by K Larsen
“Was that an underhanded compliment?”
She bit her bottom lip again and nodded. “You’re supposed to say thanks!” She struck out with her arm, hitting him with the dullest thud that didn’t even come close to a jab.
Tristan laughed. The sound seemed too loud for the space. Or maybe he just didn’t laugh enough alone to know what it was supposed to sound like. He wiggled each toe, starting with her big toe. She made a face at him. He chuckled and moved on to her pinky toe.
“Thank you.” The words hung in the air as he looked down.
Her pinky toe looked like a rotten banana. It was blistering, which was never a good sign, and the skin had turned a bluish gray. Shit. No. Not good. He grimaced.
“What? What?” Meghan’s voice grew frantic as she tried to paw the blanket pile on her knees away to get a glimpse.
Tristan’s hand flew up, swatting her hands. He bent closer to her foot, inspected the tissue. “Do you feel this?” He squeezed her toe gently before wiggling it side to side.
“What? Do I feel what? Wait should I feel something?” Her voice was nearly a high-pitched whistle.
“Meghan, we might have a problem.”
Fourteen
Meghan
She clawed at the blankets blocking her view. Tristan’s face said it all though. Something was wrong. The blanket pile on her knees moved just enough to catch a glimpse.
“Holy shit,” she breathed out. “No. No, no-no, nope. That doesn’t look like my toe.” Her voice was nothing more than a fear-filled squeak. While the other four looked bright red, her pinky toe had lost all of its color. It looked like it didn’t belong with the others—as if it had been carved out of granite and adhered like a prosthesis.
Tristan sighed and the concern was written all over his face. He straightened the blankets so she could see her feet with ease. Her pinky toe was discolored, thick, and she couldn’t feel it at all, he mentally checked all the boxes for symptoms of severe frostbite.
“I can’t feel it. Oh crap, oh my God, Tristan I don’t feel that at all. Is my toe dead?” She could see his forefinger and thumb manipulating the tiny toe but it was not registering with her brain at all.
“Try to breathe, Meghan. Just breathe.” He leaned back on his heels and dragged a hand down his face. She studied his face closely searching for a sign, as if by living up here he could somehow know her fate. “Let’s be thankful that it’s just one toe. It could have been a lot worse. Don’t move. I need to get you some socks for your other foot before I decide what we’re gonna do.”
Meghan’s eyes bulged as he stood and left the room. Her hands curled into fists beneath her mittens. A barrage of questions pummeled her brain. Her breathing became erratic. She tried to suck air in through her nose and breathe out through her mouth, but the threatening toe held her heart rate hostage. She tried to stand. She needed to move. Maybe getting her blood circulating would do the trick. The blanket fell away leaving her in just her underpants. She swayed on her feet. The room swayed.
“Meghan, no!”
She lurched forward. Strong arms replaced the feeling of free fall. Tristan clutched her against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck. She was terrified and tears slid down her face, but she didn’t want him to see them. A sigh escaped him. He gave her a squeeze and lowered her back to the couch. He reached behind him and picked up the socks he’d dropped.
Gently, he slid on one sock followed by another on her left foot and repeated it on the right. Every movement of his was deliberate and concentrated. He possessed such grace and integrity every time he touched her that Meghan felt like she was in Barney’s trying on expensive shoes, not sitting in a rustic cabin buried in snow drifts, in front of a sputtering woodstove.
“Why are you covering it up? What does it mean? Am I okay?”
Tristan grabbed the book he’d dropped with the socks and relocated to the couch next to her. She tried to quiet her mind. “It’s definitely not okay—but I’m no doctor. I need to read up on what to do.”
“Field medicine? Really?” Her voice trembled as she read the book’s title aloud.
“Meghan,” he commanded.
Her eyes snapped to his. She blinked.
“I really need to focus. I don’t want to misinterpret what I’m reading.”
“Can’t we just go to the lodge? See if we can make it?”
Tristan shook his head.
“Meghan, the introduction alone says the most important precaution is not to re-expose potential frostbite to the cold. The second says: never attempt to walk on frostbitten feet.”
She stared at him blankly. “But my toe. It’s rotten. It’s right there,” she pointed, “and it’s on me and if it dies will it spread to the rest of me? Skin death. What’s that called again?”
He placed a hand on her thigh and squeezed. “Necrosis. Let’s not go there quite yet. Yes. It’s frostbite. It’s not going to hurt you. Maybe you should read this with me? Do you do better with information or do you prefer to not know?”
She thought about his question. It was an insanely considerate thing to ask. It was so rational to her feelings of irrationality that her heart stuttered a bit. She was a need-to-know person. She didn’t like the unknown.
“I want to know.”
Tristan squeezed her thigh again. “I’ll read out loud then.”
He used the index of the book to find the page he needed before splaying the book open, resting against his thighs. She clutched his hand. He didn’t pull away. He held hers just as tightly. Meghan slowed her breathing as much as she could and strained to quiet her mind enough to listen to what he read out loud—to comprehend the words.
She could hear the snow pelting the windows. Tiny, fast, tink tink tinks against the glass. Sleet like. She thought the storm had passed, but the noises made her think Mother Nature was gearing up again.
Tristan closed the book and looked to her. “So, it’s a time thing,” she said.
“There is no way I will be able to get you to town in the next forty-eight hours.”
She nodded. She knew that. She kept nodding and biting her lip hard. Tristan’s hand lifted, pulled her lip from her teeth.
“You’ve made it bleed.” His voice was gentle, soft.
She licked her lip and tasted the coppery tang of blood. She swallowed past the ever-growing lump in her throat. “So.”
“So,” he parroted. “We’re going to soak your foot in some warm salt water and try to keep our minds off of it.”
Impossible. Maybe he could think about other pleasantries, maybe he was used to being held captive by the storm. But Meghan would think of nothing else—she was obsessive, fastidious even. Maybe he had an emergency or short wave radio and they could try to contact the National Park Service, or the lodge, or just get out a 9-1-1 to let someone know they needed saving.
Tristan came back with a chipped white pan full of steaming water and a couple of hand towels.
“I have some iodine, so we’ll try that. This is saline solution.”
Meghan felt like she might cry again. All she could imagine was the gray color spreading from her toe up her leg, turning her into a frozen statue. Never seeing her boys again. She didn’t need to howl though, because the wind was doing it for her. This environment was so brutal, demanding constant vigilance and mindfulness. Man versus nature. Man versus his own nature, because every single action was one of resistance. A constant game of staying one step ahead, preparedness was survival. She didn’t know if she could last living in a perpetual battle.
She had a newfound appreciation for her microwave and the heated seats in her car, the decadent plumbing, all those light switches she could thoughtlessly flick or carelessly leave on. The oil that arrived by truck and she didn’t even have to be home to receive it, the thermostat, the snowplows, the silky slip of her ten thousand thread count sheets.
“This water looks hotter than it is, it’s steaming on a
ccount of cool temperature inside the cabin. But if this hurts, I want you to tell me right away. We can warm you as slowly as possible to keep the pain down.” He took a knee with great care and lowered the pan. It was an old tin pan that looked like a wash basin, the white enamel was scratched and chipped like it had served many a family.
“I take it the warming process is supposed to be painful?”
He looked up at her, his brow furrowing and nodded.
At least he was honest. He unwrapped her foot from the blankets, pulled off the sock and lowered her foot into the steaming water. What she anticipated was feeling relief: warm water mean relaxation, comfort, a hug when you didn’t have anyone around to give you one. But what she felt instead was a deep ache that bordered on cramping—labor contraction worthy in their intensity.
“Holy Jesus,” she doubled over and gripped both of Tristan’s hands, squeezed much harder than was polite and yanked their interwoven fingers in toward her abdomen.
“Too much?”
“Have you ever had a migraine? That’s what it feels like in my foot.”
He tapped her other foot gently which she lifted. He removed the sock and lowered that foot into the pan.
They both leaned over peering at her feet through the hot water vapors as if they could divine the future from staring at them that way. Once the water stilled, and the steam cleared, the water became transparent glass. Her two feet presented as bright red, like a pair of wind-burned twins, all except for the pinky of the left foot which was decidedly dead. Or if not yet entirely dead—well on its way. Tristan squeezed her right pinky toe twice and they watched the color disappear and then flush back again. When he did the same to the left, she couldn’t even feel it, and there was no color change.
“What do they do when it gets like that? Will it go back to the right color?” She knew it wouldn’t, it was beyond wishful thinking. It was a pathetically feeble attempt at wishing Tristan could make it go away. But that was magic and in real life, they likely chopped those things off. But, of course within reach of antibiotics and a defibrillator and used a scalpel after they were properly scrubbed up.
She hadn’t let go of his fingers and it made for an awkward stance. He was on his knees in front of her leaning forward over the basin while his hands were bunched in her stomach.
“Sorry,” she said. She pushed his hands back to him and hugged herself around her gut. “I’m trying not to panic. I bet you can’t even believe your shitty luck, huh?”
“I was actually thinking about how strange foot fetishes are. Not that I’m checking out your feet. I mean I am, but strictly medically speaking.”
Meghan laughed out loud.
“RomComs and feet, huh? Cabins in the woods. What else do you like, Tristan? You’re full of surprises.” This was good. Maybe flirting and concentrating on the mysterious man in front of her could quell the anxiety. She’d fill her head with small talk instead of visions of necrotic tissue and missing digits.
Fifteen
Tristan
He’d laughed too hardily at her joke about feet and movies. So much so that it had kept him from falling asleep when he should have. Every time she took a deep breath in, sighed it out, he chastised himself for his juvenile reaction. They’d eaten a simple dinner and casually talked about her life back home before he dropped the sheet down and put on a movie. It was easier that way. To sit side by side in silence watching something. She hadn’t seemed at all put off by his too long, too loud reaction to her flirtatious comment. But that was just it, wasn’t it? There wasn’t anything else. He was a simple man surrounded by simple things. What could he offer her, besides a quick romp in the sack? What a fucking romp it would be though—he’d make sure of it. He had finally fallen asleep, tucked on his side facing the living room, listening to the sound of her sleep-heavy breaths.
The snow had stopped. Wind gusted ferociously still but the sky wasn’t raining ice or snow any longer. For that he was glad. If the wind stopped, if the cloud cover cleared, if the sun shone and the temperature rose just ten more degrees for a few days there might be enough snow melt to make a pass with Meghan to town.
The thought bothered him. It was the right thing to wish for. It was. She had a life, a family, all the normal comforts of an established life to return to, but a part of him dreaded the day they’d be able to make the trip. He didn’t want to admit just how much he liked having her with him. He shook the thought from his head, removed his gloves and blew on his fingers to warm them up.
Tristan spent the morning plowing through snow to the shed, greenhouse and back to the cabin to gather the supplies he needed. Everything was laid out before him, ready. He picked up the knife decided the best approach and began carving and whittling away the rough edges. It was tedious, physical work but Tristan didn’t mind that. He never had. He stood and measured against his own frame, estimating the right height.
At lunch he stopped and checked in on the napping beauty.
When he rounded the corner she eyed him sleepily, a half smile toying on her lips. He bit back a groan of desire. She looked absolutely perfect bundled in blankets, sleep flushed on his couch.
“I was just going to make some lunch. Are you hungry?”
She propped herself up to a sitting position and nodded. “What are you making?”
“Does PB&J work for you?”
She reached one hand to her shoulder and dug in while craning her head in the opposite direction.
Tristan knew that move. He did it many times himself to try and work out a tight knot that was bothering him.
“Neck bugging you?”
“It’s just a little tight. Probably from all this sitting and lying down.”
“I can work it out if you want.”
Meghan shook her head. “It’s okay. You have enough to do.”
“I don’t mind. Really.” He walked to the couch and motioned for her to scoot forward so he could fit behind her.
“You sure? I don’t want to be a total drain on you.”
“You’re definitely not a drain.” He placed his palms on her shoulders, fingers draped over, thumbs ready for knot work in her shoulder blades. She dropped her chin to her chest. His hands covered so much area on her. She was dainty. He squeezed gently and pressed around until he felt the little ball wreaking havoc on her.
“Harder,” she groaned.
Tristan’s pants grew tight. He scooched backward from her to conceal himself.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I like it hard. I’d take an elbow and all your weight. I get chronic neck, shoulder knots. I promise I’ll tell you if it’s too deep.”
Tristan stopped breathing. His thumbs kept moving, his pressure increased right along with his blood pressure.
“Tristan?”
Air rushed from his lungs. “Huh? Yeah?”
“That feels really good.” It was a groan. A breathy mess of words. His name on her tongue. His cock stood hard at the ready. Did she even realized what she was saying? Tristan massaged a moment longer before he just needed to get up and out. Away from the siren call that was Meghan telling him to go harder, deeper.
“I’m going to make lunch.” He stood abruptly, throwing the words over his shoulder to hang in the air between them. “Hope that helped a little.”
In the kitchen he planted both hands on the edge of the sink and inhaled slowly, willing his erection to cease and desist. Back in the real world, she probably had men falling all over her. Begging for her affection and attention. Suitors waiting to woo.
Tristan slid his hand down his pants and positioned his cock to a less visible angle.
“Need any help?” Meghan called out.
Tristan, startled by the sound of her voice, ripped his hand from his pants so fast he drew blood on a knuckle that caught against his belt.
“All good,” he blurted back.
He squeezed his eyes shut and sent a silent prayer into the universe to get him through their ti
me together—the cabin was too small to relieve himself without her hearing the entire endeavor. He pumped some hand sanitizer into his palm and rubbed his hands together before he started making lunch.
Sixteen
Meghan
She’d heard him splitting wood after he came in from the cold. It amazed her how just opening the door once could suck all of the warm air out in a heartbeat as if the freezing outdoors were a giant vacuum, just waiting to steal the heat from every log that they’d burned. She leafed through a novel, not really reading the words. Her cortisol was too high for her mind to stay occupied for long. She wished she could follow Tristan around and help him with chores—maybe learn something in the process or at least be useful.
He was hammering and she thought she heard a drill. Maybe he was building them a sled so they could escape off the roof. She wasn’t so sure about staying totally off of her foot. Peeing was one thing. Other bathroom needs would be more of an issue. It was hard for her to imagine letting go of her self-consciousness to that extreme. The idea disturbed her so much that it made her head spin. She swiveled and laid back on the couch, carefully lifting her wrapped feet up from the floor.
Her joints and muscles ached in protest, as if they’d all been frozen and improperly de-thawed. And she was tired, her energy zapped from lying around and doing nothing at all. Meanwhile, Tristan continued to make quite a racket around the corner where she couldn’t see. He was certainly full of surprises. First look at him and she was terrified, a day later and she was pretty convinced he wouldn’t harm a flea.
What a horrific outcome it could have been, were she rescued by someone creepy, who lived in exile because they’d actually been shunned from society. Or perhaps committed a crime and were living on the lam. Anything was possible and here she was being cared for by a pleasant and generous man.
“Close your eyes,” Tristan told her as he leaned around the corner until she could see him.
