We move fast. The sleet is getting heavier, the temperature dropping, the trail slick under our boots. I keep one hand at her back, watching her footing, watching the tree line for the shack.
She slips.
One moment she’s beside me, the next her boot catches a wet root and she goes down hard. I lunge for her and get a hand on her arm, but it’s not enough to fully stop her fall. Her ankle twists as her knees buckle.
She makes a sound, small and pained but bitten-off, and I’m on my knees beside her instantly.
“Lila,” I say urgently. I cup both hands to her face. Her eyes are wet, but she’s holding it back with everything she has, blinking fast.
“Where does it hurt?” I ask. “Knee or ankle?”
“Ankle,” she says.
“Let me see it.” My hands move to her ankle, careful, feeling through the boot. She pulls in a sharp breath when I press on the outside of the joint. Her eyes fill with tears and she looks up at the sky and blinks hard.
She’s trying so hard not to cry in front of me.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” I say, brushing her tears away with my fingers. “I’ve got you, okay? Just breathe.”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. The sleet is coming harder now. I need to get her out of this.
“I’m going to pick you up,” I say.
“Your shoulder?—”
“Not an issue right now.” I position myself beside her. “Arms around my neck.”
“Slade.” Her voice breaks slightly on my name. “I’m sorry. I’m not…I don’t usually cry like this.”
“You don’t have to be tough,” I say gently. “Not with me.”
She puts her arms around my neck and I lift her. There’s so much adrenaline pumping through me now I barely feel the pain in my shoulder, but I know I’ll pay for it later. I’ve played through separated shoulders and cracked ribs in service of winning playoffs and championships, but all of that is a distant second to the importance of what I need to do now.
I can carry my wife a quarter mile in a Montana sleet storm without making it her problem.
I find the supply shack where the map said it would be. It’s a small structure at the edge of the tree line, weathered grey wood, a rusted tin roof. I get the door open with my good shoulder and carry her inside.
It’s maybe twelve feet by twelve feet. A wood stove in the corner. A stack of split wood beside it. A rough wooden bench along one wall. Everything is coated in dust.
It’s dry, though, and that’s what matters. So does the fact that I have enough cell phone reception to call emergency services and the resort to coordinate them getting to us as soon as the storm passes.
As sleet pounds down on the tin roof above us, I set her down on the bench as carefully as I can and get the stove going. There’s kindling in a box beside the wood and matches in a tin on the shelf above it. The fire catches on the third match.
“Let’s take the boot off,” I say. “Slowly.”
She works at the laces with careful fingers. I crouch in front of her and do it for her, easing the boot off, then the sock. Her ankle is already swelling on the outside, a soft puffy look to it that I don’t like.
“It’s not broken,” she says.
“You don’t know that.”
“It doesn’t feel broken.”
“You’ve broken an ankle before?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know what broken feels like.”
