October 19
Ana
"He's not dead, you fool!"
I nearly shout at the book in my hands. Casper looks up at me from his spot near my feet. The female protagonist has given up hope that her love has survived a plane crash, despite the fact that he's very, very alive and trying to find her. In my frustration, I look up from the book and out the window. It's getting dark outside. Drawn out of the story and back into real life, the bad feeling in the pit of my stomach returns.
I've spent the day alternating between berating myself for not speaking up last night and trying to read to keep my mind off what happened. I should have said something. I should have told him! But I was just so blindsided by the realization that he doesn't hate me, that his actions were born out of a heightened sense of self-defense instead of general disgust for me. He'd been avoiding me for so long that I thought he was mad at me, not... whatever this is.
I waited for hours for him to come back inside last night. He must have returned after I fell asleep waiting because I found a note that said he'd be fishing until dinner. He wasn't here when I woke. I look at the clock. It's a little after 6 pm. The sun has nearly gone down and Ryan's still not back. I frown. He probably wanted some time away from me to sort out what happened last night. I don't blame him. I feel terrible for giving him the wrong impression.
I walk to the cabin door and open it. A gust of cold air greets me. I shiver, unsure how much is from the cold and how much is dread. Casper sticks his head out of the door, but won't go outside.
We both jump in alarm as the weather radio begins blaring a warning. I close the door, cross the room and stand over the radio, almost bashing it to pieces in my attempts to make the wretched noise end. The "warning" indicator is lit up in red and the words "BLIZZARD WARNING" scan across the small blue LCD screen. I can feel my heart drop inside of me.
The radio automatically begins to broadcast the warning to the room in a robotic computer-generated voice: "This is a statement from the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, Alaska."
I race into the bedroom and grab my winter gear out of the closet.
"Blizzard warning in effect from 6:15 pm Friday to 6 am Sunday," trickles into the bedroom from the little mechanical doomsayer in the living room. I drag my gear out with me to hear as much detail as possible.
"Conditions are expected to deteriorate Friday evening with the heaviest snow, strongest winds, and potential life-threatening conditions expected Friday night through Saturday. Impacts: heavy snow and blowing snow will cause dangerous conditions and will be a threat to life and property. Travel is expected to be severely limited if not impossible during the height of the storm Friday night and Saturday. Visibility will be reduced to near zero at times and whiteout conditions."
I grab a flashlight, though I doubt it'll help much if there's too much snow to see. When I step outside, I'm greeted with cold rain. It's unpleasant, but I'm grateful it's not snowing yet.
By the time I reach the river, it's getting too dark to see well without the flashlight. The wind is picking up too. Calling for Ryan, I start heading upriver toward his preferred spots. At each one, I stop, look for any sign of him or any recent human activity, and find nothing. When I reach the last one, I still haven't found him. Maybe I shouldn't have left Casper back in the cabin. Would he be able to track Ryan? I start to panic. It's completely dark now and a few snowflakes have mixed in with the rain. The flashlight beam becomes dimmer. Dammit! Why didn't I think to grab fresh batteries? I shut it off to preserve the little power it has left. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I see a faint orange glow.
"Ryan!" I shout. I hear a noise and draw my gun. Terrified, I slowly approach the glow. A small fire is fighting to stay burning in the rain and a man is huddled close to it, shivering violently.
"Ryan!" Holstering the gun, I rush toward him and embrace him. He's damp and cold. "What happened?" I ask.
"Twisted... ankle" he manages through chattering teeth. He's not dressed for this weather.
"Right or left?"
"Left."
"Oh great," I say in frustration. He's injured his good leg. And he's probably borderline hypothermic already.
"Take off your shirt," I say. "You're going to wear my jacket." Ryan looks at me, the expression on his face telling me what he can't bring himself to say. He doesn't want me to see the scars hidden under his shirt and long sleeves. He never ever wears a shirt without long sleeves. He'd probably rather have an extended discussion about his family, his ex-fiancee, and losing Jeremy than do this. But the defeated look in his eyes tells me that he's going to comply. His trembling fingers reach for the collar of his plaid shirt. After he fumbles with it for a few moments, I realize I'm going to have to do it myself. I swat his hands away and unbutton his shirt, stripping it and the outer vest off of him. The t-shirt under the plaid is soaked through as well.
"Did you fall in?" I ask, unable to comprehend how he could be this wet and cold.
"Yes," he manages to get out. Somehow, my heart manages to sink even deeper as I remember what he said all those months ago about the river being ice-cold and deadly.
I pull the t-shirt up over his head. For the first time, I see the burns covering his side, chest, shoulder, and arm. Even in the faint light of the small fire, it looks extraordinarily painful. I pull my jacket off and help him put it on. It doesn't fit him very well or zip up all the way, but it's better than what he was wearing before.
"Come on Ryan, you need to get up now," I say, rising. He struggles to obey. Between the violent shuddering, his bad leg, and his newly bad ankle, he's not able to get up on his own and I have to help.
"Can you put any weight on it at all?"
He tries, but nearly collapses with the pain. His plaintive cry prevents me from considering asking it of him again.
"Ok," I say, positioning myself on his left side with his arm around my shoulders. "Now I'm your walking stick. Let's go home."
We travel slowly, following the sounds of the river. The dim light from the fading flashlight reveals the precipitation has turned from mostly rain with a little snow to large snowflakes with the occasional raindrop. Ryan loses his footing on the wet ground and slips. I grab for him, but we both fall. Ryan groans in pain as his ankle strikes the ground.
"Go on without me," he says.
"Not an option," I say.
"I can't make it, Ana. Go."
I throw my arms around him and hug him tightly. I slide one hand up into his glorious but dripping wet hair and pull his face close to mine until we're cheek to cheek.
"I am not leaving you behind, Ryan Burke. Don't you dare suggest it again," I say into his good ear. I continue to hold him for a few moments, my lips inadvertently brushing his cold earlobe. I shiver, but it has nothing to do with the cold.
"Ready to keep going?" I whisper. I feel him nod against me. I help him up and we slowly make our way home, finally leaving the river to cut through the forest toward the cabin. The flashlight dies as snow becomes thicker and the winds are roaring through the trees.
Finally, I see the lights from the cabin. "We made it!"
I feel Ryan's weight suddenly increase as he begins to black out. "No, no! Not yet! We're so close!" I practically drag Ryan through the remaining trees and into the clearing where his cabin lies.
At the door, he completely loses consciousness and falls against me. I pull him inside and quickly gather towels. Stripping off my own wet clothes, I change into warm, dry ones. I grab a set of clothes for Ryan too, then drag his lifeless body onto a pile of blankets by the furnace.
Using the diesel, I fire up the furnace like Ryan showed me, for emergencies only. With the room heating, I begin stripping off Ryan's clothes, pushing Casper away. The dog seems to think Ryan is playing with him. Once Ryan's down to his underwear, I grab some towels and start rubbing him dry. I toss one over his hips out of embarrassment. I quickly surmise that I won't be able to get pants on him without assistance, so I cover his legs with blankets.
I look down at his chest. The burns are much easier to see in the light of the cabin. The majority of the right side of his torso is covered in scar tissue. I'd thought burns were the only scars he hid under his long sleeves, but I was wrong. His arm doesn't look right. Something about the shape of it beneath the rough, discolored skin doesn't look natural. Like maybe sections of his muscle were removed or torn and not properly re-attached.
I look down at his ever-gloved right hand. I feel guilty about removing the soaked article of clothing, but it's not like Ryan's really going to be bothered by it in this state. I slowly pull the glove from his hand and let out a quiet gasp when I see it. The ring finger and pinky finger of his right hand are gone. Only two small stumps indicate they ever existed. His middle finger is missing the top two-thirds, amputated at the first knuckle. I take his poor, mutilated hand in both of mine and bring it to my lips, kissing it softly. I always thought his fingers were stiff and unusable, but still there. I never once suspected he was missing some entirely. No wonder he hid it from me. And judging by the stiff inserts in the fingers of his glove, I suspect he was hiding it from himself as well.
A sound brings my focus back to Ryan's face. His teeth have begun chattering again, his lips a shade somewhere between purple and blue. I don't know if his teeth chattering is good or bad, but I'm going to assume it's a good thing. The one thing I do know is that he needs to warm up quickly. The furnace just isn't cutting it, so I go with the next option I think of.
I pull off my shirt, roll him on his side with his back to the furnace, and lie against him, skin against skin. I can feel my face heating with the embarrassment, but at least he's not conscious. I pull a thick blanket around us. I wrap my arms around his bare back and pray that he wakes up again.
I try really, really hard to ignore the fact that I'm clinging to a mostly naked, extremely attractive man who might've been about to kiss me yesterday. Despite the scars, the missing fingers, and the damaged limbs, he's still incredibly good-looking. You just need to look a little closer at him now to see the beauty hiding behind the hurt. As I hold him close to me, part of me regrets that he won't remember this. The other part of me is grateful he's completely unconscious, because if he weren't, we'd both probably be dying of embarrassment.
If he were awake, would he enjoy this embrace as much as I do? Despite claiming he doesn't love her anymore, he still seems so hung up on his ex. Does he even notice me at all? His ex is everything I'm not - tall where I am short, blonde and blue-eyed where I am dark-haired and eyed. Her skin is creamy white and mine is olive-toned. What if I'm totally not Ryan's type? Does he still think of me as the helpless, frightened girl he found in the woods?
What do I even want Ryan to think of me? After the events of yesterday and today, I don't think I can go back to just entertaining platonic, friendly feelings for him. I also care about him more than just a crush would account for.Do I love him?
October 20
I wake up to find that Ryan is shivering, his teeth still chattering, but his skin is burning up. Where his skin touches mine, heat floods into my body. A quick hand to his forehead confirms that Ryan's running a fever. His hair is damp with sweat and his skin glistens. He's still asleep, though. At some point, his arms wrapped around me too. Probably his body's reaction to the fever making him think he's too cold. Either way, lying on the cold floor is probably not helping anything. I regretfully extricate myself from Ryan's embrace, maneuver a blanket under him, and use it to drag him into the bedroom. After much effort, I manage to get him into the bed. I dress him in a t-shirt and manage to force a pair of sweat pants on him. He remains entirely unconscious throughout this entire ordeal, which I find concerning. His shivering doesn't subside either, even when I dress him in one of his many flannel shirts.
What do I do now? I can't even check the internet to figure out how to give him Advil when he's unconscious. I do know that it's important to stay hydrated when you're sick. He probably hasn't eaten anything since lunch yesterday, if he even remembered to bring one. He left awfully early yesterday without waiting for me to wake up first. But how can I feed him when he's unconscious? Frozen with indecision, I watch Ryan's sleeping face. Movement from his throat catches my eye and I realize that he just swallowed in his sleep. If I gave him little sips of water, would he swallow it? I dash off to the kitchen and return with a spoon and a glass of water. Carefully, I fill the spoon with water and use the underside to nudge Ryan's lips apart. I pour the tiny bit of water into his mouth, then wait. After a few tense moments, he swallows again. I repeat this once more to make sure it wasn't just a fluke. Ryan swallows again. Cautiously excited and reluctant to leave him alone for long, I dash off to the kitchen to heat some broth.
When I return not too much later with a bowl of steaming broth, Ryan's condition is unchanged. Using the same technique as with the water, I slowly and tediously feed Ryan the bowl of broth. I briefly consider trying to use this method to force him to swallow some Advil to help with the fever, but I don't think it's worth risking accidentally choking him. Suddenly an idea forms in my head. Using a spoon, I crush two pills into a fine powder and mix it in with water. Then I begin the slow process of spooning the liquid into his mouth.
This task complete, I feel his forehead again. It seems even warmer than before. I look up at the window to see the blizzard still raging outside and feel a familiar wave of fear.
"Please wake up, Ryan. Please wake up." I gently run the backs of my fingers down his left cheek. "I don't know what to do. You have to wake up. You have to be OK," I say as tears gather in my eyes.