He poured them each a small glass of the fragrant dessert wine and took a sip. “Ye gods, why have we not drunk this before? Did you keep it back in London?”
“Not this particular vintage, but I always had a small amount.”
“I might have to forgive them for making you be Ophelia if they keep making this stuff.” He looked at the screen on her phone where it was mounted with the little speakers, and hit Play.
It was a good thing they’d eaten before coming, as West tackled the exercise with all the glee of a drunken Scotsman. For no less than four hours, well past a sensible hour for sleeping, they danced, or tried to. Pop. Hip-hop, where she almost blacked his eye. Waltz. Salsa. She tried to chula, and it looked like she was stomping on ants.
By the time they caught glimpses of strangely pink aurora through the long bank of windows along one side of the lifeboat, he’d even made a comical forbidden dance come-on, which was all eyebrows and swirling hips that had them both tumbling onto the nearest ottoman laughing.
But as the laughter faded, and they rested from all the graceless flailing about, she still couldn’t catch her breath.
“Is it stuffy in here?” she panted, words she hadn’t uttered since she’d arrived. “I need some air, and I want to see the pink aurora outside without glass in the way.”
“Ophelia’s aurora?” he teased, and they both went giggling like idiots again to the exit.
“I think I got to the bottom of that one question.”
“Do you like pink?”
“I do.”
“Me, too. Especially when it’s got a bit of a warm brown tone to it.”
She almost laughed again; the fool was making nipple jokes. “I heard that about you.”
He grabbed the handle for the door, gave it a twist and a jerk, and nothing happened. He tried again, then bent to examine the handle. Instantly, the laughter stopped.
“It’s locked?”
He felt around with his fingertips, and then gave it another twist, then pulled up on it as hard as he could. “Don’t see a lock on it.”
“Panel,” she said as soon as she noticed the very small electronic screen on the far side of the frame. She tapped it, but it didn’t come on. Then employing West’s method of fixing the broken door, she slapped around at it a few times, then looked for other buttons.
“Not working, either?” he asked, and she realized it wasn’t just her. He was breathing as fast as she was. He stepped up behind her to eye it over her shoulder. “No buttons.”
“Nope. Looks like a dead smartphone, but no side button to reboot.”
“You brought your radio?” he asked, and they both turned to look at the counter where the phone sat with speakers broadcasting country music, because they hadn’t gotten to the line-dancing portion of her experiment. Beside the port and the phone sat her radio.
“I’ll call someone...” She glanced at her watch, frowned and hurried over to make the call. “Maintenance is on call all the time, too, right? Like for emergencies?”
“Far as I know. Someone should have a radio, even if it’s after midnight now.”
* * *
About ten minutes later, now fully aware the reason the door didn’t open and the panel was not powered up, they stood on the other side of it, listening to men working on the outside, trying to fix the electronics.
“This is kind of a bad design, if it locks people in and suffocates them. How many ventilation issues could they have?” Air issue. And it was getting colder, probably because they’d stopped their hours-long thrashing about in the most rhythmic manner Lia could muster.
“I don’t know. They said that things got switched around from the original plan when they changed up the parts open and closed for the winter,” Lia said, and he could see that she was back to trying to be stoic, but the only light in the room came through the bank of windows, casting everything pink. “Let’s just go sit and watch the aurora through the window. They’ll get this open, but we’re using more air standing around than if we went to sit.”
With all their things stashed in the bag she’d carried in, and no more country music or death metal, they took a seat on the ottoman that had landed below the windows, and he kept one of her hands in his while she gripped her radio with the other.
Another twenty minutes in, West became fully aware of how little oxygen he was getting when his vision started to darken at the edges. He looked over to see Lia with her chin to her chest, and the radio now only resting in her lax hand.
“No! Lia, open your eyes,” he barked at her, then shook her shoulders until she did as commanded. “We’re going to get out, okay? Right now.”
“The door?”
“No, baby, we’re going out these windows.” It took far too much effort to pick himself up from the ottoman where they’d been lounging, but he managed to move one down so when the window shattered, it wouldn’t get on her. All he needed was a weapon.
He looked around in the low light and saw nothing he could swing. No stools. There was a table. Could he break a leg off?
Keep on going became his mantra in those minutes, especially when he looked at Lia and found her unconscious again.
He flipped the table over, examined the construction, then cursed it. No-breaking molded steel. What else? What else?
The bottle.
He took a big swig for luck, then smashed the bottom against the table, knocking it off and making a nice, jagged weapon out of it.
The crash made her open her eyes again, but they were so bleary he wasn’t even sure she’d really awakened.
“You wanted to know how many times I’ve moved? Right? Wake up. I’ll tell you.” He climbed into the tall windowsill above her and began using the broken end of her port bottle to dig at the seal wrapping around the Plexiglas windowpane. “As a kid I moved three or four times per year between foster homes.”
“Foster homes?” she repeated, her voice small, and she looked really out of it, like her eyes wouldn’t focus and she was trying hard to keep them open.
“Yes. And they sucked.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. I didn’t want Charlie in them, or they didn’t want us.” He looked over, breathing heavily, to see her head drooping forward. “Lia!”
Nothing. He got hold of the long strip of seal and pulled, opening up a tiny gap around the window frame. Cold air pushed right into the space. He got two breaths, then shouted, “Ophelia Monterrosa!”
He jumped down to pick her up and hold her face by the air gap. In about thirty seconds, she’d regained consciousness.
“Stay there,” he said, climbing back into the frame to dig out another strip of the rubbery sealant, and rip that down the seam. It didn’t tear evenly. Sometimes it just started stretching, then tore, but when it did, he’d use his broken bottle to dig out another handhold. “My rubbish childhood is going to get us out of here, though. Using the skills learned there.”
“You learned to break into places?”
“No, though I could’ve done if I felt it necessary.” He got out one entire side, and then jumped down to do the bottom edge. “I discovered that if I broke things, they moved us. We’re getting out because I was a bad kid who could figure out how to break anything. And if I break two seams on this window, to the corner, we’ll be able to pull it out of the frame.”
“Why did you break things?” she asked, still not keeping up, still not functioning on all cylinders.
“Because the next place could be better. For me. For Charlie.”
He’d never admitted that before, denied it through all the times that he was rightly accused of it.
“We’re going to need the men to come around and push it in for us. Call them on the radio.”
She had to move away from the fresh air crack to get to the radio, and with her oxygen levels so depleted, she be
gan to droop and slur her words much quicker than she previously had.
He dragged her back to the corner, which he’d freed, and they both sat, faces to the crack, watching flashlights bobbing their direction through the dark. Soon, four men stood outside the glass, and through a series of gestures and West pulling Lia the hell out of the way, the glass soon bent inward, and the sound of the rest of the remaining rubber sealant ripping almost drowned out the hissing of exceptionally cold wind entering the lifeboat.
“You know that door saying?” she asked, coherency returning. “About God shutting doors?”
“He opens a window?” he asked, and when he looked over, he found her smiling at him and pointing.
“Pretty sure that was me. And those lads with the torches.”
They took a moment and just breathed, leaning into one another, and when she looked steady enough and like she was getting too cold, West grabbed her bag, slung it over his shoulder and helped her climb through the window to their rescuers.
Half walking, half stumbling through the snow, they reached an entry port, and made their way inside to warm air, then the clinic, and finally the hospital, and sat together, each with cannula of oxygen running across their noses.
“I’m feeling a little better,” Lia mumbled when she saw how intently he watched her. “But I know we said no sleeping in the same room...for a while...”
“I’m sleeping in your cabin tonight. Don’t even try to send me to mine.” He meant it to sound kind of like a joke, but it didn’t come out that way, too many what-ifs in his head.
What if she’d died just when he was getting her back?
What if he hadn’t come back when he had?
“We need to tell the captain to have the other lifeboats tested. Pretty sure this one is out of commission until summer when they can replace the window.”
“They can put the glass back in and do another seal if they get on it tomorrow. Otherwise, it might fill with snow.”
“Hey,” she said, sharply enough to draw his immediate attention, and she pointed at his hands, which were still fisted and white across the knuckles in his lap. “What are you thinking of?”
“Nothing good.”
“Tell me.”
“I was thinking that if I had stayed gone, no one would’ve gone to the lifeboat to dance tonight and gotten trapped.”
“Regretting coming back?”
“No. But the problem might not have been discovered until it was critical if you hadn’t wanted to go dance terribly there.” He tried to explain. “If people had gone there in an actual emergency, that boat could’ve become a tomb. People who are in this part of the station, near the clinic. You.”
“It’s good you came back. Why is that making you want to punch something?”
“I don’t. Just...having a hard time shaking it off. I’m tense all over.” He leaned down to the nurse on the stick, grabbed the pulse oximeter and slipped it onto her finger. When they’d arrived, her blood oxygen was very low, but with a few minutes of the good stuff, it was once again in the high nineties. Soon to be better.
“Would a hug help?” she asked, voice sweet and arms open.
He didn’t wait for her to ask again, and didn’t wait for her to come to him. He slid off the trauma table and stepped between her legs to pull her against him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and looped her legs around his thighs, then laid her cheek on his shoulder.
Warm, soft and alive in his arms... He felt the tension begin to ebb away, enough for him to admit, “I’m wondering how many people have been hurt by me leaving to have another fresh start.”
He knew of one, but he wasn’t ready to tell her he’d caused Charlie’s in every way but by his own hands. Not yet, but even he could see that was where this was all leading. Like a bomb that ticked without a countdown clock. He knew it was going to go off, he just didn’t know when.
* * *
“He’s not answering,” Lia called from inside her office, listening to the phone at the BAT on at least the twentieth ring.
“I thought you two were travel pals.” He poked his head in, and though the teasing was there, neither of them really had the energy to mirror last night’s playful idiocy before they almost died in the lifeboat. Never mind the day was made longer still by security ordering they give the dining hall brawlers a blood test to make sure tempers hadn’t risen due to hormonal fluctuations.
She’d asked West to go to Nigel, since Angry Guy was probably in his cabin and that didn’t involve going outside to reach him.
They should’ve been off the clock at this hour, settling in to sky-watch from her cabin, where there was plenty of oxygen and the big bubble window.
Her email chirped just as West came into the office, and she shook her head, hanging it up. “Two minutes of ringing...he’s not going to answer. Probably has his nose stuck in some galaxy or other. Told you he was going to be difficult once nighttime rolled around.”
“That you did,” he said. “Give it five and call again, then I just go up.”
She nodded, then looked at her phone, and the speculation about Gates’s problematic behavior immediately turned serious.
“What is it?”
“Email from that hospital my father was admitted to. They released his records. We only had to get an attorney involved and email a ton of documents, but...”
He moved to stand behind her and she felt his hand on her shoulder as she opened the document.
“In Spanish?”
“Well, yes.”
“Can you read it?”
“It’s close enough...”
He couldn’t read it, though he might recognize a few words here and there. She babbled through different vitals and doctor’s notes.
“You’re going to have to translate before my curiosity kills us both.”
“I feel like I’m looking at test results from someone who’s here. Angry Guy, or Nigel,” she said, then pointed to one word. “He’s hypothyroid...” She scrolled back. “Damn it, Pai.”
“More, Lia. What else?”
“Immature red blood cells. White cells skewing low.”
“Platelets?”
“Low.” She sighed again, and West’s question about the fire suddenly came back to her. “How did you know?”
“That he’s alcoholic?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t. But your family owns a vineyard—it’s not much of a stretch. With Charlie...” He stopped, sighing as if it was an act of will to say anything about his brother, or just exhausted him. But he was doing it, either to live up to his end of the bargain, or because he wanted to help. “The more he used, the more trouble he got into. After the fire, even though I know you said it was an accident—”
“It was carelessness,” she cut in, dropping her phone onto the desktop. “He was on the veranda during the dry season, smoking, and tossed a used, still-burning cigarette into the garden behind.”
“I thought it started in the fields?”
“No, it mostly destroyed fields. The people in the village, the firefighters, the farm workers, everyone helped save the manor first. The buildings. The winery. The fire ate the other direction, through the oldest Monterrosa vines. They’re now mostly gone. Some were saved, but I don’t know how long it’ll take for them to propagate back. Even with lots of help. Which is why things are precarious. The Monterrosa grapes make the port. If we don’t have them, we don’t have Monterrosa port. We just have port. Douro River port, and sure that’s great, but all the stores we currently have will probably become immensely valuable if we can never make any the same.”
“That’s the problem with the vineyard? I thought it was just reconstruction and the old guys not wanting to listen to you...”
“The cellars where it’s aging are fine. We didn’t lose any product, so we have sev
eral years of sales ahead of us. But then we have a looming dry season that will span however long it takes us to replant.”
“Aw, hell, love.”
“Making more sense why I have to live there and run the vineyard now?”
* * *
“If you’ve all those people counting on you,” West said. Normally, he’d have been put out that her personal family calamity might be changing the future from what they’d planned and dreamed up, but at that moment, he didn’t want to consider what would come after they’d left Fletcher. Eight months was a long time.
To smooth that over, he said, “If it makes you feel better, that might not have been a drunken mistake. Judging by the tests, carelessness and inattention are probable symptoms. Mental impairment comes with low thyroid.”
“I guess,” she whispered, slumping a little in her seat. “He was admitted for that. Thrown out of a bar for fighting. Can you imagine? A sixty-three-year-old man, in a bar fight, and belligerent with police? They brought him to the hospital once they found out who he was.”
“Not arrested?” Wealth had privileges.
She shook her head. “This behavior might be a little more exaggerated than usual, but it’s still him. It doesn’t surprise me. But this thyroid business does.”
“You didn’t know about the alcoholism, either,” he reminded her.
“No.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s just shock. I wasn’t expecting this. I was expecting something injury related, not...pathology.”
He made a mental note to keep a sharp eye on her thyroid levels as another thought occurred to him. “You said you might have a grandparent with thyroid issues.”
And now he wasn’t just her jerkish father who messed things up and dropped off the face of the planet. He was her jerkish father who did all those things maybe because he was sick. And she was a doctor, and she hadn’t paid enough attention to him to notice.
“No other word about where he is?”
“No. His mental capacity is strong enough to keep ahead of us, the way he’s making withdrawals just before he leaves somewhere.”
Reunited in the Snow Page 13