Wolf stopped eating and looked at me. He must have felt me checking him out, and soon Jase came to the door also. “Wolf told me you were awake. Lunch is ready as soon as you wake up enough to move and don’t worry, there’s no rush because we’ve got all the time in the world.”
My stomach said otherwise, so I quickly threw off the blankets, looked at my clothes beneath them and decided I needed a shower and clean clothes, and then I rose. That is, I started to rise. I wanted to rise. I tried to rise. I couldn’t.
Then I lay back down, rolled over on one side, and by doing so managed to stand up in stages. First to my knees, then, as a chair appeared that, when I looked, was being shoved my way by a Jase who had a sympathetic and understanding expression, I managed to pull myself upright. Then I dropped gratefully into that chair. “I hurt.” I held myself perfectly still. “I hurt. A lot. My whole body.”
He zipped his office chair next to mine and took my hand. “Of course you do. Think what you did yesterday. You spent the entire day pulling a heavily loaded sled through a very cold wilderness and across a frozen bog. What you did would have decimated a lesser person and you can’t be much more than – what? – five two?” I nodded that he had my height right. “So of course you hurt today. And you’ll hurt tomorrow too.” He cruised around me in that wheeled office chair and headed back to the kitchen. “When lunch is done and the dishes are in the dishwasher, if you can possibly make your way to one of the bedrooms on the main floor, I’ll give you a massage.”
“Can I take a shower first?”
“Of course you can and the hotter the better. Loosen those tight muscles. Give yourself a break, Laurie. You have a right to feel lousy.”
“I don’t have any clean clothes.”
“The Center has a nice selection of lovely, expensive, white terrycloth bathrobes for guests of all sizes and shapes. Will one of them do?”
“Perfect.” The thought of being enveloped in soft terrycloth made me smile over my pain. “Pure heaven.”
He put a hand towards me but stopped before touching me. Consideration for my pain? “You think you hurt now? Wait until you walk more than six yards.” He shrugged. “Just saying.” Then he took my hand and placed it on the back of his office chair. “Lean on this and we’ll get to the kitchen and lunch.”
I didn’t think it was possible to hurt more than I already did but I soon learned that I could and I did. But eventually we made it into the rather large kitchen that somewhat resembled a restaurant kitchen and then beyond, to the smaller room off of it, the one with the table and chairs and Wolf. He gestured. “Welcome to my employee lounge slash office and have a seat while I bring you lunch.” I hurt so much that I let him serve me and I pretended that I didn’t notice how much of a struggle it was for him.
Half an hour later, I pushed away from the table, full and satisfied, though still in pain and in need of a shower. “Can I shower now?”
He pointed to a second door. “Through that and first door to your right. Towels, bathrobes, and anything else you should need are waiting for you.” He gulped the last of the very hot coffee we’d had with our lunch that I recognized as being from the cabin. It was high-quality coffee, I was glad he’d included it in our packs though, as I thought about it, I realized that he might have brought it so we could eat the grounds if things got really bad. Ugh!
I stayed in that shower so long and turned the water so hot that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Center ran out of hot water but it never happened and when I toweled myself dry much, much later, my body didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had earlier and, when I wrapped myself in one of the luxurious terry cloth robes that lay neatly over a towel rack, I looked with distaste at my clothes in a heap on the floor. Had I actually worn those smelly things?
I opened the door and called out for Jase. “Can I wash my clothes somewhere?”
He appeared from nowhere on his magical office chair and informed me that the laundry was the room beside the bathroom so I carried my clothes there and found myself in a very efficiently laid out laundry with the largest washer and dryer I’d ever seen in a private home until I realized this wasn’t just a home, this was a business that went through lots of sheets, blankets, bathrobes and much more, all of which could be found on the shelves that lined the room with neat labels. There were stacks and stacks of everything.
All Jase had to do to provide me with a bathrobe was grab an assortment of sizes from those shelves and drape them over a towel rack. I was impressed and was even more impressed when I saw the pile of blankets on the floor waiting to be laundered. They were our blankets and after being in a cabin heated by a wood stove and on a sled during the trip through the forest, they smelled both of smoke and dirt and needed cleaning as much as my clothes. Maybe more.
I added my dirty laundry to the pile and shoved them into the extra-large washer and followed the directions printed on a card taped to the machine. New hires at the Center would have an easy time learning how things worked. My admiration for Jase grew. The man was an efficient, business-savvy machine when he wasn’t busy being nice and singing songs to make me march faster.
He was waiting outside the laundry when I exited and almost shoved me towards one of the several more doors along the corridor that must be the main hallway in the downstairs portion of the Center. He called out ‘stop right there’ when I was about to pass a door and told me that was my bedroom for the duration of my stay and then he reminded me that he’d promised me a massage.
“I’m not a professional but I know which muscles are most likely to hurt.”
“Were you in the military?” At last I’d find out where he’d learned about marching and, evidently, about sore muscles.
“I was in the Army long enough to visit Afghanistan and decide the military life wasn’t for me. When I got out after that one enlistment, I looked at a map for the most un-military place I could find and this was it and I’ve never regretted that decision.”
“Did you march a lot in the Army?”
“Too much.” So that answered my question.
His hands did magical things to my sore muscles and his voice did even more magical things to my mind and soon I was floating in a void of sensation and an imaginary world that included sloppy joes and wonderful dogs and snow and a man who’d arrived in the middle of the night in a blizzard and, strangest of all, of lovers. They all featured prominently in my daydream and I wondered when I’d stop thinking of Jase and lovers and snow and wonderful dogs and decided that the answer was probably never.
Lovers? I knew where that imagery came from. We were a couple through necessity, though not lovers, and would remain so until he saw a doctor and got something done to his leg so he wouldn’t have to scoot about on a wheeled office chair. Thinking about that chair reminded me that I was supposed to call his doctor and I decided to do just that as soon as his strong, magical hands finished turning what had started out that morning as a mangled piece of painful flesh back into me.
By the time he was done massaging away the pain, I was asleep once more and he let me sleep, pulling the huge quilt that covered the bed over me and quietly shutting the door. I don’t know how long I slept but when I woke, I felt like a new person, full of fuel and limp with relaxation, and the sun was decidedly low in the small spot of sky visible through the window close to the bed.
I considered the view. Evergreens, of course, because this was the north woods, and a sky full of white, wispy clouds, plus that winter sun with its thin but brilliant light. Must be cold out, I decided without caring one way or the other because I was warm and comfortable in a huge bed in a large building that was built specifically to cater to a visitor’s every whim. At the moment I was that someone and the feeling was so luxurious that I wanted to roll over and sleep some more.
But I didn’t because Jase’s doctor might not take callers at night and the sun was dropping fast and his leg needed attention. So I shoved off the quilt and slid out of bed, surprised
to find that I could pad barefoot to the door with only minor pain, and then I went looking for Jase.
“We must call the doctor,” I said without preamble. “It’s late.”
He nodded and dialed a number from the phone book beside the land line. It was already open to the right page so, as he’d patiently waited for me to awaken, he’d also been keenly aware of the passing time.
The doctor’s office answered on the second ring and soon we were on speakerphone with the doctor himself, which was when I discovered that Jase had already booted up his computer and pulled up Skype while I was still a quivering, painful mass of tired flesh. And now they were ready for a medical consultation that would somehow involve me.
“Jase,” the doctor said in that competent voice doctors have, “either skinny out of your pants or cut off the pants leg so I can see your injury.”
“No way am I going to destroy a perfectly good pair of jeans,” was Jase’s reply and before I knew what was happening, he was unsnapping those jeans and wiggling out of them. I didn’t know whether to enjoy the show or look away but neither was necessary because he wore nice, white, cotton undershorts that could easily have passed for swimming trunks. So I forgot to be embarrassed and, along with the doctor on Skype, I examined his leg.
It was a mess and that mess extended from his hip to his toes. Bruises were beginning to show and everywhere I looked the leg was swollen. I couldn’t figure out a single thing by looking but to the doctor, all those bruises and swollen places meant something. “Feel his leg, will you, Laurie? Not too hard, mind you, we don’t want to send him into shock, but the first thing I need to know is whether anything is broken.”
I felt somewhat competent about that because I’d done much the same thing in the shed when I found him and soon the doctor agreed with my original diagnosis that he’d not broken any bones. “That’s good, but it appears that he has extensive soft tissue damage.” He peered closer at his Skype. “Jase, I believe you insulted just about every muscle, ligament, and joint in that leg and the sooner you can get in here for me to see it in person the better,” He looked from the leg to us. “Now? Can you come in now? I’ll stay late if need be.”
Jase explained that the road wasn’t plowed. The doctor nodded quickly as if he’d heard that before. “As soon as possible, then.” He pursed his lips. “Does Maude plow your roads?” When Jase assured the doctor that she did, he smiled. “I’ll get hold of her. Tell her to get your road clear ASAP and she’ll get to you pronto. Tonight if she’s not on the other side of the county at the moment, tomorrow morning if there aren’t sick, injured, or pregnant people on her route who are in worse shape than you.”
“I’ll have coffee ready when she comes. And cookies or something else that’s equally sweet.”
The doctor snorted. “You’d better or she’ll let you know that you’ve been placed on her plow-last list. I hear her granddaughter is riding with her so that’s double reason to have sweet treats.” And he wiped his glasses clean, reached for the button on his computer, and winked out of existence, after which Jase shut off his computer, too, and we were left to prepare dinner because during our talk with the doctor, that brilliant, bright sun had also winked out of existence and night had arrived and it was time to eat. Again. It seemed as if I’d just finished lunch instead of sleeping away the afternoon after sleeping away the morning.
One non-existent day except for the luxurious shower and massage. I closed my eyes to better remember them and followed Jase on his office chair slash wheelchair and wondered what was for diner.
CHAPTER 14
I helped fix the meal and, in so doing, learned how the Center kitchen functioned, filled as it was with stainless steel tables and other kitchen-type equipment that I recognized but had never seen on the scale that the Center obviously required. What I soon learned in my awe-struck way was that it worked very well and soon we had steaks and broccoli from the freezer cooked and on the table, steaming and giving off wonderful smells. A couple of bananas and mashed potatoes made from a box completed the meal and it came together so quickly that I realized Jase was a master in the kitchen. He’d make some woman a wonderful husband.
We ate at that table beneath the bulletin board while Wolf gobbled down his dog food nearby. It was a lovely meal and the errant thought went through my mind that this was as enjoyable as any restaurant meal I’d ever experienced. Did kitchen staff at restaurants have it better than the patrons they served?
The snowplow was delayed by two days because a pregnant woman went into labor three weeks early and the parents-to-be followed the plow all the way to the hospital because Maude, whoever she was, wouldn’t take any chances on the anxious couple getting stranded on the way. Then a man at the other end of her route developed stomach pains that had him doubled over and the doctor diagnosed possible appendicitis so Maude once more went to the rescue and, of course, wouldn’t leave the man and his wife who was driving with hands clenching the wheel in concern, until they were safely in the hands of the Emergency Room people.
Then she plowed her way to the Center and rescued Jase with her granddaughter at her side enjoying the ride and the break from school that I suspected wasn’t official but was, rather, the kind of break families give their kids to educate them beyond what’s in books and to have fun in the process. Kate, the granddaughter, insisted that when she grew up, she was going to plow roads in the winter and grade them in the summer just like her grandmother.
Kate watched with interest from the window of the plow as her grandmother scraped snow from everywhere, not stopping until the Center could be accessed as easily in winter as in the middle of summer. Then both grandmother and granddaughter come inside and the granddaughter, Kate, followed her nose to the several dozen cookies cooling on newspaper on one of the several counters in the spotless kitchen. I was proud of myself. I’d made the cookies, cookie baking being the one culinary skill I possess.
Maude grabbed cookies and milk for Kate and more of each for herself and as she poured she breathed in the fumes and then breathed out a smile that said she knew good coffee when she smelled it, and they made their way to the stainless steel table against the wall in the careless way people do who are repeating a well-known routine.
Jase and I joined them and soon I was treated to a gossip fest, except it wasn’t exactly gossip as I quickly learned. There were no negative comments nor were there any judgements. Just facts and more facts. The woman was a living, breathing newspaper and knew everything that was going on in the community because she watched and listened as she plowed and graded and scraped and, since she kept all the roads in the county drivable plus also plowing most of the driveways, she covered a lot of territory and at almost every crossroad or house she stopped for coffee and chit-chat and was welcome everywhere and, therefore, knew everything --absolutely everything -- that was happening in the entire county.
The Johnsons had decided not to get a divorce after all and were trying to work things out. Maude carefully made no judgement on their chances but Kate nodded sagely and said they were nice people.
Carrie Lee was engaged and everyone was surprised because it wasn’t to her long-time boyfriend but, rather, someone she met at college and the former boy-friend was okay with the whole idea because he’d moved on, too.
Carter Lee, Carrie’s grandfather, had put his farm up for sale and when it sold he’d move into town. Close to stores and people. Good move on his part. Maude approved.
Maude was tall and robust but she was still a woman doing a man’s job and I couldn’t help but be curious about her and, though I thought I hid my curiosity well, it turned out that she read me like a book and eventually, with the kind of expression that said this happened every time she met someone new, answered my unasked question. “I got in the business when my no-good husband left me and the kids for a waitress from a café in the next town over.”
She snorted as she repeated what I’d figured out by then was a frequently told story. �
��When he sent me a letter giving me legal ownership of all that expensive equipment so I could sell it so he and his lady love could live the good life, I didn’t do exactly what he wanted.”
She laughed and Kate laughed with her, settling in with a grin to hear what must be a familiar and enjoyable story. “I took that letter to my lawyer who said it gave me the equipment but didn’t expressly say I had to sell it and give the money to him. So I didn’t. Instead, I went outside and stared at those machines and figured out how to operate them and I’ve been doing it ever since and from what I hear, he and his lady love are working their tails off to make ends meet.” She snorted her appreciation for the way justice had prevailed and her granddaughter echoed that snort and then nodded her head several times, pony tail bobbing.
Then little Kate sat up even straighter. It was clear that she couldn’t be prouder of her grandmother and almost strutted as she and Maude finished their drinks and cookies and left. Coming after them, I helped Jase into his truck and we followed them to the highway where Maude waved us towards town because she knew we’d have clear roads from then on as she and her granddaughter went one way and we went the other, into town and straight to the medical clinic.
The waiting room had the usual stack of out of date magazines and I learned a lot about what had been happening in the world a year ago as I waited for Jase after he’d been deposited in a wheel chair and whisked back to some unknown location. Time must not be important in the north country because surely they were back there having a great old time when the doctor returned, followed by Jase with a pair of crutches that gave him the jaunty look of an injured soldier. Had he been wounded in Afghanistan? I’d have to ask.
The doctor looked about until he saw me. He led Jase to my corner of the waiting room and spoke. “Good thing Jase here has you because he’s not going to be using that leg for a long time. Weeks. A couple of months. Maybe more.” He scowled in a doctor kind of way and continued. “No broken bones, just as we surmised, but he either strained, sprained, pulled, or tore everything in his entire leg that it’s possible to mess up and that’s a lot.”
The Snow Queen Page 8