Wide Spaces

  I swung the truck around to park by the ditch and jumped out. I couldn’t make out the car with the way it was, but I knew, I just knew it was Emma.

  I slid when I ran down the ditch and felt the freezing snow seep into the back of my jeans, but I got up, ran up the slope, and around the car to the driver's side door. I could hear music faintly, but the car was off. I knocked, but heard nothing. I furiously wiped away the snow from the window and door, but it was iced over. I bit into my fist to stop from smashing it through the window.

  I cursed and growled all the way down to my soul, hating that everything had to have an obstacle. I searched for something to smash the window with, kneeling in the snow and shoving my hands down through it trying to find the ground. When I literally reached pay dirt, I pushed around, looking for a limb or rock. The snow was up to my upper arms and they were already turning numb.

  I couldn't find a single thing to grab, so I labored back through the snowy ditch and opened my toolbox in the back of my truck. My numb fingers poorly gripped a wrench and I made it back to the car on adrenaline alone because I was fading fast. My arms were numb and my legs were too, and wet. I knew it wouldn’t be too long and I'd be useless and in trouble myself.

  I went to the back window to keep the flying glass from Emma in the front, reared back with as much force as I could muster and rammed it straight through the ice and glass. I sliced my arm when my hands went through the window with the force, but didn't even have time to look at it. I kept hitting until the entire window was gone and then kept beating down the side of the car to shatter the ice around the door so I could open it and get her out.

  It fell almost soundlessly to the snow. I used my shoe with numb toes inside to kick and shove the snow aside enough to wedge the door open, which took some time. When I finally got the door open enough to get in, blasted with her music that was still playing, I crawled in and there she was. My heart was leaned over in that seat, pale as the snow that raged outside, and blood on the side of her head.

  My heart was fearful, but my body knew what to do as it reached out to touch her. She was ice cold. "Emma?"

  My fingers were too numb to feel her pulse. My breath made thick fog, so I knew hers should, too. I watched closely, holding my breath so as not to mistake it for hers as I palmed her cheek.

  "God, please…" I groaned and closed my eyes, unable to look until I begged. I closed them tighter and then opened. I watched and waited. When the barely there puff of breath came from her parted lips, I'd never been so grateful of anything in my life.

  I undid her seatbelt and pulled her through the middle console to me in the backseat. With her in my lap, I kissed her ice-cold face and neck over and over as Royal Teeth played in the background. But I didn’t have time to catch my breath. I had to get her to the hospital and hope to hell they had enough power to do what needed to be done.

  I pushed the door open as far as it would go and slipped out from under her to get out. She moaned and I stilled. "Emma?" I palmed her cheek once more. "Baby?"

  She moaned again and whispered her words. "Mason…the heater's on." She tried to pull at her jacket.

  I didn't laugh. I knew that hallucinating was a bad sign when it came to hypothermia. I leaned over and hoisted her up into my arms as gently as I could muster. I trekked through the snow as fast as my legs would go, which wasn't very fast at all in the thick snow. When I finally reached the passenger door, I leaned her against the side of the truck just enough for me to get the door open. I stepped up on the rung and hoisted with everything I had left. She barely cleared the edge of the seat and I thanked the big guy for me getting her in the first try. I pushed her butt with my hand until she was clear.

  I was spent. The cold was too much. My legs were no longer just numb, they were painfully so. I pushed her legs into the floorboard and shut the door. Leaning on the truck side, I made my way to the driver's door and gingerly climbed in. I had left the truck running and moaned feeling the heat on my hands as I put them in front of the heater.

  I pulled Emma to me, setting her head and shoulders in my lap to try to keep her warm as I drove. My cold feet didn't want to cooperate, but I forced them to press the pedals and go. I needed to get there fast, but couldn't chance us getting in an accident. We'd never make it if something happened now.

  Cautiously, I crossed the bridge and turned back onto the main road. My hands shook the entire time and I clamped my mouth shut to stop my teeth from banging. Emma's teeth didn't chatter and that scared the hell out of me. She didn't shiver, which meant severe hypothermia had set in. I drove a little faster.

  When we got closer to town, I noticed the snow had let up a bit. By the time we reached the hospital, we weren’t the only ones in the ambulance bay looking for help. I got out and pulled Emma from my side of the truck into my arms. She fell limply, not once opening her eyes or making a sound. I ran, leaving my door open and the truck on.

  I kissed her head as I made it past the door because I knew they were going to take her from me. And I wasn't her husband yet, if she even wanted me to be anymore, so they wouldn’t tell me a thing about her progress.

  "Hey! Help me. Please," I called and the same nurse who I'd seen earlier came around the counter.

  "You found her. Where?"

  "In her car. She had an accident." She looked at Emma's eyes, prying open the lids. She touched Emma's lips that I could see had a bluish tint now that we were in the light. "Out past the bridge."

  "How long has she been unconscious?"

  I sighed. "Lady, I don't know. Just help her, please."

  She sighed, too. "Bring her back here. There's not that many staff on tonight and it's too dangerous to drive in that." She gave me a look. "So, we're short staffed. You OK to help me?" She squinted at me. "No, no, you're not OK." She looked at my arm where the blood was and then my face. "You've got mild hypothermia it looks like."

  "She's full-blown," I argued and followed her back to a room. "I don't care about me. Help her."

  "You need stitches," she argued back as I placed Emma gently on the bed. "And a warming blanket and to get out of these wet clothes." She turned and grabbed something from a drawer. "Here." She tossed me a sheet. "Wrap this around you and then come back. I'll stitch you up later, but you at least have to get out of those wet clothes."

  The only reason I was able to go into the bathroom was because the robust woman had already begun taking Emma's clothes off with skillful hands that knew exactly what they were doing.

  I labored through it as fast as I could, the pain from my frozen feet and legs overriding the pain from my wounds, and wrapped the flimsy sheet around myself. When I came out not two minutes later, she had a metallic blanket over Emma and was tossing other blankets on top of that.

  She looked at me. "All right, get in here, sport."

  "In here?" I asked, but couldn't take my eyes off my Emma.

  "Yes, in here." She lifted the side of all the blankets. "I assume it's you who put that pretty little rock on her finger, so it's you who's getting naked to warm her up, not me. Skin to skin, so take the sheet off."

  She didn't have to tell me again if it was what Emma needed. I'd never seen Emma naked before and climbed in without a view even if I did want one. She was an ice cube. "Ah, Em, baby. You're freezing."

  I stuck one of her legs between mine and pulled her arm to lay over my side while I wrapped her as closely as we could get.

  "A lot of the machines are down because the generator is having problems, and I don't have anything to warm her with." She let me get situated before going on so the rustling would stop. "I don't even know if she's passed out from the hypothermia or the concussion. So we're going to run some tests. On you, too," she said sternly. "And you just lay there and keep her warm for me."

  No problem.

  I nuzzled my nose into Emma's face and breathed her in. Even like this, she still smelled like her. I picked her freezing hand off my side and put it between my palms. I blew my
hot breath on her fingers. The nurse saw me and smiled as she looked at Em's head wound. When she pulled out stuff for sutures, I scowled. "Aren't you going to get the doctor?"

  "I am the doctor," she spouted wryly. "I always work on holidays because I'm not married. It doesn't seem fair to their kids that they have to work, so here I am."

  She pulled one of Em's arms from the blankets and started the fastest IV I'd ever seen. She smiled at my awe and taped the sensors for the monitors to Emma's fingers. "I've had lots of practice. I was a nurse before I was a doctor."

  "How many of you are working tonight?"

  She grimaced a split second, but I caught it. "There's only two doctors here and six nurses. The rest, we can't reach and they don’t know to come...or can't get here."

  I sighed. "It's a mess out there."

  "It's a mess in here. I'm sure they'll trickle in as they can be found." She locked eyes on me as she put Em's arm back under the blanket. "Good thing you got here when you did."

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "You know you saved her life, right?" I looked away, but she continued. "Like, seriously saved her life. She wouldn't have lasted much longer out there."

  "I hope she agrees with you when she wakes up," I muttered, sweeping Emma's hair off her cheek as she faced me.

  "Lover's quarrel?"

  I closed my eyes and pulled Em as close as I could get her. "We'll see." I focused on Em's face. "Why isn't she warming up?"

  The monitor started to beep faster. The doctor stopped what she was doing and looked at it.

  "It takes a while for the body temperature to go back up. Her organs were already shutting down."

  It beeped faster and faster. I held my breath, hoping that damn beep slowed back down, but it didn't. And when the doctor yelled for me to get up and move, I knew it wasn't going to. I pulled away from Emma as easily as I could and wrapped the sheet around my bottom half as I got up, scooting around beside her head.

  And then the line on the machine betrayed us both by flat-lining, screaming for all to hear that my baby was dying on that table.

  A teaspoon of honey is the life's work of 12 bees.

  Emma

  Someone was begging for my life. "Please, please, please don't take her. Please don't punish her for my mistakes. If it's not one part of my past creeping up, it's another and Emma always suffers because of it. Please, please."

  Mason. I could feel his lips at my ear, his warm breath that felt so inexplicably good on my skin. Then his voice faded and I couldn't hear him. I strained for him, not knowing anything in that moment other than I needed him. Then the worst pain I'd ever felt blasted through my chest, burning my skin and scalding my veins.

  "Emma, come back, baby."

  I gasped awake, becoming aware of how painfully hot I was. Or…cold. I couldn't tell anymore. And how hard my heart was beating, as if doing its own begging.

  Mason came into my line of sight from behind my head. He smiled, yet I could tell it was anguished, and put his forehead to mine. "Thank you, thank you. I'm so sorry, Em."

  I wanted to speak, but couldn't. I barely held on to the thin thread of lucidity. I heard them speaking around me, a woman yelled at Mason and then I was engulfed in warmth. I tried my hardest to snuggle into it. Mason's arm came around me, his legs pulling me toward him and crushing our bodies together. It was so warm I could do nothing but sigh against his neck.

  He kissed my eyes, my forehead, my hair. When he started to whisper to me, I knew that he knew...that I knew about Adeline. "God, help me. I don't know if you can hear me right now, but I'm so sorry, Em. I wasn't trying to hide anything from you. In my mind, there just wasn't anything to tell. It was one date, and that was it. I didn't know that she was holding onto…whatever she thought was between us."

  I managed a small moan. I didn't want to talk about Adeline right then. I wanted to drown in his warmth. I didn't care what he did or didn't tell me in that moment. I just knew that somehow, someway, I had thought I was going to die in those woods, yet here I lay with Mason in reach. Nothing else mattered in that second. He must have known what I wanted, because he shushed me and pulled me as close and tight as he dared. He leaned down and tenderly kissed my lips. I heard murmurs from people around us as my arm was moved. I felt a stick before my veins were flooded with warm liquid. It made me feel as if I were floating. The pain started to go away and the tired feeling wasn't just knocking at the door anymore, it was coming in.

  "Sleep, baby," he whispered into my hair as I felt warm fingers on my temple before a stick there, too. "I'll be right here."

  And then I was out.

  When I woke next, I was no longer wrapped around Mason. And I was no longer naked and freezing under my blanket. I had on a hospital gown and socks on my feet. The pounding in my head hit me the first inch I moved. Good Lord, it hurt. When I went to move my hand up to investigate, it was occupied. I pried open my eyes and looked over at Mason. He was sitting in the chair, his head on the bed beside me with both of his hands gripping mine. I brought my free hand up, ignoring the pull of the IV, and rested it on his head.

  I wondered how long I'd been asleep. And for a few panic-filled seconds, I wondered if I had been in another coma, but if that were the case, Mason wouldn’t still be sleeping here every night…would he? I shook my head. I remembered everything from my accident. I was fine except for the drum in my temple.

  Letting my fingers rake his hair, I wondered what I was going to say to him. Finding out about Adeline wasn't what I'd wanted, and yes, I had been angry with Mason when I first found out. But as Mason lifted his head, I knew then that I didn't need to say anything. The man was torturing himself enough for the both of us.

  Oh, my… His eyes were red and rimmed with irritation, like he'd been crying. His lips parted in surprise at finding me awake. "Hey, you," he said gruffly.

  "Hey, you," I whispered back.

  "Em." He scooted forward a little in his chair, but kept my hand in his. "Gah, baby. I'm so sorry." His chest heaved, catching the sob right on the edge. "How do you feel? Other than the obvious hell."

  I croaked, "I'm all right. Just so tired."

  He saw the struggle I was having with trying to sit up. He pressed the button for me and stopped when I was almost upright. We stared at each other, a whole conversation of worry, guilt, hope, and concern between us.

  I cleared my throat and went to speak, but he shook his head softly, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. "Wait. Just let me get this all out. It's been eating me alive since we got here." I nodded and licked my dry lips. "I didn't mean anything I said. I may have thought I believed it," he shook his head, "but I didn't realize how much I still let my guilt take me over sometimes." He looked me straight in the eye and choked on his words, as his eyes turned glassy. "I love you, baby. Loving you doesn't make me feel guilty. It feels like a miracle, like something I've got to grab onto and tighten my grip to make sure it doesn't get away. I don't regret loving you, and I wouldn't change anything. If you've taught me something, it would be that things happen for a reason." He gulped. "As hard as that is to accept sometimes, like right now while I'm looking at you so tore up in this bed, I have to believe that there's a reason for it." His eyes wandered to our hands, his thumb still rubbing my knuckles so adoringly. "Otherwise, I'll just go crazy. I have to believe that it all means something, otherwise you wanting me could be just a fluke, too, and I couldn't handle that."

  He finally let his eyes settle back to mine and I felt the impact of that gaze. I couldn’t look away if my life depended on it. "I not only want you, baby, I need you. You make me capable of being the person I was always supposed to be. And not only do I want you and need you, I choose you, because there's no one else I want to wake up with. And the Adeline thing? It wasn't even a thing at all. We went on one date a few years ago. She got a little clingy afterwards, but eventually stopped all together. I worked at the hospice before she did. When she started working there, you were already there. I wasn
't about to leave you there because of her. Besides, I thought it was all behind us. It wasn't until the petty crap she tried to pull on you that I knew she wasn't over it. But it didn’t matter. She asked me out a few times, but I wasn't interested. I love you, Em." He leaned down and kissed my fingers. "Please, please forgive me. I'm not saying that I won't ever mess up again, I'm sure I will, but I promise you that I'll do everything I can to make up for it. For the rest of our lives."

  Obviously, tears were on the loose after that. The look he was giving me looked like he wanted to wipe them away himself, but he stayed put, as if scared of what I might have to say to his speech. I used my free hand to wipe under my eyes and looked at my lap. "Can I just ask why you didn't tell me about Adeline?"

  He sighed a little, but said quickly, "Because she wasn't who I was focused on. Like I said, it was just one night with her years ago and it wasn't something I thought about. I didn't even think it mattered. But when you asked me if there was anything going on with Adeline, I should have told you then, but I didn't want you to think it was more than it was and worry about that. There was never anything with her. She's just a pathetic girl who couldn't let it go and tried to cause trouble." He ground his jaw. "I can't believe she called you to make it seem like…"

  I remembered. She had called me in the car. But how did he know that? "How did you know Adeline called me?"

  "She called me when I was out looking for you." What? He came looking for me? "She was the one who had been texting me those times, I'm pretty positive. She told me she had called you to mess with you, but there had been a accident or something and she wanted to let me know in case you were in trouble."

  "The police didn't bring me here?"

  He shook his head. That bashfulness that kept him so grounded surfaced, making me melt with the warmth of it. "I did. I…drove around looking for you when you didn't make it to your parents'."