No One Left Behind, Except for Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cold Hands

In the ER she reads Tate's post that all 43 are safe, leaves the group chat and quits his shoulder rehab; at three in the morning Heidi brings back her jacket with the name tape cut off.

"The truck left at noon," I repeated.

"Yes."

"He looked Doc in the face and said I was on it."

"Yes," Mikkel said. "Hold still. I will drive."

He drove the last four miles to Harlan Regional with both hands tight on the wheel.

The ER nurse took one look at my fingers and had me in a bay in two minutes.

She filled a basin with water at one hundred and one degrees.

"This will hurt," she said.

"It's supposed to," I said. "That's the blood coming back."

Then it hurt so badly I bit the inside of my cheek.

Mikkel sat on a stool beside the bay and did not look away.

When the burning peaked, he held my wrist above the water and talked to me about Oslo harbor in January.

He said the ice there groans all night, and that you stop hearing it after a week.

I listened to every word.

Doc came in at seven-thirty, in his team windbreaker with sleet still in his gray hair.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at my hands in the basin.

His mouth shook once.

"I should have checked myself," he said. "He told me you were on the truck, and I let him."

"You didn't know, Doc."

"I should have called the driver before I called Mikkel." He pulled a chair close. "Frostnip or frostbite?"

"Superficial frostbite, three fingers on the left, two on the right," I said. "No blisters yet."

"Good," Doc said. "Then you will keep all ten."

I laughed, and then I cried a little, and he put his large dry hand on top of my head the way he did when I was nineteen and failed my first practical.

At ten past eight, my phone lit up on the tray.

It was the group chat, No One Left Behind.

Tate had posted a photo of the hotel ballroom, forty-two players in navy jackets holding paper cups.

Under it he wrote: All 43 safe and sound at the hotel. So proud of this team. Nobody gets left behind.

Two hundred and twelve people had liked it.

Reagan had added a heart and a snowflake.

Rhett had written: Family forever.

I read it twice, and I did not feel anything for a moment.

Then I felt it all at once, and it did not feel like crying.

Doc read it over my shoulder.

He pushed himself up from the chair very slowly.

"I'm going back to that hotel," he said.

"Not tonight," I said. "Sit down. Please."

"Natalie."

"If you go now, he gets to be sorry in front of the coach. I want him to say the truth with everybody looking."

Doc stared at me.

Then he sat.

Mikkel wrote something small in his notebook.

I took the phone in my right hand, the one that could still hold it, and I left the chat.

The words appeared: Natalie Cahill left the conversation.

I opened a new message to Tate.

It took me four tries, because my thumb kept missing.

Your rehab is over. I am not running your shoulder anymore. Find someone else.

I sent it, and the little word Delivered came up under it.

I put the phone face down on the tray.

"You have accepted Oslo," Doc said quietly. "I saw the confirmation come through Friday night. They copied me."

"I did it at 11:58."

"Two minutes to spare." He nearly smiled. "Does anyone on that team know?"

"No."

"Good," Doc said. "Then they cannot take it from you."

They moved me to a room upstairs, and Doc went to find coffee that was not terrible.

Mikkel stayed.

He sat in the chair by the window with his long legs folded and his notebook on his knee.

"Why did Doc call you and not the coach?" I asked.

"He said you would never ask anyone for a ride," Mikkel said. "So someone had to drive past and not wait to be asked."

I looked at the ceiling.

Nobody had ever blamed themselves for me before.

"Sleep," he said. "I will count the hours."

I watched the freezing rain turn the parking lot to glass.

At some point I fell asleep with my bandaged hands on top of the blanket.

When I woke, the room was dark, and a figure stood in the doorway.

It was almost three in the morning.

Heidi stood there in her sock feet, shaking.

She was wearing my navy jacket, zipped to her chin, and she held one arm out toward me.

"The hotel shuttle driver brought me," she whispered. "I couldn't stop crying in the lobby. Natalie, I'm so sorry."

I did not answer.

I was looking at the cuff of the jacket.

The white name tape that read Cahill, 17, was gone.

Someone had cut it off with scissors.

Loose blue threads still stuck out of the seam where I had sewn it.

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