Chapter 19 Hudson
Hudson
“Hudson!”
The words sounded like they were coming from down a long tunnel. It was so dark; I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t want to wake up from the best dream I’d ever had.
Just a little more sleep.
“Hud-son!”
I reached out to pull Amelia closer but met empty air. I cracked my eyes open with a groan. Even my eyelids hurt. I rolled my head to the side to look for her, the room spinning. Dust motes shone in the light coming through the broken window.
In the other direction, the fire was mostly banked, leaving behind red coals. A shiver rolled through me.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry. I had to get up. Find Amelia.
In a minute.
“The cabin’s right here!” A herd of moose stomped closer, pulling me from sleep again. “He’s here!”
I squinted my eyes closed tighter when a bright light hit my eyelids. Something cool touched my face.
“Hudson. Hey, I’m Marshall with Search and Rescue.
” I forced my eyes open and immediately regretted it when met with the shining flashlight aimed right at me.
I groaned, and the light disappeared for a blessed moment, then reappeared.
Someone else had my wrist, and something warm was placed over me.
“Get me some water,” he barked over his shoulder.
“Amelia,” I croaked past my thick tongue.
“She’s okay. She’s on the beach with the rest of my team, getting taken care of.” He wrapped something around my arm, and it squeezed. I knew what it was, but the words were escaping me. He spoke to someone over my head. “Call the team and tell them we found Hudson. Let Amelia know he’s talking.”
“She’s still here?”
“Refused to leave until we found you,” he said with a wry smile. “She has a strong will.”
She did. I missed her. She’d become an essential part of me the last couple of days.
“I’m going to sit you up.” He put his arm behind me and when he went to move me, I started gasping for air.
The pain, at least, jarred me more awake.
Marshall stopped, his eyebrows low with concern.
Someone brought the water over, and he held it to my mouth as I took small sips of it.
I’d never tasted water so good in my life.
“Bring the stretcher over,” he ordered. “And call in a helicopter from Ketchikan.”
“On it,” a woman said, and I heard the beeping of a walkie-talkie as she went outside.
“No,” I said. “I can walk.”
“With all due respect, Hudson, you can’t even sit up.”
The events of the last—how much time had passed?
Twenty-four hours? More?—went through my mind like an old-fashioned movie reel.
Most felt like an impossible dream. Especially the part where Amelia and I kissed.
But what was hallucination and what was reality?
It felt like a foggy dream, with small portions of reality thrown in—the subtle brush of a hand, the taste of salt and mint, the delicious pressure against my lips.
But all of it existed in wiggly lines and wavy clouds of space within my brain.
“You’re real, right?” I asked him.
Marshall laughed. “I am very real.”
“How?”
“Well, my mom and dad were really in love, as hard as that may be to believe now.” He was motioning for someone, and I felt the coolness of something wet on my arm, and then the prick of a needle. “And I was the result.”
“No. How did Amelia …?” I knew what he was doing. Trying to play it cool. Distract me from all the people buzzing around the cabin, setting up a stretcher and getting an IV ready.
“She waved us down from the beach. She must have been there for hours.”
I imagined her out on that beach, as injured as she was, desperately trying to get someone to come to help me. “She has a cut on her foot,” I told them. “Her lungs. She almost drowned.” It was getting harder and harder to speak as my head spun with the dizziness of watching everyone move.
The woman came back into the cabin and heard the end of what I said. “I’ll let the team know. Amelia is refusing to leave until she sees him.”
“Of course she is,” Marshall said. Someone tossed him a sling and he put it around my head and slipped my arm into it. “We’re going to lift you onto the stretcher and take you out of here.”
I closed my eyes against the pain as I was jostled around and placed on the stretcher.
“Did he pass out?” one of the men asked quietly.
“No,” I said.
“He just wishes he did,” Marshall said, sounding way too happy. It made me wonder what he’d been expecting to find. What kinds of things he’d seen in his line of work. Perhaps finding an injured, but alive, person holed up in a cabin was a best-case-scenario situation. I’m lucky I can feel pain.
That conversation hadn’t been a dream.
The walk out to the beach was slow and bumpy, and I focused on taking deep, steady breaths.
Marshall continued to carry on a steady monologue as he held the stretcher near my head.
“You two are extremely lucky. Your parents’ dinghy washed up on shore of the island across the way, and the owner happened to be in residence.
He called us, and we tracked down your parents with the serial number.
Your parents were worried, but we all hoped you’d made it to the island and did a poor job of tying the dinghy to the dock. ”
“My parents, do they know …?”
Marshall nodded. “My guys let them know you were found safely and that we’re transporting you to the hospital.”
“Thank you.”
“You are more than welcome. This was the best-case scenario. When we checked the other side of the island and found the cabin empty, we expected the worst.”
My attention drifted in and out as he continued to tell stories about other successful rescues.
I only caught portions of what he was saying as I had a hard time focusing on anything but my need to make sure Amelia was really okay, but the deep rumble of his voice gave me something to focus on other than the pain.
“The copter is almost here,” one of them reported as they walked us out onto the beach. They set me down on a level portion, and Marshall checked my vitals again.
“Hudson!” Amelia was at my side, her arm around the waist of a search and rescue worker, who helped hold her up.
She was the best sight I’d ever seen. Her face was sandy and pale, and she was wearing my shirt.
I could see her in my shirts every day for the rest of my life and be a happy man.
“You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.” She repeated it as if to convince herself more than anyone else.
“She’s supposed to be lying down,” Marshall said mildly, with raised eyebrows.
I lifted my good arm, and she bent over me in a hug so tight I wondered if we’d ever let go. This was exactly what I needed, to physically feel that Amelia was okay.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should have turned the boat around when I saw the sky turning gray.”
“And miss this adventure?” she murmured into my neck before pulling back and letting her eyes rove all over my face, as if assuring herself that I was okay too. We heard the helicopter's thwopping rotor blades as it approached the island.
I stared at her, not willing to take my gaze away from her for one second, like she might disappear if I looked away.
“It’s time to go,” Marshall said. He peered downward, and I followed his gaze to where Amelia was wearing my thick socks. “Have you had anyone look at the cut on your foot yet?”
Amelia glanced at me quickly, knowing I would have been the one to mention it, and then folded her arms defiantly. “No. But now that Hudson’s here, we can.”
“Well, thank you so much for allowing us to do that,” Marshall said dryly. He nodded to someone who helped Amelia walk toward the helicopter. Even though she was only a few feet away, she was out of my sight, and I felt unsettled by that.
“You’ll be together again soon,” Marshall said with a gentle pat on my knee.
If only that were true. If half the things I thought I remembered happened, then Amelia was never going to want to see me again.
I closed my eyes and shuttered my feelings. It was harder to do than ever before, but when it came to Amelia, I had a lifetime of practice.