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 traveler. 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 bab-
ble 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 ac-
cident, he thought. That much came
back to him now, nothing more. Noth-
ing about flying 150 feet through the
air down this ravine, nothing about
slamming into trees, nothing that ex-
plained 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 and
torso were smashed up badly, as was
his back. He couldn’t move his legs.A
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
traveled 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, he78 july/august 2019
Reader’s Digest