Perfect Strangers

by Dani Atkins

  He turned to give me just one barked order. ‘Get out of here, Hannah. There may be others.’ His next words were lost in a cry of agony as a small bloody geyser pumped from a newly inflicted puncture. I’m not a brave person. I’m nobody’s hero, but when I reached for the oar, still propped up against the wall behind me, all thoughts of my own safety or preservation were gone. I gripped the shaft of the oar firmly with both hands, and wielding it like a bat I struck the wolf across the head. It paused for a second, its dirty saffron eyes flashing my way before it resumed its deadly attack on Logan.

  ‘Nooooo!’ I screamed, half insane with desperation as I swung the oar again, this time smacking the wolf across the sensitive flesh of its nose. There was a yelping sound, and more startled than anything else, the wolf let go of Logan’s leg and snapped nastily at me. I really believe that if we had tried to get away then, the animal would have quickly recovered and the situation would have ended very differently. Maybe I had once read what to do when under attack, or maybe I was just working on some primitive survival instinct, because I continued to strike the wolf on its vulnerable nose and muzzle, each sweeping arc of the oar finding its target, which is amazing for a woman who usually has little to none hand-eye coordination.

  I don’t know how much longer I could have continued to beat the wolf, but thankfully neither the wolf nor I had to find out, because with one last baleful yip it turned and ran off into the woods.

  There was red everywhere. That’s how I had to think of it . . . as red, not blood. Because I wasn’t good with blood. Nor red too, as it turned out. I fell to my knees beside Logan’s prone body. He was struggling to sit up, his eyes darting left and right as though afraid the attack was not yet over. If it wasn’t, then we would both be done for, because it was going to take every ounce of strength I possessed just to get him back to the cabin. I had no fight left in me.

  ‘Oh God, Logan,’ I said, crying as I struggled to know where to look. Not at the blood-drenched snow, nor the jeans with the ripped fabric that was no longer blue. Definitely not at what I could glimpse beneath the long jagged rents in the material, because I wasn’t brave enough for that. In the end the only place I could look was at his face, but that was the most terrifying of all. He was whiter than the colour of the snow he was lying on. Was that from shock, or the amount of blood he had lost – was still losing – with every pump of his heart.

  ‘You were meant to run,’ he said, through lips that were trembling as though he was suddenly very, very cold.

  ‘Sod that,’ I said succinctly. ‘Do you think you can stand?’

  Logan looked down at his damaged leg, grimaced and then bit hard on his lower lip to stifle a cry as he tried to move it.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ I said, looking around for something – anything – to help me get him inside. There was nothing I could see that would be of use.

  ‘I can get up . . . if you can support me,’ Logan said bravely.

  I leant down and let him loop an arm around my neck. I’d like to say we managed to get him to his feet the first time, but the reality was much more painful and messier than that. He slipped and skidded a great many times, falling back onto the icy ground, and several times my legs buckled beneath the weight of him and we collapsed in an untidy human avalanche of limbs. By the time we were upright, both of us were panting like rabid dogs and drenched in sweat. I winced as I stood trembling beside him. There was pain in my own lower leg, where Logan had landed on me just before the wolf had attacked, but I swallowed it back down in one huge guilt-filled gulp. I had no right to complain, or even acknowledge its presence. It was nothing compared to what Logan was now going through. All because of me.

  Grunts and groans from both of us punctuated our walk, but we wasted no energy on words, knowing that every last drop of it was going to be needed to travel the twenty-metre journey back to the door of the cabin. After a couple of faltering steps, Logan pointed a shaky hand towards the oar that was lying abandoned on the snow, where it had fallen from my hands. For one awful moment I thought that he’d spotted the wolf again, but he had another use for it. My crude weapon served quite well as a crutch, although my stomach had rolled and heaved horribly when he’d positioned the oar’s blade beneath his arm and I spotted the spattering of bloody stains, matted here and there with clumps of coarse grey hair.

  It took twenty agonising minutes to finally reach the sanctuary of the cabin. I kept darting fearful glances at Logan, whose complexion was now a dirty grey colour. It was not a good look. I glanced frequently over my shoulder, each time certain that I would see a line of malevolent vengeful wolves, watching and waiting. But what I did see when I looked back was in some ways even more frightening. Twin trails of footprints in the crisp white snow, mine and Logan’s. A dark red snaking line, like an angry graffiti statement, showing which were his.

  I pushed the door open with my shoulder and we both stumbled into the relative safety of the cabin. Logan staggered towards the table and after slamming shut the door, I ran to it and swept my arm over its surface, sending the enamel mugs and everything else on it clattering to the floor. ‘Always wanted to do that,’ I muttered, as I bent low and propped my shoulder beneath Logan’s supporting arm. ‘Lie down on the table.’

  By the time we had accomplished what should have been a fairly simple manoeuvre, Logan’s eyes were glazed in pain and his breathing was shallow and noisy. I stood beside the table, looking down at him with tears streaming down my face. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said helplessly. My eyes scanned the room, as though my sheer desperation might have somehow conjured up a physician to help me. But of course, there was no one there. I was alone.

  Logan’s hand reached out and grabbed mine, with unexpected strength. It was covered in blood, some of it now dry, some still horribly wet. It matched mine exactly. ‘Yes, you do, Hannah,’ he affirmed.

  I shook my head as he shimmered and disappeared beneath a tide of fresh tears. ‘You’re losing too much blood. I don’t know how to stop it.’

  ‘I do,’ he said, his voice unbelievably calm, considering the circumstances.

  I looked deep into his pain-filled emerald green eyes, and saw in them that I was his only hope, just as he’d been mine. I owed him this. I had to do it.

  ‘Tell me what to do.’

  Logan breathed in deeply a few times, and I realised then how great an ask this was, making him orchestrate his own first-aid treatment. Why had I never bothered learning how to do this sort of thing? Because I was the sort of person who got queasy just trying to remove a splinter, I heard my own voice silently reply in my head. That was why.

  ‘We need to see how bad it is,’ he said, gritting his teeth as he tried to sit up. My hand on his shoulder pushed him gently back down.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, hoping only one of us was aware of how much my voice was shaking. I rummaged like a burglar in the backpack standing in the corner of the room for several costly moments before finally locating and extracting Vincent’s multi-tool pocket knife. I quickly realised that everything I would have to do next was going to challenge me in ways I had never faced before. Even ripping open the leg of Logan’s jeans was a test I almost failed. The thick denim was sodden with blood and even the sharp blade struggled to slice through it.

  When the material was finally severed from hem to knee I gingerly took hold of the two sides of fabric and parted them like curtains. The room swam and swayed as I looked down at something that for a moment I struggled to recognise as a limb. It was covered in a thin red slick of blood that was still flowing steadily from several deep punctures. They looked bad enough, but worse – far worse – was a large area in the meatiest part of his calf where the wolf had sunk his teeth so deeply into Logan’s flesh I was afraid to look too closely, in case I saw bone.

  ‘We need to clean it,’ Logan said.

  I nodded, ferociously, but didn’t move. ‘Hannah, hold it together for me.’ His words somehow unlocked my stupor and I left
him for a moment, to snatch up the enamel bowl from the bench. Logan must have returned the coffee pot and flask before going to look for me behind the cabin. Thankful that they were on hand, I clumsily upended them both, splashing their contents into the bowl.

  I used one of the enamel mugs to trickle a slow flow of water down onto Logan’s leg. I worked one-handed, as the other one was otherwise occupied, gripping his tightly in support. I’m not sure whose, actually: his or mine. It took the entire bowl of water before the leg was even clean enough to assess the damage.

  ‘Get Vinnie’s first-aid kit, it’s in the backpack,’ Logan instructed, his voice tight as he spoke through teeth gritted together in pain. I’d completely forgotten about the kit we had found, and it was shocking to realise that in spite of his injuries, Logan’s brain was still working more effectively than mine.

  I grabbed the green plastic bag with the white cross decal, and yanked open its zip, shaking the supplies out onto the bed. I fumbled rapidly through them, like a blind man prospecting for gold, before seizing up a packet of steri strips and two large wound dressings. I ran back to Logan, whose forehead and upper lip were now beaded with a fine sheen of perspiration. ‘Will these do?’ I asked holding out my finds.

  ‘Yes. They’re fine. But we need to sterilise the wounds first. If they get infected we’re going to be really screwed.’

  We’re already screwed, I heard a voice in my head mutter with dire certainty. I shook my head as though to dislodge it. ‘How? How do I do that?’

  ‘Alcohol. We’ll need to pour that bottle of whiskey over it.’

  ‘Won’t that burn like crazy?’

  ‘Probably,’ Logan said grimly. ‘But they do it in all the best cowboy movies, so I guess that’s what you have to do.’

  I wasn’t so sure he was right, and I was far more worried that the wolf had been sick with something that no amount of whiskey was going to disinfect. I’d not read much about rabies, but the little I knew scared the hell out of me. The bottle shook in my hands as I struggled to unscrew the cap. Eventually it flew off to land somewhere never-to-be-seen-again in one of the corners of the room.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked, my eyes dark with concern at the pain I knew I was about to inflict.

  ‘Wait,’ he cried just as I was about to tip the aged amber liquid onto his leg. His hand gripped my wrist and brought the bottle to his lips as he drank down a large slug. ‘They always do that in films, too,’ he said, offering me the bottle. I took it, my lips curving against the neck where his had just rested, before I took a large fiery swallow. I gasped as the raw liquid flames seared a scorching path down my gullet.

  ‘Now pour,’ he instructed brusquely.

  I did.

  He screamed and so did I.

  If I am ever looking for a change of career, I now know, categorically and with one hundred per cent certainty, that nursing isn’t the way to go. I did the best I could, squinting through half-shut eyes at the bits that made me wonder if I might pass out or throw up before I finished ministering to his wounds. I was far happier when the puncture wounds were all criss-crossed with steri strips, and the huge bite on his calf was covered with a dressing. I ripped the sleeves from several of Bob’s shirts, and found they made very handy bandages.

  That Logan was still in an awful lot of pain was obvious, but he stayed stoically silent as I did the best that I could with his injuries. I found a blister pack of paracetamols among the first-aid supplies and passed them to him. He took them eagerly and immediately dry-swallowed three of the pills, which told me more about his level of discomfort than words ever could.

  I was terrified of hurting him further as I helped him move from the table to the bed. I fussed with the pillows, trying to do something – anything – to make him feel more comfortable. There was something a little manic in my actions, and I only realised my hands were trembling violently when Logan reached for them, and grasped them tightly in his own.

  ‘Hannah, it’s over now. You can relax. You’ve been amazing.’

  I shook my head in denial, my voice choked behind a huge suffocating lump of guilt wedged in my throat. I looked into his eyes and then down at his leg and burst into loud and noisy sobs. The hands holding mine tugged firmly until I was sitting on the mattress beside him. Logan’s arms came around me, and I couldn’t fail to notice there was considerably less strength in his hold than usual. Hardly surprising. He let me cry for a while, realising – perhaps better than I did – that I needed this release after the shock, the fear and the adrenaline rush.

  Eventually I levered myself away from his chest, and wiped my wet cheeks with the back of my hand. ‘You risked your life to save me,’ I said solemnly. ‘The wolf was going for me, I know he was, and yet you stepped in front of me without thinking, so it would attack you instead. You could have been killed, Logan. It’s a miracle that you weren’t. You saved my life.’

  He was still holding my hands and brought one up to his mouth and kissed my knuckles, almost fiercely. ‘And you saved mine, Hannah. I told you to run, but you didn’t. I know grown men who wouldn’t have hesitated in leaving me for a second, but not only did you stay, you also took on a ferocious wild animal to free me.’ He kissed my hand again, much more tenderly this time. ‘That has to be the bravest thing I have ever seen anyone do in my entire life. You are an incredible woman, Hannah Truman, and I am very glad that I have finally found you.’ He flopped back on the pillows, looking exhausted and drained, and it was a relief to see his eyes flutter to a close. He needed to rest. Very gently I eased our hands apart, extricating my fingers from between his. His next words were little more than a whisper, but I still heard them as he slipped into something halfway between sleep and delirium. ‘And I never want to let you go.’

  Logan slept for a very long time. That was what I told myself, anyway. It was sleep. Because if I admitted that the sweating, the thrashing, and the mumbled moaning was anything else, then I would have to admit that even though the animal was probably miles away, the wolf was still wreaking damage on Logan. And this time I was powerless to stop it.

  I built up the stove with the wood we had gathered, and then worried that the warmth of the cabin was making his fever worse. When I laid a hand on his forehead he was hot. When I laid it against the bare skin of his lower leg it was a blistering inferno. I hobbled out onto the porch, wincing as I put weight on my own leg. It was painful to stand on, and I had to hope it was nothing more serious than just badly bruised, because if both of us were incapacitated, we really had no chance at all of making it. I packed handfuls of snow into the zippered first-aid kit. Wrapped in what was left of the shirts, it formed the closest thing I could manage to a cold compress for Logan’s leg.

  He eventually woke up late in the afternoon and said he felt better, but I saw the way his face spasmed as he tried to move his leg, so that was clearly a lie. He drank several mugfuls of water that I’d boiled and cooled for him in readiness, but obstinately refused any of the food. Not that I could blame him. If I never tasted anything with maple syrup in it again, it wouldn’t be a moment too soon.

  Logan waited until I had finished nibbling half-heartedly on one of the remaining cookies before speaking. From the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes, I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to say. ‘Hannah, I want you to leave tomorrow. I want you to keep following the river downstream and try to find another cabin – maybe the next one will even be occupied.’

  I shook my head emphatically. ‘No. Absolutely not. I’m not leaving you.’

  His eyes softened, but not his determination. ‘Hannah, I know this is hard, and it’s a lot to ask of you, but you have to. I can’t walk on . . . this.’ He waved his hand down at his leg, which worryingly was beginning to look more than a little swollen. ‘And I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can. We need to be sensible here. The small amount of food we have is going to run out soon.’

  ‘Then I’ll catch fish,’ I said stubbornly.


  Logan sighed, but surely he must have known I wouldn’t make this easy for him. ‘It’s too dangerous here. What happened this morning proved that.’

  ‘Then all the more reason why I can’t leave you here alone,’ I reasoned. ‘You need me to stay.’

  ‘I do,’ he admitted sadly. ‘But even more than that, I need you to go.’

  Tears were pricking my eyes at his unshakeable resolve, but this was one instance when I had no intention of doing as he said. Leaving Logan here alone was simply not an option. ‘When you’re better, when your leg is healed, then we’ll both walk out of here,’ I told him mulishly. ‘That’s all I’m going to say on this subject. It is now officially closed.’

  Day Seven

  Logan did not have a good night. And in consequence, neither did I. Heat was radiating off him like a furnace, making the stove’s efforts appear paltry and pathetic in comparison. I’d spent the entire night pressed as close as I could against the wall once more, giving him as much of the bed as I could, but I don’t think it helped. We were both grateful when the first shafts of daylight began to slip through the holes in the cabin’s roof, slicing into the darkness. By that time we’d given up on trying to get back to sleep.

  Thank God.

  Because if we hadn’t had such a terrible night, if we weren’t both wide awake, then there’s every chance that we might not have heard the distant rhythmic whirring of the helicopter. I froze for a second, scared the sound existed only in my imagination until I turned my head on the pillow and saw Logan’s face, which was alight with hope.