It took about thirty seconds before the women could collectively regain their composure. Manoj knew that he looked absolutely ridiculous in Sheryl's ski wardrobe, but he had long learned that turning into emotional skids, rather than trying to protect his ego, was often the best way to go. It was certainly proving the case tonight. They had to find a way to get them all out into the elements and ferry Kerren to safety, as quickly as possible. If had to make a fool of himself in order to get that to happen, then so be it. It was what they needed to refocus on their situation.
It seemed to work; once they had finished laughing at his ill-proportioned women's clothes and faux-model posing, they got back to the business at hand. The women hurriedly gathered up the rest of the clothes and put them on. Fortunately, his body type was the most dissimilar of the group, and the process went smoothly. For his part, Manoj started to pick out an assortment of jackets and coats that could be laid across Kerren, since it would be not only painful but nearly impossible to slide any kind of leg coverings on her.
Sheryl seemed to notice what he was doing, and came over to him. "You don't need to find much for her; I've got an idea. Would you come over here with me?"
Manoj followed her, and she headed directly for the front desk he had recently hidden behind to change. She seemed to have a clarity of purpose now, one that had been entirely absent before. It was nice to see. He had been worried that he and Kelly were going to have to share the responsibility of figuring out how to get Kerren anywhere other than where she was.
Sheryl stood before the desk, appraising its jagged edges, especially the place where Kelly had pulled off the long piece that had been converted to splints for Kerren's legs. "What we need..." she said, almost to herself, "... is a piece long enough for her to lie on..."
Manoj had no problem in suggesting possible issues with proposed solutions. "Even if we find one, it's not going to be wide enough for her to lie across."
Sheryl took the criticism in stride. "That's what the rug is going to be for." He didn't know what she was thinking of, but she seemed to be working it out as she spoke, and so he let her. He stood still, giving her space to circle around the front desk in silence. When she had made a full circuit, she gestured to the topmost part of the desk, where most travelers would rest their elbows when speaking to Glenda during check-in.
"That's what we need," she said, and Manoj nodded in approval.
Once the decision had been made, Sheryl's plan came together quickly. She, Manoj, and Kelly managed to work together to rock a long, thick plank off the top of the desk, which they then laid across the seats of a pair of the lobby chairs. Then came the hard part; transferring Kerren so she lay across the board as it was suspended two feet off the floor. Kelly had the idea to ease her over while atop the sofa cushions she was already lying on; Kerren gritted her teeth and cried out just once, when they had to slide the cushions out from under her legs so she was lying directly on the board. Other than that, she complied totally. She was just as aware as anyone how pressing the idea of leaving the Deertail lobby was.
The second part of Sheryl's plan took care of both stabilizing Kerren and covering her from the elements; one of the smaller lobby rugs could be wrapped around Kerren multiple times, cocooning her and her supporting board together, while leaving the plank sticking out, both above Kerren's head and below her feet, so she could be carried like a stretcher.
The wrapping process was, at least, less painful for Kerren. She closed her eyes, furrowed her brow, and remained all but silent through the process. By the time she was fully secured, the other three were all starting to sweat under their ski clothes, and actually kind of looking forward to moving out into the cooler air.
"Ready?" Sheryl asked her wife, leaning down to kiss her forehead, and Kerren nodded in return. "Don't worry," Sheryl said. "We'll be so careful. Right?" she asked Kelly and Manoj, who answered affirmatively. They didn't seem to need to speak, in that strange connectivity that groups intensely focused on a shared activity tend to have -- Manoj had been a part of it many times, when programmers put their heads together to tackle a thorny bit of coding. He imagined that Kelly saw it in group sports as well; the physically strongest of the group, she instinctively moved up to Kerren's head and prepared to take the lead.
It was going to take two people to get each end of Kerren's board up and into carrying position, so Sheryl helped Kelly get Kerren's head lifted off the chair, and saw the athlete positioned so that she would be facing forward as they proceeded. Manoj had already established that it didn't work for the lead person to walk backward over the window threshold, certainly not the entire way to the equipment shed. Sheryl made sure Kelly's grip was secure before running around to help Manoj gently hoist Kerren's legs up as well.
For a moment, they just stood there, unsure that this was going to work. If any one of them stumbled, the whole contraption was going to fall disastrously, but at least the board didn't seem like it was going to break under the combined weight of Kerren and her rug/shroud, nor was she going to roll off without some kind of major disturbance.
They continued their silence as they steadied themselves, ready to venture out over the jagged bottom edge of the broken lobby window. Kelly took the first step, and the others moved in tandem, ferrying Kerren toward the edge of their shelter. Manoj watched the way Kelly's hands tightened around the end of the board as she stepped up and over the windowsill, with hardly a bump in Kerren's makeshift pallet.
Manoj's ill-fitting women's boots did a good job of keeping out the chill, at least while he was stepping through the randomly piled slush that had flowed in since the window had been broken. Enough had fallen into the lobby to create a slope up to the level of the snow outside, and the incoming fan of snow across the floor had been slowly melting this whole time.
The four of them quickly started heading on an upward angle that increased to just a little past comfortable as soon as they got outside. They slowed a little, partly because they were still testing their footing on the slope, and because they didn't want to get out of sync, because that would be the easiest way to spill Kerren's makeshift travois face-down onto the snow.
Sheryl had the foresight of pulling one of her wooly hats down over Kerren's head before they walked out, and it proved a good idea; powdery snow was swirling around them as they rose up to a height of about twelve feet above the floor of the lobby they had just left. Manoj felt Kelly's feet falter only once, when her head finally cleared the top of the thick snow blanket, and when he did the same, he understood why.
The slope of the mountain spread down and away from them in an immediate panorama that was expansive enough to startle. The view was very similar to that he had seen from the second-floor guest room -- he was very close to that same elevation now -- but it was so much sharper and clearer when not seen through glass. The snow stopped blowing across them, as well. There was wind, but there was nothing to keep it from just flowing like water around all obstacles, imparting to the air a clarity that made even the town far below seem close and toy-like, though still unmoving.
The moon, almost directly overhead, cast a constant flash-bulb shadow of whatever shapes managed to stick up from the frozen onslaught that fell across everything. They all kept their feet moving, and he heard Sheryl gasp as she looked up from her wife and beheld the vista that had unfolded before them. There was absolute silence here, away from the sharp angles of the building they had come from, which could have been the sole cause of the strange sounds they had heard while still inside. Out here, there was no such unnatural resistance to the flow of air down the altered sides of the mountain, and the result was visual and aural serenity.
If only they had a chance to enjoy it. After being in the unheated lobby, the group had no residual body warmth to protect them for even a minute of exposure of the chill, even though the wind was nowhere near as strong as they anticipated. They had to get around to the side of the lodge, hopefully before Dale and Glenda got any of the snowmobiles up and running. It would certainly be easier to pool their rescue efforts and get both injured parties down the mountain together.
Even while thinking this, Manoj held no ill will against Dale for leaving without them. Glenda's situation was certainly more perilous, and he had looked in the security guard's eyes as he walked out of the lobby, Glenda draped across his strong arms. He had clearly been in his version of panic mode, his mind ceasing to function except for the imperative of getting the woman he loved to a safe place. He didn't know if he'd ever felt such a powerful version of the emotion, but he certainly could understand it.
Kelly wasn't turning her head back to look at him as they carried Kerren's stretcher, and this made him strangely proud. She wasn't checking on him, or seemed at all unsure that he couldn't keep up. This had been his underlying fear all through their relationship, that he wouldn't be able to keep up with her. But now that it was necessary, he was holding his own. It was her that needed a little reassurance from him. Maybe he was deserving of a woman such as her, after all.
The trio trudged along, following Dale's heavy footprints in the snow, surprised at how their group confidence was growing with each step out into the elements. Things were strangely tranquil here, as if the world had stopped in the aftermath of the avalanche. And, if Manoj's theory proved to be correct, perhaps it had. Thinking this, he looked down toward the frozen town, wondering if it really were just a mirage, a visual echo of some sort.
But then he spotted one thing that was moving. It was small, still far off along the devastated tree line, but once or twice every second it would eclipse the whiteness that lay partially over everything. All he could determine was that it was dark, a stark contrast to the lightness of the rest of the scene, and that it was bounding quickly through the snow, heading their direction.
It had two legs, and moved upright, like a person, but Manoj's dawning realization was that it wasn't.
-9.4-
Dale's arms were warm, the perfect balance between the air (too cold) and her body (too hot). They buoyed her up like tropical ocean waves, or at least what Glenda imagined tropical ocean waves must feel like. She'd never been south of Texas, and some part of her distant mind felt like she should be regretting that.
They moved along the thin border between the white below them and the black above. There was a bright -- too bright -- spot of white in the black overhead, just like there were black things in the whiteness underneath. What was that Eastern symbol that did that? Black with a spot of white, white with a spot of black? It was supposed to symbolized how everything came in pairs, and in every single thing there was a bit of its opposite.
That made her think of Dale again. He was strong, his skin dark, carrying the weak one with pale skin, across the divided/united landscape. Duality within duality. Wow. Where did that thought came from? Glenda had never thought she would start thinking so philosophically with five inches of steel stuck in her upper chest.
That was where the heat seemed to be coming from. It was spreading through her body, radiating from that spot in movements that sometimes felt like waves of rich syrup, and sometimes like pointed, probing fingers. The feeling wasn't supposed to be there, and her body knew this. It was rebelling, waging a little war against the metallic invader, and she thought this internal battle was causing the worst of the heat.
Dale was talking to her as he brought his feet down over and over again into the snow, moving them a little forward each time. Everyone should have a Dale, a warm protector to carry her wherever they needed to go. Even Dale himself should have one. She wished that one day she would get the chance to be that for him.
Glenda was only slightly aware that she was dying. It was part of the rebellion of her body (a unit in which her mind was definitely included), shielding itself from the truth. Sometimes lies were just as important. She was thinking about philosophy and half-drunk musings about how the world should be, instead of how it actually was. But she had lost a lot of blood, and some nearly-vacant corner of her wished she knew more about how much a person could afford to lose.
Dale kept moving his feet toward the side of the building, first one then the other. He was almost lulling her to sleep with the side-to-side rocking and his voice; he was speaking to her almost subconsciously, his voice as methodical as his steps, first one word then the other...
"Gonna get you to the shed with the snowmobiles, honey, hopefully you can sit upright enough that I can steer us down the hill, that's what we're going to do... Those things are so noisy but that would sound so good right now, can't hear anything out here except for that ringing your ears get in them when there's nothing else to listen to, I heard once that's the actual sound of the electric circuits in your brain running, they're there all the time but you can't hear them until it gets so so quiet like this... Glenda, I wish I would have kissed you back, I was just so surprised, I mean I knew there was something between us but I didn't know you'd pick that moment to jump me, and don't get me wrong, I'm all about you jumping me, but I was thinking about something else, on any other night you're pretty much all I think about... Honestly, I thought maybe you never would want me, not after... that night I told you about. I was just a kid, you know? And my dad... he was so drunk. He shouldn't have gotten either of us into the car. That's something else I wish I had done differently. After the crash, I should've... I should've helped him. Instead of just sitting there after I was thrown clear. He at least did that much for me, not making sure I was belted in right. How crazy is that? He hits a tree, trapped in the wreck, can't open the doors, burns up right there, and I'm thrown clear with hardly a scratch. I should have helped, I know. But I was so scared and angry at him... an attitude I supposed I inherited from him. So ironic that I just stood there, and I know he saw me there, watching me watching him die. God..."
Dale fell silent for a long time after that. Of course, this was the story that Glenda had heard before. He had confessed it to her at that opening-day party. He was right in his suspicions that it had changed the way she felt about him, but wrong about the way in which it had. It had shown a side of him she had never seen or even suspected before then, seeing a whole man where before he had been mostly the function he served at the Lodge. But here was a man who had pain in his past, who carried it with him wherever he went.
On any night before this one, if Glenda had been asked where those feelings had come from, she would have answered incorrectly. She would have said that seeing this large, powerful man choose to be vulnerable in front her (even if it had taken several glasses of wine to get there) threw her natural, nurturing instincts into overdrive. She was a mother to young boys, so of course the story of something Dale went through when he was young would resonate with her mothering instincts. However, this heat under her skin, spreading out from the knife in her chest until it felt like it was going to make her brain burn, was making her see things more clearly, seeing reasons not only deeper than the surface, but even deeper than the ones she thought were the deepest. Just as she could now observed the individual beams of moonlight as they streamed across the two of them trudging through the snow, even more complexity was being revealed.
She loved Dale not just for the pain he had been through and her own most basic tendencies, but for what he had done since then. She had never made the connections before, but it was plain as day in her last few moments of consciousness. Ever since that terrible night his father had died, Dale had never once turned away from helping people. Even when the noise and horror of the world became too much and he ran away to work in a high, mostly quiet place where the number of life's variables had been whittled down as much as they could be, he was still helping people. He was unable to do otherwise.
If she had the strength, she would have started crying with the painful gorgeousness of that realization. Instead, she just continued to look up at him, witnessing every moment of his life etched in his face, limned in moonlight. Even when she felt their forward momentum toward salvation stop, and that steadfast expression change into one of horror, he was still beautiful.
He uttered one more thing, little more than a breath exhaled, that fell across Glenda's face with a puff of warmth that defied the despair in it: "It's gone... smashed." She didn't know what he was referring to, and found she didn't care. She just wanted to stay there, warm in Dale’s arms, forever.
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