flat on
his back on a steep slope, surrounded
by vegetation. The jungle. He tried
to sit up, but his body wouldn’t
cooperate. What happened?, he
wondered. Where am I? In an empty
forest? Then it came to him. Bali! But
why? He strained to think, but his
mind was a fog.
Oh man... I was in a scooter
accident, he thought. That much
came back to him now, nothing
more. Nothing about flying 150 feet
through the air down this ravine,
nothing about slamming into trees,
nothing that explained the blood he
could taste and feel, the dull pain all
through his body.
He took stock. His glasses were
gone. The scooter was gone, and with
it his cell phone. His left wrist andA
And then she read the post. Rather
than seeing beautiful travel photos or
a detailed narrative of Lythcott’s jour-
ney, Spevak saw a bright red back-
ground and a few stark words written
in white: “Help. In danger. Call police.”M
ikey Lythcott, A 39-year-old
graphic designer, had indeed
travelled to Bali. He and his
friend Stacey Eno, 25, had landed on
the Indonesian island just the day be-
fore. Excited for their adventure, the
two Americans had rented a scooter
on the outskirts of Ubud and driven
into town, where they stayed until
the wee hours doing what they both
loved: chatting with strangers from all
over the world.
It was pitch-dark, well past 2 a.m.,
when they hopped back on the
scooter and headed to their hotel.
Lythcott had placed his iPhone in the
pouch of the scooter and was using it
to navigate. As they climbed a hill past
the rice paddies and the jungle, he