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KIM BALDWIN. The boy tried to wrap his arms around her
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The boy tried to wrap his arms around her. They struggled, locked together, until she was able to turn him so his back was to her. She grabbed him over his shoulder in a lifesaving hold as she popped back to the surface, gasping for air.
“Don’t F ght me!” she barked at him. “Let me help you!”
He went limp, whether in compliance or exhaustion she didn’t know or care. She managed to get the rescue rope wrapped around him, but she’d lost the dexterity to tie the right kind of knot. Her gloves were becoming stiff with ice and she was losing the feeling in her hands. She F nally got the rope looped around in a couple of half hitches and let the boy’s own body weight tighten it. She hoped it was secure enough.
Her legs began protesting the lengthy struggle against the current.
She felt as though twenty-pound weights were attached to her ankles, pulling her down. She concentrated all her energy on getting the boy up and onto the ice.
“Try to help me,” she gasped, but the teenager was barely conscious. She got under him and tried to boost him up, but the ice cracked away under his weight.
She took up the slack of the rescue rope and tried again, and then again. The ice kept breaking, and she weakened with each effort, but every attempt brought them a foot or two closer to shore, and onto thicker and thicker ice.
Finally, on the F fth try, the ice supported the upper half of the boy’s body, and Gable quickly hoisted his legs up as well. She knew better than to try to haul herself up right next to him. The ice would never support them both.
She was beginning to have trouble keeping herself af oat. She managed to kick her way to a spot far enough from the boy that she thought it was safe to try. Get out. Get out right now.
Propping herself up on her left elbow on the ice, she grappled for the rope around her waist that linked her to shore. It was slick and hard, covered with ice. She got a good look at her hands, and her blood ran cold. Oh Jesus. This is bad. Her gloves were stiff with a thick coating of ice too.
Gable could no longer move her F ngers. She couldn’t feel them at all. In desperation, she slammed her right hand against the hard ice repeatedly, trying to regain some dexterity and circulation. She fumbled for the screwdriver in her back pocket so she could gain purchase on the ice, but it was useless. Her hands would no longer obey her. The
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screwdriver sank to the bottom.
The current was relentless. The muscles in her arm and shoulder F nally surrendered to it and she slipped back into the water.
Oh shit. Panic was sour in her mouth. Help is coming. Help iscoming. Hang on. Swim. That’s it. Just keep swimming.
Gable couldn’t feel her arms, her legs, or her feet. She looked down and was almost surprised to see her legs still kicking away, albeit in the same scary, jerky way the boy’s had. She was losing control of her body, and F nding it more and more difF cult to focus. It was all she could do now to keep her face above water.
The current pulled at her until she was against the downstream side of the hole. She clutched desperately at the edge of the ice to keep from being swept under it. There’s too much rope. She tried to twist it around her arms to take up the slack but she had no coordination left.
The current was winning.
Her head slipped under and she sucked in a mouthful of water. It startled her and scared her so much she found the strength for one last desperate effort to survive. She fought her way back up, kicking and failing about with limbs she no longer had power over. She caught a glimpse of the boy, still unmoving on the ice.
If this is all for nothing, she thought hazily, Erin will be so pissedat me.
She tried to keep herself from going under by hooking her elbows on the downstream edge of the ice. The current held her there for a full minute or more, her head barely above water, long enough for her to feel a burst of hope she might be able to remain like that until help arrived.
But the ice she was leaning on abruptly gave way, breaking off and tipping sideways, throwing her back into the water. Gable managed to gulp a quick breath before she went under.
The current grabbed hold of her and took her under the ice, into the dark void beyond the hole. She drifted until a sharp tug cut into her waist. The rope pulled taut and the current pinned her, face up, against the ice, several feet downstream of the hole.
Gable opened her eyes, surprised at how well she could see, surprised that it was beautiful —the way the ice ref ected the light from above; the bubbles trapped in the ice acting like prisms, shooting rainbows of color in every direction.
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