Randall
I know something's wrong before I'm fully awake.
It's the sound that gets me first, a wet, retching noise from down the hall. I'm out of bed and moving before I think, bare feet hitting cold floorboards, adrenaline slamming through me the same way it used to right before a call went bad overseas.
I find her on the bathroom floor, curled around the toilet, skin pale and clammy, breathing too fast and too shallow.
"Kori."
She doesn't answer right away, and when she finally looks up at me her eyes are unfocused, glassy in a way that makes my entire body cold.
"Kori. Look at me."
"I'm okay." Her words come out slurred, nothing like her usual sharp, quick voice. "Just tired."
"You're not okay."
I check her pulse, count her breaths, and every single vital confirms what I already know. Her skin's the wrong color. Her lips are dry and cracked despite how much water she's had.
Diabetic ketoacidosis. I haven't treated it in years, but I remember the details. Even if Kori kept her blood sugar under control without administering insulin, she could still go into DKA. The body needs insulin and without it her kidneys and other organs will begin shutting down.
"How much insulin do you have left?" I ask, voice steadier than I feel.
"None." Her voice cracks on the word. "Took my last dose an hour ago. Wasn't enough. I knew it wasn't enough."
"Why didn't you wake me?"
"I didn't want to be a burden."
Something in my chest cracks wide open at that, fury and fear tangled together so tight I can't separate them, because this is exactly the kind of stubborn, self-sacrificing nonsense that gets people killed, and I am not losing her over pride.
"You're not a burden," I say, already moving. "You're never gonna be a burden. Not to me."
I get her sitting up, get water into her even though I know it won't fix this, not really, not without insulin she doesn't have, and my mind's already running through options, discarding half of them before I finish the thought.
The roads are closed. An ambulance can't get up here, not in this storm, not for hours even if they tried. My truck won't make it through drifts this deep, not without getting stuck somewhere between here and town where it'd do neither of us any good.
There's one option left, and it's a bad one.
The old snowmobile in my shed. It hasn't run in years. There’s no guarantee it’ll start. No guarantee we’ll make it down to the ranger’s station that has medical staff and supplies for emergencies like this. No guarantee of anything except that if I don't try, she doesn't make it to morning.
"I'm getting you to the ranger’s station," I tell her. "Gonna need you to hold on to me the whole way. Can you do that?"
"Randall, it's too dangerous. You shouldn't."
"Not up for discussion."
Her brown eyes dart to my prosthetic, worry and concern clear in her expression.
"It’s not safe for you either, you could—"
"Kori." I cup her face in both hands, forcing her glassy eyes to focus on mine. "It’s just a foot. I can still do my job. I can still take care of you."
Something about the way I say it, flat and certain, seems to get through to her, because she stops arguing. She just nods and lets me bundle her into layers of my clothing. Nothing she had in her duffel would keep her warm enough.
The snowmobile starts on the third try, engine coughing to life.
"Hold on," I tell her as her arms wrap around my waist. "Whatever happens, don't let go."
The ride down is the longest forty minutes of my life.
Snow's coming sideways hard enough to cut visibility down to almost nothing, the trail barely distinguishable from the drop off beside it, and every single second I'm running calculations I haven't run since I was twenty three years old and half a world away from anywhere safe.
Risk versus consequence. The consequence being a woman I care for dying because I didn't move fast enough.
I don't let myself think past the next hundred feet the entire way down.
By the time the lights of the ranger station come into view, Kori's grip on me has gone weak, and panic claws up my throat.
"Kori. Stay with me."
"I’m here," she mumbles, barely audible over the engine and the wind.
I get her inside, and then there's a blur of activity, IV lines and monitors and someone finally, finally getting insulin into her system the way she needed hours ago.
I stand back against the wall of the little clinic room once they've got her stabilized, hands shaking now that there's nothing left to do with them, adrenaline draining out of me all at once and leaving something a lot more raw in its place.
My father's voice picks that exact moment to show up uninvited in my head, same as it always does whenever I let my guard down enough to feel something. Playing soldier. Wasn't real medicine. Real doctors save people in real hospitals, not tents in the middle of nowhere.
Except I just did exactly what he always said didn't count, and it's the best thing I've ever done in my life.
I think about every year I spent trying to earn praise from a man who was never gonna give it.
Every deployment I came home from hoping this time would be the one that finally made him proud.
Every single time I told myself the disappointment started with the foot, like losing it gave him a fresh reason to be ashamed of me instead of admitting the disappointment was there long before the amputation.
It was never about the foot. It was never about the Army.
He just never wanted the version of me that existed outside his own plan, foot or no foot.
I spent two years hiding out on this mountain telling myself that it didn't matter anymore, when the truth is it's been sitting in my chest this entire time, waiting for a moment exactly like this one to finally crack me open.
"Randall."
Kori's voice, small and tired, pulls me out of my spiraling thoughts. I cross the room and sit beside her bed, taking the hand that isn't hooked up to an IV.
"Hey," I say, voice rougher than I mean it to be. "You scared the hell out of me."
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just don't do it again."
"Deal." Her eyes are heavy with exhaustion, but she squeezes my hand anyway. "Anything for the grump who saved my life."