No One Left Behind, Except for Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fifty-Two Minutes

Tate tells her on the phone that the buses are stopped and she can take care of herself while Rhett laughs; she walks Route 9 in the freezing rain until a Norwegian stranger finds her, and he says Tate told Doc she rode the equipment truck.

The tunnel door had locked behind me, and the stadium was dark.

I called Tate with my thumb already numb.

It rang four times.

"Natalie." His voice was easy. "Hey."

"Tate, the bus left without me. Turn it around."

"Can't. All the buses are stopped. The roads are closing."

I looked at Route 9.

A truck was driving past on it.

"I'm in the lot at Harlan State," I said. "It's twenty below with the wind. Send a bus back."

"Natalie, you're the one who wrote the cold protocol." He sighed. "You've always been able to take care of yourself."

Behind him someone laughed.

It was Rhett, and I knew his laugh from the age of six.

"When has she ever not made it back on her own?" Rhett said.

Reagan laughed too, higher, and the line went dead.

I stood there with the phone against my ear.

That was when I understood.

All those years of you can handle it had never been a compliment.

It meant they had already decided not to wait for me.

I put the phone away and did what my own protocol says to do.

The hotel was two and a half miles down Route 9.

Keep moving. Cover the face. Tuck the fingers into the armpits. Never stop to rest in wind.

I had written those rules for forty-two players.

I had never once written them for myself.

I started walking.

The freezing rain came in sideways and coated my jacket in a minute.

It was only a team windbreaker, because my insulated one was on Heidi.

I pulled the collar over my chin and kept my hands tucked in tight.

At ten minutes my ears burned.

At twenty my fingers stopped hurting, and I knew that was worse.

I forced myself to keep moving to keep my head clear.

I texted Doc with a thumb I could not feel: Left at Harlan lot. Walking to hotel.

The message would not send.

The signal bars were gone.

At forty minutes I reached the overpass, where the wind came straight up the ravine.

My knees buckled on the ice.

I went down on one hip and could not make my hands push me up.

The ice crackled in my braid.

I thought of Heidi's white fingers around the zipper of my jacket.

I thought of Tate on the dock at fifteen, swearing.

I thought, so this is the fifty-second minute, and I started to laugh.

Headlights swung across the guardrail.

A car stopped hard on the ice.

A door opened, and boots hit the road.

"Natalie Cahill?"

The voice was low, with an accent I could not place.

A tall man crouched in front of me in a long charcoal coat.

His hair was cut short and pale under the headlights, and his eyes were grey.

"I am Mikkel Dahl," he said. "Doc sent me. Can you tell me your name?"

"Natalie," I said. My tongue felt thick. "I was counted aboard."

"Yes. Stay with me."

He took off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders.

He pulled off his gloves and took both my hands in his bare ones.

His hands were warm, and they did not rub.

"Do not rub them," he said. "Skin that is frozen tears. Is that right?"

"That's right," I whispered. "Rewarm slowly. Not on a radiator."

"Good."

He looked at my fingertips under the headlights and his face went still.

"Three fingers on the left, two on the right," he said. "Grey, not black. We are in time."

He lifted me off the ice in one move.

I turned my face into his collar.

He smelled of cold air and clean wool.

He set me in the passenger seat, and the heater roared.

He tucked my hands inside his shirt against his ribs, and I felt his heart thudding there, fast.

"You are sure you can't feel this?" he asked.

"I can feel that you're warm," I said.

Something moved in his jaw.

He shut my door gently and walked around the car.

When he got in, he took the wheel and did not start the engine yet.

"Doc called me at twenty to six," he said. "He was at the hotel, checking the roster."

"Forty-two."

"Forty-two players and no trainer. He asked your captain where you were."

"Where were you?" I asked.

"At a coffee shop by the stadium, writing up the game in my notebook. I drove to the gates first, and they were locked."

"I was inside the tunnel."

"I know that now. I drove back along the road with the window down, looking."

He gave a short, rough breath.

"I nearly passed the overpass."

My stomach turned over.

"What did Tate say?"

Mikkel looked straight ahead through the glass.

"Your captain told Doc you went back on the equipment truck," he said. "The truck left Harlan at noon."

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