She was mostly soaked and had gone past shivering. She needed heat, liquids, rest, right now.
Now Wynn understood why Jack had been so testy, why he’d insisted on taking the fishing rods, the survival pack, the rifle. In case. In case they found just what they’d found. Still. The man had clearly been injured and upset, almost in shock. Some accident had happened, Wynn just wasn’t sure what, and the man Pierre had missed her in the fog somehow. There were a dozen possibilities. Bear attack. Mother moose. The woman could have gotten lost in the fog in the woods and climbed a tree to locate the lake and fallen, cracked her head on a rock. Or: the two drunks. Not the most savory of dudes. They could have spotted the couple’s canoe from a distance and stalked them. Seen their camp before the fog rolled in. Creepy. He shook it off.
He cleaned up her head. She began shaking hard. That was good in a way. They didn’t have much first aid. They traveled light in that regard—they were boys. Sometimes on climbing trips they took a small bottle of iodine, some SecondSkin glue, and a partial roll of duct tape. Now in the emergency box they had a couple of packs of gauze, one bandage, the iodine, duct tape, Neosporin. They cleaned her head the best they could; it was a diagonal gash to the skull but not deep, maybe three inches long.
They needed to get her warm right away.
“Make a fire,” Wynn said. Jack nodded. They had to warm her up, her core. They had bouillon cubes in the survival box and a few packets of ramen. They’d get her close to the fire and wrap her in the emergency blankets and whatever else they had and feed her hot liquids until the shaking stopped.
Jack shoved away through the tall weeds and Wynn doused the cut with iodine. She was half conscious. He washed the blood off her face. No more cuts, good. She was maybe watching his face, her eyes were slits, they blinked and she moaned. He found a needle and stout thread in the box, he’d packed it for gear repairs but knew it would work as backup for sutures, and he sewed up the cut where she lay. Her body shook in waves and she groaned, but he knew that with the dislocation and the crack to her skull the other pain would mostly mask it. Relative anesthesia. He shivered. “Done,” he said. He patted it with gauze and bound the gauze to her head with the bandage.
Wynn glanced up at the sky: a solid overcast now, moving fast south. Fuck. He prayed it wouldn’t rain. Well, if it didn’t, the clouds could work for them and hold off the frost. He didn’t think they’d move tonight—she wouldn’t be ready, they’d have to camp here. The two emergency blankets were waterproof and they’d cover her, and he and Jack would keep the fire going and do the best they could. He held her head while she shook and he didn’t turn but he could hear the crack and pop of the fire. For the first time Wynn looked at her. Not at the sum of her injuries but as a person lying in the weeds beside him. She was maybe early thirties, dark hair in a braid, hazel eyes, what he could see of them. She was lean, and she had even teeth, unbroken. A strong jaw, also in place, strong dark eyebrows. She looked tough. She must have been tough to survive the two days exposed. If they could get her through this part and she had no severe internal injuries, she would make it. What Wynn told himself. When the danger of hypothermia had passed he would have to reset her shoulder.
The fire cracked and popped and hissed, and when the wind eddied back toward the woods he could smell the smoke and it smelled like life. Maybe the first time he’d ever thought that. Jack was beside him, and Wynn said, “I don’t think anything’s fucked with her spine. Just in case, we’ll carry her together.” He didn’t have to tell him that he’d take her head and shoulders and Jack would support her hips. “On three.” They carried her. They could feel the shudders moving through her and they laid her on a Therm-a-Rest inflatable sleeping pad on a bed of sand Jack had cleared and smoothed by