Chapter 15

The next morning, when she woke up, Dawney saw outside her small bedroom window a sight she had never seen in her twenty-eight years of life. The sky was light gray, completely, and hundreds, nay, thousands, of tiny white flakes were falling from the sky.

The room was still plunged into darkness and, on impulse, she decided to take her smartphone, which she had placed last night on the nightstand beside her bed, and take a few pictures of the snow as it fell.

The spectacle was magnificent and, at the same time, terrifying: she had never seen so much snow as at that moment and, for sure, it would not be wise to go out in that weather, much less drive.

'Fortunately, we arrived yesterday,' she thought.

Considering the road they had taken to get up to the cabin, and which they had also walked yesterday in the afternoon, little but certain the limousine would not have made it that far in that weather. Even with the chains underneath that she had seen on the wheels yesterday when Ilary, the driver, had picked them up at the Aspen airport.

She took another photo, then turned on the light and, after making a quick stop in the private bathroom, she changed, choosing a pair of light gray flannel pants and a white wool sweater with a high collar. The night before, while they were having dinner, Cole had told her that the pace was more relaxed there in the mountains, so to come down as well by ten o'clock.

She looked at the smartphone screen: nine o'clock.

Gosh, she must have been so tired last night, she had never gotten up so late! Nor had they gone to bed too late because, right after dinner, Cole had told her he was tired and wanted to go to rest!

'One more oddity,' she thought, remembering that when she followed the Razor Edge, the “boys” never went to bed before five, and sometimes six, in the morning. Cole then was always one of the last to touch the bed, and if he happened to lie down earlier, it was certainly not to sleep...

She blushed suddenly and, before going downstairs, she decided to make another stop in the bathroom to freshen up her face and let that blush go away. “It is true that ten years have passed, after all,” she reflected, shutting off the running water and then grabbing a towel to dry her face. “But can a person change so much in ten years?”

She lifted her head from the towel and the answer appeared in the mirror. Yes, she had definitely changed, and not only in physical appearance, but this was not true for everyone.

Her father, for example, had gotten worse over time.

Coming out of the bathroom, she was ready, so she turned off the light and, after opening the door of her room, she went out into the hallway...going to collide against Cole!

“Watch out!” he said, encircling her back with his arms to keep her from falling backward. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, deciding that, for that one time, she would “let him get away with it.” If he had not intervened, she would have taken a nasty fall, and if she had, the least that could have happened to her would have been a blow and severe pain in her head and back, most, and at worst, injuries that would have required immediate hospitalization at Aspen Hospital. And, given the weather outside, and the reason why she was there, which was to intervene in the event Cole's heart played tricks again, it just was not the case.

“Yes, I'm fine, thank you,” she replied, then lowered her eyes to his muscular arms. “Those are no longer needed now, the emergency is over,” she added, trying to throw in a laugh.

He looked at her strangely, but did as she told him.

“Today the weather is very bad,” Cole said, clearly referring to the snowfall raging outside. “I was thinking of taking you out to see the city a bit or go skiing, but I'm afraid we'll have to postpone. The forecast calls for heavy snowfall until Monday, then things should improve.”

Dawney grimaced. It was not an ideal situation and, to herself, she hoped that no serious emergencies would happen.

“Is something wrong?” Cole asked her, seeing her thoughtful.

“I am a little concerned. I have intervened before in very serious accidents caused by torrential rain... by scorching heat...by storms...by fire...by electricity...by sharks and other animals...by chemicals...by stupidity or distraction...by human madness...by earth moving, but...this is a new situation for me,” Dawney admitted, even though, the first thing her professors had taught her, besides how to give CPR properly, was not to upset the patient and, above all, not to show concern or other emotions, good or bad they were, in front of him or her, “we are on top of a mountain, the hospital is a thirty minute walk from here when the weather conditions are good, so now that they are bad, we will have to estimate at least an hour...an hour and a half to get there,” she continued, “definitely not an ideal situation in case you were to have another heart attack and you needed immediate medical attention. Then, if it were to continue snowing like this, an avalanche could fall...or a power outage could occur, with all the difficulties that such a situation involves.”

Hearing the concern in her voice, Cole felt his heart clench with remorse. For a moment, he thought of revealing his deception to her, of telling her that he was all right and that if he had done what he had done, it was because he wanted to spend time with her, to make up for the horrible deed he had committed ten years earlier, when he had left her unconscious in front of the ER door and had rushed off in his car, too drunk, to young and too stupid to realize that he had committed a carelessness that could have cost her her life. Then, remembering how she had reacted to the bouquets of flowers and chocolates he had sent her to thank her and ask her to go out to dinner with him, he drove it away forcefully. He could not have done what he planned to do any other way.

“Yesterday I forgot to tell you because I was tired and needed to rest, but...” he began, trying to infuse his voice with a soothing tone, “...further up, above Mr. and Mrs. Grahm's house, there are avalanche guards. They used to be made of wood, but already a year after I got here, they rebuilt them during the summer...now they are made of steel and are very solid,” he explained. “As for the electricity, it is true that it has already happened to go off in such heavy snowfalls, but there are also three emergency generators in the basement, where the utility room and bathroom are located. There is also a fireplace, a Finnish stove, plenty of wood...and a gas kitchen, which works even in the event of a power outage, and enough supplies for a long period.”

Little by little Dawney relaxed. She would never admit it, but she was relieved to know that, apparently, this was not the first time Cole had faced a snowfall of that magnitude.

“And...about emergency rescue?”

“In the pharmacy located in the master bedroom there is a notebook with all the numbers to call in case of emergency written down, including those of the helicopter and mountain rescue. In case the helicopter cannot fly, or the ambulance cannot reach, they can arrive with a snow cat to transport people...equipped like an ambulance.”

She looked up at him, surprised. “Really?”

“Yes, of course,” said Cole “I have never heard of such a rescue service.”

“It is not very common,” he explained. “It is mostly found in mountain towns, such as Aspen, and is generally used to get to homes outside the city center and to the ski slopes. You know...when some idiots go too fast, they have a ski accident and get hurt,” he continued. “If you want, I can show you a picture. I took it the second year I spent my winter holidays here.”

She nodded, enthusiastically. “I would love to see it. May I?”

“Of course,” said Cole. “Come, I'll show it to you right now,” and, having said this, walked to the door behind him, where the master bedroom was located.

She followed him, trying not to pay attention to her surroundings. The master bedroom was ten times the size of her own, which was already very spacious, and had a huge white and gold four-poster bed that was right in front of her eyes, with a padded headboard and several white pillows scattered all over the gold-colored bedspread.

Cole pointed to her a white, rather large suitcase with a red cross on it.

“It's in there,” he said to her.

Dawney approached, then knelt down and unzipped the pharmacy. Gee, besides the defibrillator, inside was practically everything needed to intervene in any situation, from a simple headache to an arterial hemorrhage.

The photo was in an inside pocket of the suitcase, covered by clear plastic film, and when she saw it, she was astounded. It showed a snow cat for people transport, on a snowy slope, on a sunny day. In front, in the foreground, were six people, all dressed in a dark blue and glow-in-the-dark yellow uniform, three men and three women.

One of the men was Cole!

“I don't do it professionally like you,” he hastened to explain, seeing her expression. “The second year I came here, I was twenty-eight years old, there was a heavier snowfall than today. A large part of Aspen found itself without running water or electric light, but the most distressed were the people who lived in the surrounding mountains; they had been cut off from everything, and some were elderly people who had no close family members who could help them. The mountain rescue, however, did not have enough staff to be able to cope with the emergency, so they put out an appeal for volunteers who could help them out...and I joined them.”

Dawney continued to look at the picture. They were all smiling, but she could see on their faces the fatigue, typical of those who had spent the previous days working without ever stopping and resting for a few hours...when they could.

“When did you take this picture?” she asked.

“At the end of the emergency,” answered Cole. “Unfortunately, because of my job, I can't always join the others, but...let's just say I'm still an active volunteer. And, if another snowfall like that comes while I'm here on vacation and the mountain rescue calls me, I would go and help them out without a second thought.”

Dawney was increasingly amazed. She did not know what to say...and, try as she might, she just could not imagine Cole intervening in an emergency situation in the mountains. Yet, in front of her, there was a picture that witnessed it.

“The work of volunteers is also very valuable,” she commented, trying to use a cautious tone. “Do you have in mind...the Great Sunshine Boulevard Incident?”

'How very much he had it on his mind,' Cole thought.

It had already been four years since then, but he still remembered it very well, and not just because all the newspapers had covered it. It had been the biggest road tragedy that had ever occurred in Los Angeles: more than two hundred people involved, seventy injured, between fifteen and twenty dead, gasoline spilled everywhere on the road, piles of twisted metal sheets, blood...

“Yes, I have it in mind,”

“In that case, too, we called all our volunteers...everyone who was available and who could get to the site in a short time,” explained Dawney. “It was a challenge, for all of us, but also thanks to them we won it. Had it not been for them, I don't doubt that there could have been more victims.”

Cole also filed that information away. And he also understood why, while they were on his private jet, Dawney had made that wry joke about her having seen more dead and injured than he had at Razor Edge concerts. She was talking, indirectly, about when she had intervened on the scene of the Great Sunshine Boulevard Incident!

“How old were you...when there was the Great Sunshine Boulevard Incident?”

“I was still to be twenty-four years old, four months away,” answered Dawney. “And I had been working in the ER of the L.A Hospital since...six months. I had already intervened in many critical situations, but that was my baptism of fire.”

A baptism she would gladly have done without, since, for the first time, she found herself having to pull broken young lives out of the wreckage as well.

She chased that thought away, then carefully closed the suitcase. “You have a nice sampling,” Dawney commented, trying to hide her admiration. “With such a pharmacy you could save many lives on your own.”

“I like to be ready,” Cole explained, wishing he did not sound too proud. Her compliment had pleased him greatly. “You never know what can happen, even to Mr. and Mrs. Grahm...as you rightly said, we are in the mountains and thirty minutes away from the city center.”

She nodded, then stood up again. Cole, standing behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, then began massaging them.

“Are you calmer now?” he asked her, solicitously.

Dawney took longer than expected to respond. Not only because of the memory of the Great Sunshine Boulevard Incident, which had come overbearingly back to invade her mind, but also because she was still surprised by Cole's latest revelations.

“Yes, I am.” Then she squinted her eyes, as he continued to massage her shoulders.

An insistent little voice kept telling her to stop him, to stay away from him, and to put distance between them again, but she decided not to listen. The massage felt so good...until that moment, she had not realized that she had built up a lot of tension over the past few weeks.

Little by little, as he loosened all her knots, she relaxed. She felt him pass along the nape of her neck, applying gentle pressure to loosen the stiffness, then return to her shoulders.

“I would need you to take off your sweater and T-shirt. That way I could massage your back more easily...if you want it.”

She began to think about it. Immersed as she was in her thoughts, she did not notice that, in the meantime, Cole had moved to her shoulder blades. He was trying to put pressure on her to loosen some knots that had been plaguing her for three years, that is, ever since, in the darkest hour of the Covid emergency, she had gotten into the habit of resting what little she could on the front seats of the ambulance during the grueling shifts, which lasted as long as eighteen hours. It had been the saddest, and blackest, period of her seven years as a rescuer, and a real race against time, and against an as yet unknown enemy, to save as many lives as possible.

“Dawney?”

Cole's voice penetrated her thoughts, rousing her from her numbness.

“Yes, wait, I'll do it right away,” she said, then after moving away from him, she removed her sweater and T-shirt, remaining wearing only a cotton bra.

Seeing her like that, Cole felt his mouth go dry.

On any other woman that bra would have given him the effect of a cold shower, but on her it was the sexiest garment he had ever seen. The temptation to unhook it, even by “accident,” and thus free her round, perfect breasts, was so strong.

'Slowly, go slowly,' he thought to himself, drawing closer and putting his hands on her shoulder blades again.

As he resumed massaging her, moving his thumbs circularly so as not to hurt her, he began to think.

The best thing would have been to tell her to get on the bed so that he could focus on her and untie those knots that seemed to be really tightly contracted, but he feared that by doing so she might misunderstand his intentions. On the other hand, however, by standing as they were now, he could never exert the pressure he wanted and make her feel better. What could he do to resolve that situation?

Surprisingly, she probably realized that he was in trouble, it was Dawney herself who “bailed him out”:

“If you want, I can lie on my stomach on the floor, so you are more comfortable,” she said, then lowered her gaze to the floor, which was covered with a thick woolen carpet. “Looks like it is very soft, this carpet.”

Cole nodded, then, after ceasing to massage her for a moment, took one of the pillows he had on the bed, then placed it in her hand. "All right, but put this under your head.”

“Okay,” Dawney said, then, taking care not to bump into the travel pharmacy, she got into a prone position on the carpet and tucked the pillow under her head.

Soon she felt him straddle her and begin massaging her shoulder blades again. He was very gentle but, at the same time, seemed to know how to apply the right pressure.

“Where did you learn? To give massages, I mean.”

He took a while to answer her. “When we were still rookies, I worked for three years as a massage therapist in a beauty salon. I started when I was eighteen, but then I stopped at twenty-one when more and more people started calling us to give concerts,” he answered.

She nodded her head briefly, letting him know she understood, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was relaxing, this time for real, after ten years.

“How did you get all these knots?” he asked her, before he untied another.

She opened her eyes, then closed them again and sighed. “One word: pandemic,” she replied, straining to remember the time that, for her, Bette, Mark and so many other colleagues at L.A Hospital, had been the closest they had come to hell. In their ranking of the worst disasters they had faced, the Covid-19 pandemic had been at the top since 2020, followed, of course, by the Great Sunshine Boulevard Incident of 2019. “While everyone was locked in the house during the first lockdown, I was working eighteen-hour shifts to save as many lives as possible. I hardly even had time to go home to sleep, in fact...I did not want to go home, because I was afraid that by doing so, I would risk bringing that filth from the hospital into the house and infecting my mother. I always wore a blue and white protective suit, light blue ankle-length shoe covers, an FFP2 mask...ah, yes, gloves and a protective visor as well. Occasionally I would take temperature and swabs, but most of the time I was out recovering patients with Covid symptoms...and sadly, at least forty of them, died during the ambulance transport...and with me on it,” she continued to narrate, trying to depersonalize the situation as much as possible. She paused. “There were also four colleagues, all under forty years old, who fell ill during their shifts. Two of them made it, while two others...unfortunately did not. One of them had a six-year-old girl and was expecting his second child,” she continued, “the rare times I had a breather, I rested in the front seats of the ambulance. Since, every one-by-two we got a call from the nine-one-one, I wanted to make sure, in case it came, that I was ready to leave to pick up the Covid patient. I didn't want to waste time...every minute, every second, counted. Only, by dint of resting on the ambulance seats, well...I got those muscle knots, you know,” she sighed, “I've been fighting them for three years, now I consider them a part of me.”

When Dawney finished her story, Cole did not speak.

In fact: he was grateful that she could not see him at that moment, because he realized his eyes were glazed over.

He had spent his first lockdown in his mansion and, although he had had to suspend his business for almost two years, all in all he had had few losses and, by mid-2022, had managed to restart.

Dawney, on the other hand, had not only been on what the newspapers had dubbed “the hot front,” that is, the hospitals, but in addition had experienced the health emergency on the front lines...and without the ability to be able to go home to her mother or to get decent sleep.

God, how he would have loved to take her now to that soft bed, which was very close to them, and make her forget everything, even if only for a few hours! How he would have loved to drag her with him into sweet oblivion, to give her pleasure until she was unconscious and awakened fulfilled, and happy, and then to begin again!

'Not yet, old man,' he thought, untying her last knot, the most difficult one. 'First you have to get her to trust you again.'

Pretending to continue the massage, he stroked her arms, once, twice, three times, up and down, gently, then took her hands in his and stroked her fingers, one by one.

“Is this also part of the massage?” Dawney asked him.

“Yes,” he promptly replied, continuing to caress her fingers. “I used to do it all the time to make the clients of the beauty center I worked in relax. It's a way to greet each other...in a gentle way and make the feeling of relaxation last longer,” he explained, taking her hands in his own and barely squeezing them to make her feel his strength.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, then Cole, sensing that she was trying to retreat, released her from his grip. “I'm going to light the fireplace in the living room. Take your time to recover and get dressed, I'll wait for you downstairs,” and, so saying, stood up, then left the master bedroom.