2. Erin
ERIN
I open my eyes to a pine-plank ceiling I do not recognize.
The rest of the room comes in layers. First the quilts — heavy and stacked high rather than draped, pressing across my chest with a weight that feels almost intentional.
Cedar smoke reaches me next, and behind it the dry heat of a wood stove working hard in a cold house.
The pine walls hold the warmth close. The light is orange and amber, the warmth of something burning rather than humming, and it pools rather than floods.
Then my body takes inventory. My collarbone runs hot, a line across the left side of my chest where the belt caught and locked.
I press two fingers to the bone itself and wince, but it is surface heat — skin-deep, and the bone underneath does not answer back.
My temple aches in a steady low pulse, a clear sign of swelling, which means I have been out long enough for it to start.
There is a dressing over it, clean and flat, and I can feel the edges of a butterfly closure underneath.
It's properly seated, not just slapped on. Someone knew what they were doing.
I move my eyes left, right, up, looking for visual disturbance or the rise of nausea, and find none. My left wrist complains when I flex the fingers one at a time, but my hand opens and closes with ease. That's good enough.
Concussion, mild. Seatbelt bruise. Wrist sprained.
I don't know where I am, but at least I know what is wrong with me.
I am also not in my own clothes, but in an oversized flannel shirt and sweatpants I have to assume came from the same person who did the butterfly closures. My own clothes are nowhere I can see. Someone took care of that, too.
I take in more details. Small boots stand by the door, child-sized, their laces still loose. A shelf holds mismatched objects: a coffee can of pencils, three pinecones in a row, the clutter of a life being lived in. Someone chose these things and put them here.
Something in me unknots, if only slightly.
Then, very close, a small voice. "Are you alive?"
She is right there beside the bed, holding a cookie. Gap-toothed, with two uneven auburn pigtails and big brown eyes that go wide the moment my gaze meets hers. She has been here a while.
Then she leans in another half inch and lowers her voice, as if she's telling me a secret. "Daddy told me to take care of you while he gets firewood."
I stay still. She does not. She settles back on the edge of the quilts where I can see the impression of her, brushes a cookie crumb from her pajama front, and goes about her business. She looks around six, maybe seven. Small-framed and still round in the cheeks.
"Hi." She extends the hand not holding the cookie, and we shake.
Her grip is decisive. "I'm Cleo. C-L-E-O," she says, spelling it carefully, one letter at a time.
"My real name is Clementine. Like the orange.
Daddy says Mommy ate a lot of them when I was in her tummy.
She ate so, so many." She leans close again.
"I don't even really like clementines that much. "
She looks at the cookie in her hand, breaks it into two even halves, and holds out the piece without tooth marks in it. I take it. It seems like the right thing to do.
I take a bite. Shortbread, probably from a tin. It is the best thing I have eaten in a long time.
I run the peds check on instinct. Color is good, pink and well-perfused.
Speech is age-appropriate. She reached her hand out without hesitation and took mine back without flinching.
Just now she broke the cookie in half and gave me the cleaner side.
Tone is good. Her affect is bright, her eye contact easy, and she is interactive without working at it.
For the first time in fourteen months, my hands have done a general impression of a child without bracing first, without the effort it has taken to do what used to be automatic.
I let the thought go and finish the cookie. "Thank you," I say. "I'm Erin."
" You're Dr. Erin?"
It takes me a beat. "Well, yes."
She nods, satisfied, and finishes her half of the cookie. A crumb lands on the quilt; she frowns at it, brushes it off the bed, and draws her knees up to her chest to look at me from around them. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-five."
Cleo tilts her head and squints. "That's pretty old," she says, matter-of-fact. "Daddy's thirty-six. He says that's not old, but I think he's wrong."
I bite the inside of my cheek. "That's true."
"Are you married?" Cleo asks suddenly.
"No."
"Great! Me neither. I'm only six." She pauses before adding, "Do you have any kids?"
"No," I say again.
Cleo nods slowly. "Okay. Daddy said you probably have an owie. He said not to touch it." She openly peers at my temple.
"As a doctor, I can tell you that your father is right."
"I didn't touch it. But I looked at it a lot." She drops her voice. "There was a lot of blood."
"Cuts up there bleed more than you'd expect," I explain to her. "There's a lot of blood vessels right under the skin up there. It really just looks worse than it is."
"Whoa. Okay."
She rests her chin on her knees, tilting her head this way and that. Outside the window the snow is still going. The stove ticks. I'm warm.
"Your dad found me," I say.
"It was during his SAR call. He saw your lights." She says this carefully, like she's repeating something important. "SAR is Search and Rescue. He's really good at it."
"I believe it."
Cleo perks up. "Do you like pancakes?"
"I do."
"We have them on Saturdays. Daddy makes them in circles, and I cut them up in triangles. Some people make them in squares." She scrunches her nose. "Triangles are more fun."
"I completely agree," I say with a smile.
"You've got to cut your pancakes into triangles,” she explains. “And you have to eat them fast. I eat mine fast, with lots of butter and syrup."
Cleo's head turns at the sound of a latch clicking. The back door opens on a draft of cold air.
A man steps in with an armful of split wood, the cold coming off his flannel jacket and his shoulders nearly filling the doorframe.
He carries his load across the room to the stove.
Then he opens it, adds two logs, and closes the door on a wash of orange light. He pulls the scarf away from his face.
I know those eyes.
When he straightens and looks at me, hazel and weathered, I recognize the rest of him. The long, dark brown hair, flashlight beam through broken glass. The careful thumb at the hinge of my jaw.
He walks to the bed and crouches at the edge of it. Up close, he is bigger than I expected, and the cold is still coming off him in waves.
He pulls a penlight from his jacket pocket and holds it to my left eye, then my right. He is checking that my eyes follow.
He is almost done when he says his name. "David Perry." He glances at my temple and asks, "May I?"
I nod. His fingers hover over my wound. "This bled."
"Yup, scalp lacs tend to do that."
He nods and drops his hand. He is still close enough that I see the leather cord at his throat — thin, dark, darkened with what I assume is sweat.
It looks like it has been worn a long time.
The cord disappears under his collar. Something on it catches the lamplight, just below his collarbone, turned in against his chest. The flat curve of metal.
A ring on a cord, kept against his chest.
A wedding band.
I keep my face neutral.
David straightens. "Pass is closed tonight. Hank can get to your car in the morning." He glances at his daughter, his expression softening. "Cleo. You were supposed to be asleep two hours ago."
"I was watching her breathe," Cleo says. "I wanted to make sure she doesn't stop."
David is quiet for a moment. "Sofabed's in the front room. Blankets are on it."
"I don't get the bed?" Out before I can stop myself. Brilliant.
That gives him pause. His eyes slowly move back to my face, his expression flat. "I put you there for monitoring. You're awake now, and you're lucid. It wasn't an open invitation."
The flush starts at my collarbone and climbs to the tips of my ears. I am in my thirties. I am a physician. I am blushing in front of a six-year-old because of something her father said.
Cleo delivers her verdict from the foot of the bed. "That's it! She sleeps in my bed, and I get the sofabed. You said she can't have your bed. So she can have mine. I don't make the rules, Daddy."
David's face cracks. Not into a smile — into what happens just before one. It's the arrested amusement of someone who didn't see this coming and isn't sure if he likes it or not.
I laugh, too — one short helpless sound, before I've decided to. It sounds strange in my ears. Unfamiliar. I have not made that sound in a long time. In fact, there were months back there when I wondered if I still could. But here it is.
David's head whips back to me. He gives me a brief, unguarded look before he walks back to the stove and adjusts the damper. I realize he's giving me a moment. It's more generous than most things anyone has done for me recently.
Cleo looks back and forth between her father and me and grins in triumph.
David excuses himself and steps outside to call Hank.
I hear the back door, the brief draft of cold, and then the quiet.
The stove ticks. Cleo rearranges the pillow under her elbow and settles in.
The lamp puts a small orange circle on the floor and holds it there.
Outside, the snow is still falling. Inside it is warm, and the air smells like cedar.
I've forgotten what that felt like, laughing at something because it was actually funny. Not the courtesy laugh I give to patients' parents, not the version of me that is fine when she is not. This one was real. For both of us, it seems. And it took a child to do it.
Cleo reaches over and produces a yellow legal pad and a fat orange crayon. She settles the pad on her knees with great seriousness.
"I'm going to draw you a picture," she declares.
She begins without waiting for an answer.
I watch her, because there is nowhere else to look, and because I find that I don't mind watching.
She draws with her whole arm, shoulder and all.
First a cabin: four walls, a triangle roof, two small rectangles for windows.
Then a tall figure beside it with a beard that she goes over twice.
Next, a smaller figure, stick-thin, with pigtails as two squiggly lines on each side of the head.
And lastly, a third figure with a long ponytail over her shoulder and a small square at her chest.
When she is done, she holds up her drawing with both hands for my assessment.
"That's me," Cleo says, pointing to the small figure. "That's Daddy." She points to the tall one. "And that's you." She points to the square. "That's your doctor coat. Because you're a doctor."
"Thank you. I love it."
She studies my face. Whatever she sees there must be good enough, because she offers me the page. "You can have it. It's a present."
I take it and look at it for a moment. Three figures in front of the cabin, side by side, the arrangement obvious. I fold it and slide it into the pocket of the sweatpants. The fabric is soft from a hundred wearings. They fit. They smell of cedar and woodsmoke and clean laundry.
Cleo yawns, full and easy. She immediately straightens up when she notices me watching. "I'm not tired."
"Okay."
"I was going to draw Daddy's truck next," she continues, only to stare at her crayon. "Maybe I'll do it tomorrow."
I bite back a smile. "Sounds good."
She tucks herself against the pillow. Her eyes drift shut. Her pigtails have mostly come undone. One hand is still loosely curled, halfway through a gesture she didn't finish.
The back door opens and David comes back in.
He's dry now, the flannel gone for a gray sweater pushed up at the forearms. He reads the room in one look.
He walks over quietly, eases the legal pad out from under Cleo's hand, and sets it on the nightstand without waking her.
Then he slides one arm under her knees, one at her back, and lifts her.
Cleo's head tips against his shoulder. Her hand finds the front of his sweater and holds on.
He carries her out of the room. I hear a door open down the hall, then close softly.
David comes back alone and leans against the doorframe. The lamp catches the line of his jaw, the cord at his throat, and the tiredness on his shoulders.
His eyes find me. There is a small furrow on his brow I cannot place, but it doesn't last. A slow, tired smile takes its place, appearing without ceremony.
Something in my chest folds, and my breath catches at my throat.
It's not his smile, exactly, or the way he fills the room.
I just didn't know my chest could still fold like that.
"Hank will be at your car by eight tomorrow morning," he says. "Road should be clear."
"Good." My voice is steady. "Thank you. For — all of it."
He looks at the foot of the bed where Cleo was, then back at me. There is something in his expression I don't have a word for.
I shift to swing my legs over the side of the bed; the room tilts with my movement. I put one hand flat on the mattress and wait for it to pass.
"Stay."
I look up. David has not moved from the doorframe, but his gaze is sharper. "You have a concussion. You're not moving tonight." When I just blink at him, he adds, "I'll take the sofabed."
"This is your bed," I say blankly.
"It is." There is a finality to his tone.
I don't have the energy to argue, and I'm not even sure I want to. I lean back against the pillows as David straightens and pockets his hands. He looks at me like he did when he was checking me with the penlight earlier.
"Get some sleep, Doc. I'll drive you to Cedar Hollow in the morning."