Second Chances (20 page)

“Where am I?” The woman demanded. She pushed Loni back down when she tried to get up. “I can't stay,” the girl said, glaring about.

Doc held a hand on her chest until the woman coughed again. “You can and you will. You've got hypothermia and frostbite like I said. Fortunately, the frostbite isn't too bad, and as long as you get some rest and stay warm, I don't think you'll catch pneumonia. At least I hope not.” She frowned thoughtfully. “It's a killer here, and unfortunately there is very little I can do.” She shook her head, making her pony tail bob. “So, doctor's orders. If you cause me any grief, I'll...I'll tie you to that bed young lady. I'm lot losing another patient. Not over her stupid pride. Get over it,” she growled, eyes flashing.

The girl flopped back in bed, exhausted. Doctor Brown nodded, but her resolve didn't waver.

“Just until I get my strength up,” Loni said, shivering again.

“No, you're staying the winter. Get that through your
thick
head. We
need
you healthy. We need your grit, your skills with animals, and yes, your female parts to make sure there is a future for our people here. Get over that too,” Doctor Brown said, packing her kit up. “You can check on the animals after you've gotten better. Until then Trisha, Miranda and the others got it covered. Consider this a vacation,” she said.

Loni fought her exhaustion but knew it was a losing battle. The warmth was seeping back in, driving her consciousness down, down, down. She felt herself slipping as Morpheus called her. “You win,” Loni said, eyelids fluttering.

“Smartest thing you've said all year,” Doc said softly. She pulled the blanket up to cover her and then stroked her temple gently. Reluctantly Loni allowed herself to be taken care of.

The next day Doc checked on her. She was asleep though, so she talked with someone else. Loni woke to the soft voices. She reached out with a bandaged hand to pet a silken feline cuddled up to her side in a ball.

“She doesn't have an ounce of quit normally. She must really be done in...” Doc murmured. She tried to listen but was too tired. “Pigheaded to the point of being terminally stupid,” she growled acidly.

“She doesn't have an ounce of body fat either, Doc. She's all skin and bones,” a familiar male voice rumbled. That troubled her long enough to try to look. She heard the doctor murmur something else, then walk across the floorboards until the door opened and closed. There was a slight chill, so she burrowed deeper into the covers. After a while the warmth lured her into sleep once more.

Sometime later hunger woke her out of her stupor. Her sleepy mind came awake long enough for a thread of fear and revulsion to hit her. It took her a moment to realize why. She'd thought the other person had been Quincy, but then she realized it wasn't. The other voice...it was John. John's voice.

She was furious when he came over with a tray of food, on top a steaming bowl of soup. “Better?” he asked.

“You...I'm...I'll be gone in a minute,” she growled, then coughed.

“No you won't,” he said. She looked up with a glare. “You can use the chamber pot to pee if you need it, but Doc said you stay put. Besides, you go outside and you're as good as dead,” he said.

Her eyes flashed taking that as a challenge. Adrenaline tore through her system with her anger. He pointed to a window rattling. She looked outside and saw a blizzard beating against it. “I need to shut the shutters, but it's too bad out there to chance it,” John said. He shook his head.

She glared at him, still angry, so he pointed to the door. She saw the cloth, old towels and such he had stuffed around it to keep the chill out. She went over, wrapped in a blanket like a shawl. She touched the door knob and then snatched her hand back; it was ice cold. She shut up, flopping down in a chair by the wood burning stove. He glanced her way and then went back to work.

She did her business in the chamber pot bucket, embarrassed, but glad to relieve her body of that burden. He pointed to the stove after she came out. She could smell the stew on it; she went over and stirred it. She looked at him and found he had a bowl. He handed it to her and then went back to whatever he was doing. She ate quickly despite the hot stew. It felt like a lead weight though, weighing her down. After a while she got sleepy so she went back to the loft and the waiting bed. It was cooler, but after a while her body heat warmed it up.

He didn't talk to her, just worked. She watched him warily from the loft. They only interacted when he silently handed her a bowl of food, usually stew. She petted the cat he had in the cabin; she was welcome company. The calico cat was six months old, one of the first litter. She wondered why he'd kept it in the house since he usually kept all of them out. But the cat proved itself when it hunted down an intruding hex rat and killed it.

Boredom was annoying to her; the enforced inactivity chafed at her for a while. Her illness kept her weak, which also annoyed her; she didn't like being dependent on him or anyone. Doc came by once a day, weather permitting, to check on her. She took her temperature and took her other vitals, amusing the woman. They even got her on a small scale John had. She frowned; she'd lost a lot of weight and was under one hundred pounds.

“You're all skin and bones. You need feeding up,” Doc said, then chuckled at herself. “Listen to me, sounding like an old country doctor,” she said, shaking her head.

“Well, technically you are, Doc,” John observed from his chair by his small table. She looked over to him and stuck her tongue out at him. He snorted, then went back to whatever he was doing.

“Who asked him,” Loni muttered darkly.

Doc eyed her for a moment. “You two getting along okay?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Loni muttered, shrugging uncomfortably under that gaze.

Doc nodded. “Good. I fetched you some of your clothes and stuff,” Doc said, indicating a pile of neatly folded laundry by the table. “Anything else you need, let me know. I'll have to get John here or someone else to dig it out though; your place is buried.”

Eventually Loni recovered enough to do something about her boredom. She started doing little things around the cabin, more to keep busy than out of a sense of duty to him. She was testy when he tried to help so he backed off and left her to it.

Occasionally she would sit by the window and look longingly outside to the compound. She realized her shelter was gone, buried. John kept his place mostly cleared of snow; he went out daily and did what he could after feeding the dogs. It was snowing she realized; she'd wool gathered enough to not even notice the first flakes. She shivered and pulled her borrowed shawl up over her bony shoulders. She realized she'd lost a lot of weight when she looked in the mirror in his bathroom corner; the scale really hadn't made it sink in to her. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken, her hair straggly. She was a mess, so she wasn't surprised that he hadn't hit on her. She wasn't sure what she'd do if he did. Fortunately it never came up.

She finally figured out what he was doing. He was constantly busy, moving from one project to the next. He had a DVD and TV but apparently wasn't interested in them. Sometimes a project was something mechanical or chores, whittling wood, other times it was some odd project she didn't understand. It annoyed her when he kept bringing raw materials in to the cabin; he created a draft twice. His latest project puzzled her until she realized just what he had been up too. He had used cleaned down feathers and tanned hides to make comforters, pillows and cushions.

She was amused by the project but not when she found out he hadn't planned on giving her one. She found out from Carlene later that he had made them for Pat, the kids and people who didn't have heavy bedding first. That surprised her. So did his generosity. She wasn't sure what his game was. Those kept turning over in her head for several days until she irritably forced her bored mind to think of something else.

She berated him when he came in muddy and covered in snow. They had a brief warm spell, and instead of the usual snow, they'd had a nasty bit of rain. The rain was going to freeze overnight she realized mucking up a lot of things. He'd been out there with the others doing his best to prepare for the freeze. She hadn't been happy that he'd tracked it all in after she swept with the broom. He was chagrined and apologized immediately, looking down at his boots. He went out to the porch to clean up. Mollified, she'd left it at that.

~~~~~~(@)~~~~~~

Over the winter she was surly, grudging towards him. She rarely spoke, nor did he. “Like an old married couple,” Carlene teased them when she came over to visit. “You two are a cute couple if you'd get over the stick in your asses,” she said.

That earned a sniff of disdain from Loni, and a snort of amusement from John. Loni turned a glower his way, but he ignored it.

The constant togetherness and the enforced inactivity was hard on her. She'd handled hard winters in Montana, but this was worse, much worse. He on the other hand was constantly busy. Over time, if only to keep busy she started to pick up on additional small chores leaving him the heavy tasks like bringing in firewood, shoveling snow, feeding the animals, or fetching water. She resented the way he cleaned dishes so did it herself with her usual ire and elbow grease. John was amused but was careful not to show it.

He slept on the floor in a sleeping bag near the fire. He never complained, and she didn't ask for him to join her even when it seemed brutal out. She did miss companionship sometimes but cursed her traitorous body into silence.

She asked about his dogs one evening when she noticed it was snowing again. She'd lost all track of time; she had no idea how long she'd been in the cabin. “They were bred for this; all are arctic breeds,” he said. She just looked at him. “I've trained and conditioned all of them, even the pups,” he said, not mentioning that he'd lost two pups to the freeze. “Besides, Hanuk and a few of the others are part wolf.” She frowned. “That means they are not house trained and never will be. You can't train a wolf, not an adult one, they are stubborn as...” he indicated her. She scowled. “They would soil everything, marking their territory, then they'd chew and get into anything they could. You'd be screaming bloody murder and ready to shoot them and me after the first day,” he said.

She blinked. “Oh.”

“I found them after a storm like this,” he said, looking to the window. The shutters were closed, the room lit by a flashlight and the fire. “Buried. They dug themselves out, shook off the snow and were rip raring and ready to go, hungry as could be,” he said. She snorted.

“Don't worry about them; they’re fine, even the pups. I've built them shelters, and I'm checking on them twice a day,” John said. She nodded and walked off ending that conversation.

He sanded the floor when he got a splinter in his sock and ripped it. He darned a patch by the light of the fire. She hated the fishy smell from the skins he'd used but liked the sheen that came from the natural oil he applied afterward.

A month after moving in she couldn't stand the itching and smell anymore. She went and got more snow to melt, he watched amused as she poured it into the small cast iron bathtub he had set up in one corner but not hooked up. It took her hours to fill the tub. Then she kicked him out to take a bath.

“It's my cabin,” he muttered as he threw on his coat, bundled up, then pulled out the pail of meat he'd put by the fire to thaw. He went out and fed the dogs, petting them and checking over each. Then he checked on the chickens and other animals. He did a circuit around the base, then went and brought loads of firewood onto the porch.

He stamped his feet at the door, shaking off the snow. “You decent?” he called when he cracked the door.

“No!” she screeched. “Stay OUT!” she yelled.

He sighed and went back for more wood. They couldn't have enough wood, he thought. “This is going to be a looong winter,” he sighed to himself.

~~~~~~(@)~~~~~~

During the long winter he still hunted and gathered additional wood. The dinosaurs had left but apparently other animals had moved in. He recognized the mammoths and rhinos, but some of the others were just weird. The shaggy six- and even eight-legged things moved like lizards. They also tasted horrible so they were avoided.

Elk were on the menu as were bison and oxen. Animals that looked like tauntauns seemed to be easy to kill. They were like sheep, easily herded into brush pens for slaughter. The bison were the best to eat, but the herds stayed in the open areas by preference and were constantly on the move.

She at first hoped he'd get his stupid ass killed so she could keep the cabin, then felt remorse over those betraying thoughts. He was a good man she reluctantly admitted. She also realized she resented that he hadn't hit on her. What was he, gay? Not that's she'd led him on or anything, but he hadn't.

She looked at the clock. He'd been out a while, but that was to be expected. She sat by the fire in the stove, feet tucked up with a blanket over her, reading one of his dog-eared books by the light of the fire. When it got late, she became worried when he didn’t come home.

When darkness fell she really became worried. She found herself staked out by the window, hoping to see him come in. It was snowing again, bad. She was tempted to go out and look for him, but the frost on the window alone told her it would be futile. Besides, she had no idea where to begin looking.