“What do I do?” he asked again, hoping that would help clear up the lines between him and God.
“Call. Travis,” Lauren slowly whispered through her convulsions.
“Travis? Travis. Right. He’s a paramedic.” Zach grabbed his phone and glanced back and forth between the road and the phone until he found Travis’s contact.
“Hello.”
“Hey. I have an emergency. Lauren is hurt, and I don’t know what to do.”
“She’s injured?” Travis asked quickly.
Zach moved the phone away from his ear. “What hurts?”
“My stitches busted. I rolled my ankle. My back. I hit it on a tree.” The sentences were disjointed, but at least she was coherent enough to explain.
Zach relayed the information. “And she’s freezing. She says she fell in the woods.”
Travis ignored the last bit of information and gotstraight to problem solving. “Have you moved her? How did she hit her back? Can she move?”
“I moved her, and she says the tree stopped her when she fell down a hill.” He turned to Lauren while keeping his attention on the road. “Can you move everything?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Everything except my ankle.”
“Is her ankle swelling?” Travis asked.
Zach glanced over at her, but there was no way he could assess her in the dark while driving down the road. “I don’t know. I’m driving.”
“How far are you away from home?”
“Five minutes.”
“Do you think she needs to go to a hospital?” Travis asked.
“I don’t know,” Zach said just as Lauren answered, “No.”
A car door shut on Travis’s end of the line. “I’ll meet you there.”
“No,” Lauren said. “Stay home. I’m okay. Don’t leave your family in this weather.”
Travis let out a long huff.
“I can take care of her,” Zach said. “I’ll call you when I get her home, and you can walk me through what to do.”
Travis agreed, and Zach growled as the snow slowed him down the rest of the way to Lauren’s house. The snow had piled up to the top of the porch steps when he slid the car into park. Seconds later, hewas trying and failing to transfer Lauren without hurting her.
Once they were inside, Zach lowered her onto a chair at the kitchen table. He called Travis with shaky hands as he grabbed a blanket from the couch.
Travis gave orders, and Zach checked every injury. Once they were fairly certain no bones were broken, Zach cleaned the wound on her arm and wrapped it in gauze and tape.
“She’s still shivering. This blanket isn’t working,” Zach said as he lowered her wrapped ankle.
“Get her in a warm bath. Not hot. Put her in the bath with her clothes on, it doesn’t matter as long as she gets warm. Don’t be an idiot. Add more warm water as it cools until she isn’t shivering anymore. She might be exhausted, so let her sleep. If she can eat, that’s good too.”
“Thanks, man. I’ll do that.”
“Keep me updated,” Travis said.
Zach stood and leaned over so they were face to face. “Travis said to get you into a warm bath.”
