Nevada Barr - Winter Study

Gavin began a proficient physical check, starting with her pulse and body temp.

“EMT?” Anna asked.

He shook his head. “Eldest of seven,” he said.

Robin interrupted: “Do you think you can survive a ride out on the Bearcat?”

“Out of gas,” Anna said, and Robin went back to the radio.

“Hot packs. Tell him we need hot packs,” Gavin said. As with Robin, his winter gear was worn and idiosyncratic. In place of a hood, he wore the same woolen tasseled hat Robin sported. They were probably the only two people in the world – other than the Lapps – who didn’t look silly with reindeer on their earflaps and pointy tufts on their heads. “Who is the president of the United States?” Gavin asked, to see if Anna was oriented in time and space.

“The blue rucksack,” Anna said suddenly. The old canvas day pack they’d found shredded at the scene of Katherine’s death had bothered Anna. Like Anna, both Bob and Katherine had all-new gear. It was out of character for Katherine to carry a beat-up canvas bag. The affectation fit with Robin’s boyfriend. “It was yours. You had scent lure, didn’t you? To make the wolves go where you wanted them to.”

“It was mine,” Gavin admitted. “I forgot I had the canisters of lure in it when I left it with Katherine. I only meant her to have food and water while she waited for help.”

“‘HELP ME,’” Anna said. “On the window.”

“Ski wax,” Gavin said. “It grows opaque as it cools.”

Anna said nothing. If scribbling a magic message on the glass and vanishing into the night was his idea of rescue, he wasn’t worth accusing.

Gavin read the thoughts she chose not to express in words. “Katherine said she’d phoned Bob and he was arranging the rescue. She promised to keep our secret. She wanted Bob to look the fool, be discredited. I didn’t think anyone was still at the bunkhouse. It seemed a good time to further the hoax,” he said.

Anna closed her eyes so she needn’t see the misery on his face. She’d had sufficient misery to last at least a few days if she was careful and didn’t blow it all in one breakdown. Gavin’s confession exonerated the wolves. Covered in scent lure, bleeding, running, flopping about in true helpless-prey fashion, no self-respecting predator could have resisted Katherine. Not and held its head up at the next carnivore convention. The poet in Gavin would have him suffer the guilt of Katherine’s death. Had she more energy, Anna would have reassured him it was an accident, that Katherine had broken open the canisters in a fall or opened one not knowing what it was. Instead, she just sat with her eyes closed and listened to the crabbing of the radio as Robin clicked and talked and then, finally, Ridley Murray answered.

Anna roused herself to shout: “Ask him why in the hell he wasn’t answering his radio!” That, at least, had been her intention. Instead, she heard herself whisper “Why didn’t he come?” in the voice of a little girl, the one Bob Menechinn said nobody cared about, nobody would rescue. That little girl embarrassed Anna and she hoped her whisper went unnoticed.

“Ask Ridley what’s kept him,” Gavin said.

Gavin heard Anna’s little-girl plea. Him, she didn’t mind so much. He had the same feel as Robin did, as if the two of them were not quite of this world, raised in bubbles, maybe, or from another dimension where good always won out, the cream rose to the top and the poor were not always with you.

Undamaged, Anna thought and wondered how damaged she was.

“Ridley and Jonah are just leaving Feldtmann. I’ll go back to Windigo and get gas. Enough to get you home,” Robin said to Anna.

“I’ll go,” Gavin said.

“I’m faster,” Robin said.

To Anna, Gavin said: “She is. Like the wind.” He seemed proud of her, and Anna liked him for that too.

“It’s too far,” Anna said, thinking of how far Robin had already come that day.

Robin smiled. Ten miles on easy trails had probably not been “too far” since she was nine years old. “I won’t be long,” she said and pushed off with the sudden grace of a bird taking flight.

“I’m guessing an hour or a little more. Downhill with no pack, she’ll make good time. Coming back with the gas can will take longer, but she doesn’t need to bring more than a gallon at the most. Eight pounds. That’s nothing for Robin,” Gavin said reassuringly.

The blanket and tarp Anna had wrapped around herself for warmth were beginning to feel like a shroud and one that was shrinking noticeably. They had done their job, she was found alive, now she wanted out. “Unwrap me,” Anna said.

Gavin looked alarmed, and she knew he was remembering the tales of finding people naked and dead of the cold. A rare but not too rare hypothermic reaction was to feel hot. In late stages, victims would sometimes take off their clothes and lie naked in the snow.

“I’m okay,” Anna said. “No running naked for me. I’ve got to move. I’m getting crazy. Crazier. Can you reduce a dislocated shoulder?”

“I’ve never done it,” Gavin admitted.

“Me neither. I learned it in EMT training. It looked easy enough. Align the arm, pull, snick back into place. One… two… three.”

“Two sounds like it would be pretty painful,” Gavin said.

“We’ll numb the shoulder with ice first,” Anna said, then: “Oh, hey, that’s already taken care of.”

Gavin laughed.

Unwrapping her was more of a job than she’d anticipated. Expecting to stay in her blue-and-brown cocoon for the foreseeable future, Anna’d rolled herself in the fabric more concerned with putting as many layers between herself and the elements as possible than with eventually getting free.

“Help me stand,” she said, pushing away the last of the tarp. “I have to get up. Help me. Then we can reduce the shoulder.”

Gavin put one arm around her back and gave her his other to brace herself against, so she could control how much pressure was on her shoulder and ankle, and began to draw her to a standing position beside the snowmobile. “Anna, maybe you should-”

“No,” Anna interrupted him. “My arm is useless, numb. I’ve got to reduce it. I can wedge myself against the seat. You’ll have something to brace against-”

“Anna, you’d have to take off your coat,” Gavin said reasonably.

“No. Why would I?” Confusion was clouding Anna’s brain. Instead of making her cautious, it made her desperate, angry.

“I couldn’t see what I was doing. Where the lump was. Which way to pull to make it go back into the socket,” Gavin said.

“I’ll take the damn thing off,” Anna snapped.

“You’d lose too much body heat, and it would hurt you too much unless we cut the coat off. It won’t be long. Robin’s fast.”

Hysteria. Most of Anna wanted to give in to it, go with it. Breathing slowly through her nose, she gained enough rationality to wonder what made the human mind want to spin over the edge, what evolutionary genius thought this would ensure the survival of the species. Maybe it was the flip side of being self-aware. Dachshunds had bad backs because of the long spine. People had craziness because of the big brain.

“I can wait,” Anna said after a time. Gavin looked relieved.

“Let’s keep you warm,” he said kindly. He helped her to the seat of the Bearcat and wrapped her legs in the army blanket, then sat behind her and put his long arms around her. “Lean back,” he said.

“Consider me your sofa.”

Menechinn was dead wrong. The girl did get rescued.

Gavin stayed at the bunkhouse. Crude as it was, it had amenities that put his camp in the abandoned fire tower to shame. He’d come to the island from Grand Portage, seventeen miles in a kayak, and had been living at Feldtmann for thirteen days, his only heat a camping stove and a cooking stove. Food and supplies had been cached there over the summer. The plan had been hatched by the biotechs when they heard Homeland Security was to evaluate the study.