protect him from the worst bite of the frigid water, reducing the rate
at which body heat was sucked out of him.
Within a minute of entering the river, however, when he was only halfway
toward the stranded couple, Lee felt as if a refrigerant had been
injected into his bloodstream. He couldn’t believe that he would have
been any colder had he dived naked into those icy currents.
He would have preferred to wait for the Winter Rescue Team that was on
its way, men who had experience pulling skiers out of avalanches and
retrieving careless skaters who had fallen through thin ice. They would
have insulated wetsuits and all the necessary gear. But the situation
was too desperate to delay; the people in the river would not last until
the specialists arrived.
He came to a five-foot-wide gap in the rocks, where the river gushed
through as if being drawn forward by a huge suction pump. He was
knocked off his feet, but the men on the bank kept the line taut, paying
it out precisely at the rate he was moving, so he was not swept into the
breach. He flailed forward through the surging river, swallowing a
mouthful of water so bitterly cold that it made his teeth ache, but he
got a on the rock at the far side of the gap and pulled himself across.
A minute later, gasping for breath and shivering violently, Lee reached
the couple. The man was unconscious, but the woman was alert. Their
faces bobbled in and out of the overlapping flashlight beams directed
from shore, and they both looked in terrible shape. The woman’s flesh
seemed to have both shriveled and blanched of all color, so the natural
phosphorescence of bone shone like a light within, revealing the skull
beneath her skin. Her lips were as white as her teeth; other than her
sodden black hair, only her eyes were dark, as sunken as the eyes of a
corpse and bleak with the pain of dying. Under the circumstances he
could not guess her age within fifteen years and could not tell if she
was ugly or attractive, but he could see, at once, that she was at the
limit of her resources, holding on to life by willpower alone.
“Take my husband first,” she said, pushing the unconscious man into
Lee’s arms. Her shrill voice cracked repeatedly. “He’s got a head
injury, needs help, hurry up, go on, go on, damn you!”
Her anger didn’t offend Lee. He knew it was not directed against him,
really, and that it gave her the strength to endure.
“Hold on, and we’ll all go together.” He raised his voice above the roar
of the wind and the racing river. “Don’t fight it, don’t try to grab on
to the rocks or keep your feet on the bottom. They’ll have an easier
time reeling us in if we let the water buoy us.”
She seemed to understand.
Lee glanced back toward shore. A light focused on his face, and he
shouted, “Ready! Now!”
The team on the riverbank began to reel him in, with the unconscious man
and the exhausted woman in tow.
7
After Lindsey was hauled out of the water, she drifted in and out of
consciousness. For a while life seemed to be a videotape being
fast-forwarded from one randomly chosen scene to another, with
gray-white static in between.
As she lay gasping on the ground at the river’s edge, a young paramedic
with a snow-caked beard knelt at her side and directed a penlight at her
eyes, checking her pupils for uneven dilation. He said, “Can you hear
me?”
“Of course. Where’s Hatch?”
“Do you know your name?”
“Where’s my husband? He needs … CPR.”
“We’re taking care of him. Now, do you know your name?”
“Lindsey.”
“Good. Are you cold?”
That seemed like a stupid question, but then she realized she was no
longer freezing. In fact, a mildly unpleasant heat had arisen in her
extremities. It was not the sharp, painful heat of flames. Instead,
she fe feet and hands had been dipped in a caustic fluid that was
gradually dissolving her skin and leaving raw nerve ends exposed. She