As the Roses Bloomed Beneath His Feet, I Buried Our Seven-Year Marriage. novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Two Hours Late

We sat in the back room of the shop, on two overturned buckets, with the cooler humming behind us.

Briggs kept his elbows on his knees and his eyes on the concrete floor.

"The survey team was six people," he said. "Alister and I were on the ridge line when the slope let go."

"You were there?"

"I never told you because Alister asked me not to. He said you'd lie awake for a month."

I picked up a ceramic vase from the shelf behind me, because my hands needed something.

"Go on."

"I was thrown clear. Alister was under about four feet of snow." Briggs rubbed his jaw. "I found him by his glove. I dug with my hands for twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes."

"He wasn't breathing when I got him out. I breathed for him until he started again."

He said it flatly, with no pride in it.

The vase felt cold and heavy in my lap.

"I dragged him to the survey tent. The radio was dead. Nobody came for two hours."

"And Carina?"

"Came off the rescue helicopter at the end of it, with a medical bag." His mouth went thin. "By then he was awake and talking, and I was sitting in the corner with my fingers frozen."

"Then where did the story come from? The snow cave. The stars. 'You carried me.'"

"There was a snow cave. We were in it, all five of us, waiting for the second helicopter." Briggs shrugged. "Carina sat next to him and held his hand. He was half out of his head. When he woke up properly, he thought she was the one who'd pulled him out."

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