Free Icebound by Julie Rowe

moment.
    Stan’s body temperature rose slowly but steadily over the next hour. She and Tom rotated fresh hot packs and blankets frequently, and they gave him a couple of liters of warmed fluids.
    After another hour she decided the danger of Stan going into cardiac arrest had passed and Bob and Tyler were no longer needed. She sent them to get some sleep.
    She looked at Tom and opened her mouth, but before she could say a word he was already talking. “Forget it. I’m not going anywhere.”
    Emilie tried to hide a smile. “I was going to offer you a chair.”
    “Oh, sorry.” He ran a hand through his short hair. “Sure, a chair might be a good idea. Don’t know how long it might be ’til he wakes up.”
    “It may be a while.” She rolled her desk chair over to him, and he dragged it to Stan’s side and sat.
    She grabbed the only other chair in the room and brought it over to the other side of the gurney.
    “Should we move him to a bed?” Tom asked, his gaze on Stan’s face.
    “Until he comes around, I’d rather he was right here where I…we…can keep an eye on him.”
    Tom nodded.
    “How long have you known him?”
    He sucked in a deep breath. “About ten years. We met on a job in Taiwan. After my first winter-over on the Ice, he decided to give it a try and liked it too.” A chuckle escaped him and he smiled, but the moment didn’t last.
    She watched Tom’s face slide into frigid sadness.
    “Stan reminds me of my favorite uncle,” she said. “The guy is a truck driver and the life of the party. But if you want something done, you call him and he’ll get it done.”
    “Yeah, that’s Stan.” Tom’s lips pressed together. “But, will he still be Stan when he wakes up?” He turned his head to look at Emilie. “Did we get to him in time?”
    “He was suffering from brain swelling, but hypothermia isn’t all bad when it comes to that. The cold can actually help slow down the effects of cerebral edema.” She stood, pulled her penlight and checked Stan’s pupil reactions to the light. “Normal.”
    Judging from the tension in his jaw, her words didn’t make Tom feel any better. “We’ve done all we can,” she said. “It’s up to Stan now.”
    Tom grunted. “The big moron knew better than to go anywhere alone.”
    “Did he get separated from the group he was with?”
    “They stayed within eyesight of each other for the first twenty minutes. It was another ten minutes before anyone realized Stan wasn’t with them anymore.”
    “The conditions outside, were they changing?”
    “Yeah, winds were picking up, barometric pressure was going down, not much, but…” His voice trailed off. “Air pressure was going down .”
    “Coupled with the lack of sleep, stress…that could’ve triggered a physical response.”
    Tom cradled his head in his hands and swore.
    “It’s not your fault,” she told him.
    He shook his head.
    “No. Stop. Don’t even try to go there,” she said with a growl. “I’ve been living with guilt for more than a year and I can tell you with complete certainty that you could not have foreseen this.”
    He skewered Emilie with eyes that radiated anger. “It’s my job to foresee problems and hazards. The way things have been going this week, I should be fired.” He stood and strode away, but stopped before the doors, his hands fisted at his sides.
    She went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’d hire you back in a second.”
    He turned to face her. “Why?”
    “Because you’re honest and you care. If the problems this week happened because of neglect or stupidity, I’d say, yeah, you’re fired. But they didn’t. Life here is hard.” She attempted to wrap her hands around his biceps, but they were too thick. She hung on to him anyway, and tried hard not to notice his warm strength. “Someone very wise explained it to me this way. Gravity works here, but that’s about it.”
    “Funny.”
    “Come on.” She tugged him toward Stan.
    Tom sat again