"I don't … " he blinks slowly, his whole stance settling as though deciding somewhere deep down at bone level that he was back in the here and now. "I don't know. I … I just... I'm OK. Slipped on something?"
That's a performance deserving of the glare of death, in my opinion. Anyone looking at his skin, his still-racing pulse, the way his chest is working just to keep him standing, can see that he's not ok. Infuriatingly, tightening my muscles to step close enough to touch properly is enough to set off another ripple of pain, blood slowly returning to my twisted leg, and I hiss with it.
"Dan? Shit -- are you ok?" Matt asks, stepping that last bit closer, with Mitch not far behind.
I wave them off. "Fine, it's just a cramp and general panicking. I just need Tylenol and an ice pack. And for you to be ok."
I go to poke him in the chest, to make it a joke, but my fingertips turn gentle, resting, riding the frantic beat of his heart. He closes his own hand over mine, still cold and clammy, but somehow reassuring anyway, and gives it a squeeze.
"I'm ok. Mitch, can you….Thanks"
A bottle of prescription painkillers has appeared in Matt's hand, and Mitch is already rummaging in the freezer, deciding which vegetables we don't really need. By the time he brings it over, Matt has eyeballed me into dry swallowing two of the tablets, but he hasn't taken his supporting hand off the work surface yet.
Given how much they don’t get on, it's all kinds of strange to see my room-mate and my boyfriend sharing meaningful looks. Apparently they make some kind of decision that way though, because Matt shrugs a little and it's not until Mitch is carrying me carefully down the hallway to my bedroom, with Matt trailing behind with the ice pack and a couple of bottles of water, that I figure out what they're doing.
"Hey! Guys! No way. Matt, you need to get to the hospital." I try to sound stern, which is hard when you're being dropped on an unmade bed. Well, set down pretty carefully, but it feels like being dropped.
"I'm fine. I just need to -- rest or something. I don’t need a doctor. If anyone needs a doctor it's you."
I roll my eyes. "I know what this is, Matt, and I'll be fine, but you…"
"Um, guys?" Mitch interrupts. "If you're well enough to bicker, I'm going to figure you're both going to live, so I'm going to..." He nods his head towards the open door.
"God -- sorry -- Mitch, thank you. You're a hero."
"Thank you." Matt adds, from his spot sitting by my knees.
"You sure you're going to be ok?"
"Sure," "Yeah," we chorus, and Mitch rolls his eyes and makes like a bunny, thumping up the stairs. By the time the bedroom door swings shut the muted sound of Aerosmith through the floorboards has started.
We don't talk as we get situated because, much as he's plowing on, moving pillows and pulling blankets and arranging the ice packs to best effect, Matt's skin is still pale and slick and when he comes to rest, one hand on my hip, I can feel it shaking slightly.
"Matt?"
"Shhhh, Dan, really. I just need to rest."
I stroke his hair back from his face, which only means I can see the vein butterflying in his temple.
"You scared me." It's not what I meant to say, but it's what comes out. He squeezes my hand, rolling a fraction closer, but not saying anything. I let out the breath I was holding. "Rest, you, but if you're not better in a little while, I am taking you to the emergency room and you're not going to argue, ok?"
"Deal" he nods into my shoulder. "I'll be fine, so you won't have to, but if it makes you feel better -- ok."
"Ok."
"Ok."
With the adrenaline ebbing and the pills pulling gently at my edges, I manage to doze, but Matt is far from sleeping easy. He's restless, unsettled, his forehead creased and his hands are still frozen, for all he's acting like someone with a fever. When Mitch put his head round the door to say he'd cleaned up and to check on us before heading out for the night, I'd promised myself half an hour. For the last twenty minutes all I've done is look between Matt not resting in the half-light and the clock numbers slowly tumbling upwards.
Getting him into the truck turned out to be the easy part, for all he wasn't quite awake and I have to resort to the walking stick to support myself. It's once we are on the road that he really gets difficult. It's as though the cold night air takes him from semi-conscious to fervently awake, gloved fingers plucking at his jacket, knee bouncing, and constantly talking. Insisting over and over again that he didn't need a doctor, wouldn't go to the emergency room if I paid him, wouldn't set foot in the place at all, that it would kill him to be shut away in there, that he was fine, that the air was helping. And through all of the words his voice scratches and catches, and his skin is dirty ash under the tan, lit with twin highpoints of fever red at the cheeks, and the low grade panic in my stomach is rising again.
I try to argue; that one emergency check up won’t bankrupt me any more than my own bills have; that the doctors could help; that he's clearly not fucking fine; but everything I say just makes his answers louder and harsher and wilder, and I'm terrified that if I look away from the road for more than a fraction of a second we'll crash. Larry's no shrink, but he assures me it's normal for me to get tense when I'm driving these days, even when I'm not otherwise on the edge of freaking out.
Now that we're further away from campus the roads are almost deserted -- that mid evening lull when the folks who are at home are home already and the folks going out are holed up in the bar or restaurant of their choice. I think my vision's blurring some, but all my headlights catch are parked cars and snow slides where the day's sun was hot enough to loosen a roof load, so it's hard to tell. Nothing to do but drive and try not to listen to the note of hysteria in Matt's voice; to focus on just getting us over to Cowles Street without crashing into anything.
There's a reason I hate to take the prescription meds. Maybe it's callous of me, but I'm almost screening Matt out, just concentrating on the curb, the roll of the swept tarmac under the wheels, which turn I need to hit the bridge.
I scream like a girl when Matt grabs my arm.
Scream and stand on the breaks, and we judder to a halt, front end over the center line and at an angle, and in that moment, just as the engine stalls, I could kill Matt. If I could just keep from blacking out or throwing up.
"Jesus fuck! Jesus fucking fuck!"
He won't let go of my arm when I try and move away. The grip is intractable -- none of the weakness or shakes of the past hours -- and when I look at him the fever spots are burning just as hot, and there's something I don’t recognize in his eyes.
Maybe he's a psycho. Maybe he spent the summer in a mental hospital. Maybe he's someone very, very dangerous.
It's going to leave bruises, but I have to wrench myself away, shove open the door to retch into the street. When I sit up, gulping down air, his hands on me are softer, his voice someone I recognise, cursing under his breath and apologizing, saying my name over and over. It almost makes me want to laugh, hysterics threatening, the thought of just how fucked up the both of us are right now.
Matt catches my face in one hand, turns me by the chin so I have to focus.
"Dan? Dan, listen to me. Let me drive, ok? Just -- slide over this way, come on you."
He suits actions to words, tugging and encouraging, and I'm wrung out, ribs sore with laughing and crying and not being able to breathe, and I let him support my hurting leg -- throbbing a hundred miles away now, thanks to the pills -- over the gear stick. I close my eyes, and Matt becomes the sound of a door opening and slamming, footsteps, and the truck rocking where he's gotten in the driver's side.
I don't really notice the cold until he fires up the engine and the heaters give up their first blast of hot air, making me shiver, and with my eyes shut it's like we're a see-saw -- the less together I am, the more Matt's coping. I let that ride for a while, leaning against the door as we corner and trying not to think past that. Which works great, right up until I open my eyes and realise
that we're out somewhere past the airport, moving at speed, and Matt's skin is sheened slick in the reflected lights.
"Matt?"
He doesn't even glance my way.
"Matt!" I repeat, over the rumble of the engine. "What the….Matt!"
The spectre of the truck swerving and rolling keeps me from grabbing his arm, but I'm moving to tap his shoulder when his hand snakes out and grabs my wrist in an iron grip. He doesn't take his eyes off the road.
I swallow my alarm as best I can, trying to keep my voice calm and reasonable, trying to draw my arm back gently so he'll let go.
"Matt? Baby? Where are we going?"
His hand loosens enough that I can move my fingers, but it's nothing like a lover's caress. Nothing I can find reassuring.
"What's out this way, Matt? I thought we were going home?"
"Something I need to do." His voice is lower than normal, as though he's smoked a thousand cigarettes since lunchtime.
"Baby? What?"
No reply, although he does put both hands back on the wheel. Every instinct tells me to move slowly as I pull my arm back, wrapping them both around myself. My poorly-contained panic is definitely still in the cab with us, because all of a sudden I don't recognise him. I don't recognise anything about the man I've spent the last few months with. I don’t know him at all, and all those maybes just got darker and more threatening.
***
As best I can figure from the distant glow on the horizon, we're somewhere off the Chena Hot Springs Road. Somewhere off, because, just before he lost it completely, Matt threw my truck over the snow bank and off road for as far as he could thrash it. Then he grabbed the emergency shovel from the back and started attacking a knot of broken tree roots and frozen muddy slush.
The fact that I have no real idea of where I am and if my truck's still going to run is half the reason I'm still sitting here, wrapped in every layer I can find.
The other half is that, even if he's had some kind of psychotic breakdown, I can't quite bring myself to drive away and leave him to a certain death out here. I mean, I grew up pretty rural, but there's nowhere south of Canada that can compete with Alaska for sheer wilderness, and all the darkness, the stillness, the occasional creak and crash is something else. And the cold. All the facts and figures I can remember tell me that Matt ought to be done for, but I can’t just leave him here.
I can't hear him any more, but I can't leave, and every time I hear snow shift, or one of this tangle of trees move, my heart jumps because maybe… I don’t even know if I should be hoping that Matt comes back or that the psycho madman who seems to be in control right now never does.
The more I think about it the less it makes sense, and the more I try to make sense of it, the more I wonder if he's cracked or if I have. Or if maybe this is all just a really, really bad reaction to the medication, although in that case taking the second pair of tablets when my knee started to throb again was probably a bad idea.
I'm not so drug-fuzzy or snow-blind that I don’t see him coming though. His red shirt is bright against the snow even in moonlight, and by the time he's opening the truck door and heaving himself into the driver's seat it's occurred to me what's so very wrong with this picture. Not only has he lost his coat and several other layers of clothes, he's tramping through broken snow in unlaced boots. I flick the overhead light, and even in the sulphur light I can see his face is calm, clean, normal.
"Matt?"
"Hey." He turns three-quarters in the seat to smile at me, and somehow that helps, because I might still be somewhere in the foothills of freaking out, but at least I recognize the guy who just got in my truck. In the good, making love and sharing coffee sense, rather than the bad, was just kidnapped by sense.
He wipes his hands on his jeans, leaving damp marks, before he reaches out to rest his hand on the edge of my seat.
"I actually don’t know where to start," he says. His voice is back to normal, too. A little hesitant, and husky, like he could use a drink, but his normal register and tone.
"How about -- are you ok?" I move my hand that extra fraction so our fingers can tangle. He squeezes them tight, as though he needs grounding as much as I do.
"Yes. Now. Better. Although, shit, are you ok? I didn't … "
"Hurt me? No. Freak me the living hell out, yes, but -- Jesus, Matt -- what the hell?"
"Um -- maybe I'm a nature spirit?"
"Or maybe you could tell me the goddamn truth this time?" The anger is quick and hot and unexpected.
He looks me straight in the eye and repeats "Maybe I'm a nature spirit."
"Right. Fine. You're a freaking nature spirit, and a shaman summoned you out here to talk to the great moon, and you actually hate playing with my head but the moose made you do it. Of course. Nothing could be clearer."
I scrape my hands back over my face, tugging fingers in my hair, because I don't quite trust myself not to do something stupid.
Matt's making little 'shh'ing noises and I may have jerked my hand away, but he's still touching me, delicate gentle strokes that I'm dimly aware ought to be calming.
"Please, Dan. Please. I wouldn't. I don't.… I'm not lying now, Dan, I swear. I know it's crazy, but that's what I am, that's…. Fuck. If you don’t know yet that I love you Daniel Rushkin, then… "
"Show me, then," I interrupt.
It scares me how badly I want those words to be true, but Mitch and Dirk and Sarah and the others are right -- the secrets he's keeping are no foundation for anything real. His expression tells me clear as day he doesn't really understand me.
"If you're a nature spirit, Matt, show me. Prove it to me. Make it be true, and…. Please? I feel like I'm going nuts, and -- just show me. Anything, Something."
I feel stupid for it, but my heart breaks all over again in the long minute where he just looks at me, weighing it up, making his decision. Between the drugs and the stress and the evening's insanity I'm hiccuping on the brink of something when he nods once, sharply, and opens the truck door.
He hops down and waits for me at the corner of the hood.
"Well?" he calls back, and I'm scrambling out of my cocoon and out where the air's cold enough to strip my lungs before I even think this through. I take his outstretched hand and let him guide me, tugging me through and over rough snow and through brush shadows, until a hand on my shoulder urges me down.
I crouch, and feeling with my boots and one outstretched hand I understand that he's brought me to the mouth of a muddy bluff. I rap my knuckles on the slick plastic handle of the shovel, and figure out that this must be where he'd been excavating, not that that makes anything any clearer. I am also hit by the unmistakable stench of bear. I may not be a wilderness buff, but I know what bear smells like, and no one moves to Alaska without hearing at least a dozen horror stories to get the adrenaline pumping. It's musky, almost a solid wall of scent where the scooped out snow shelters me from the wind. I stop automatically, and Matt is pressed up close behind me, and even with everything that's gone on this evening it's still automatic to grab his hand.
I'm whispering warnings, and his voice is normal, perilously loud out here in the still of night.. "It's ok, Dan, I know. It's -- this is what I had to come out here to take care of. It's ok. I promise you. Come on."
He wriggles past me, fingers fleetingly hot against my cheek, and crawls head first into the narrow opening. I'm frozen, trying to work out if I can find my way back to the car, what my chances are, what I should do, when his hand snakes back out of the darkness and tugs me forward.
The first thing I notice, once I'm past the claustrophobic moment of feeling earth close in around me, is the warmth. It's pitch dark, and warm, and the air is thick, but somehow the smell is less dominant, and even straining my eyes I can see nothing -- not even the proverbial hand in front of my face -- which is doing nothing for my overall sense of reality. I'm light headed, and I keep forgetting to breath and my voice catches in my mouth.
"Matt?"
> His hand is hot against my cheek, his lips burning on mine, and I shut up, relax, go with it because what has thinking done for me this evening? When he pulls back we are tangled close enough that I can feel his intention to do so in the muscles in his back.
"You trust me, Dan? Don't you?"
It's such a stupid question that I'm in danger of cracking up and just laughing.
"I'm here, aren't I?" I hiss, and somehow I know he's smiling.
"Keep touching me, ok? Promise?"
I nod and press closer into him. He takes my hand, his palm against the back of mine, and after a moment's awkward adjustment he reaches out with my arm, and my fingers brush cool greasy fur. I try and jerk back, but his grip is that iron stranger’s grasp now, and when he starts to whisper to me, low and gentle, I realise I must be hyperventilating again. My head is spinning and my wrist aches under Matt's finger tips, and my own are pressed into the coat of something that -- oh my god -- just breathed, and nothing is making any sense.
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