“I can do more than make tea,” he said, after I’d done the dishes, checked his wrist, and re-wrapped the bandage on his ankle.
“Not without good boots, you can’t,” I said. I gave his ankle a pat. He was healing well, but then young men typically did.
Directing Blue to the easy chair, I was met with very little resistance, even when I wrapped him in a blanket and started a fire. The room was cozy and warm, and he quickly relaxed into it, which, to me, was another sign of healing. He was fully asleep, or at least dozing, when I went into my bedroom, closed the door most of the way, and dialed Dr. Tanaka’s number.
“Billings Clinic, this is Dr. Tanaka,” he said. “And look, before you ask, the clinic is closed due to the storm. I’m here, just in case and because I can walk to work.”
“Dr. Tanaka, this is Wolfe Bramwell.”
“Mr. Bramwell, hello, how is the hand?”
“It’s doing well,” I said. “Listen, I have a favor.”
“Shoot.”
“I have someone in my home who had a bad fall. He prefers to remain anonymous, and I wanted to run something by you.”
“Is he okay?” asked Tanaka, concern rising in his voice, though there wasn’t a darn thing he could do about it. “What are his symptoms?”
I described the situation, my theory that he’d been riding the rails for a while, that he’d fallen off, and went over his bangs and hurts.
“And his eyes, his pupils, react to light evenly?” asked Dr. Tanaka.
“Yes, they do,” I said. “He seemed feverish at first, but now he eats and rests and can hold a conversation.” I paused. “But there’s another thing. It’s got me concerned because I don’t know what it is.”
“Tell me,” he said.
I told him about how Blue had raced into the snow, barefoot, duffel in hand, sure that there was somewhere he needed to be.
“I’d love for you to bring him in when you can,” Dr. Tanaka said. “So I could check him over just to be sure, but I’d say he’s going to be fine. His memory will come back. As for going into the storm, I’m not a psychiatrist, but it sounds like a fugue. A dissociative event. Patients with Alzheimer’s, dementia, people with bangs to the head, emotional trauma and, yes, amnesia, can get this. A part of their brain is working on the problem of not quite knowing where they are. It hooks into a memory it knows, an errand, perhaps, or something they were responsible for. Some patients take medicine. In his case, it should fade with time.”
“What should I do if it happens again?” I asked.
“Just what you did. Stay calm. Offer support. Offer security. Something soothing, like a warm drink.” I could almost see him nodding. “You did everything right. Bring him in when you can. I’ll be here all week.”
I hung up the call and went into the living room to poke at the fire, make sure Blue was properly covered, and go over a list of things that needed to get done. My life was the same as it had been before, but between now and the moment I’d discovered Blue on the road, it was completely different.
CHAPTER 7
blue
The blizzard began to die down. Even I could see that as I stood at the kitchen window and looked at the patterns in the wind. I thought I saw the faintest glow beyond the swirl of white. This fact was proven when, just after lunch, Wolfe laced up his boots, put on his coat, and began digging a path in the snow beyond the back door.
The snow was still going sideways, but it seemed to skim over the top of him, whispering rather than howling as he cleared a high-walled path to a little building he’d called his workshop. The path had high walls to block off the wind, was narrow, and his digging of it caused snow to come inside the cabin.
Standing there, with my arms crossed over my chest, I felt useless. He’d done so much for me, and all I had done was become a weight around his neck. He never said as much, but I felt it.
I especially felt it now as I watched him lift mounds of snow to throw over the high walls of more of the same, the grunt of effort, the press of his thighs against the weight of each shovelful. He seemed to heat rather quickly and tossed his dark blue parka inside the cabin.
I hung it up on a peg in the wall and turned to watch once more. He had muscles all over him, along his thighs, his back.
The flannel shirt, rolled up to his elbows at one point, came off as well, leaving him only in a white t-shirt speckled with sweat. He handed the flannel shirt to me, wiped his forehead on his bare, snow-flecked forearm, the edge of the gloves in contrast to the strength of his wrists, and continued digging.
His lifted arms revealed the elastic band of his briefs above the waist of his jeans. The dark line of hair from his belly button made me feel like I was watching a peep show, but hadn’t actually paid to get in. It was hard to look away.
“Can I help?” I asked when he’d come to the cabin end of the near-tunnel, turning to look at the effort he’d done so far, as if judging how much more muscle he needed to complete the task. He looked at me appraisingly.
“You standing on that foot all right?” he asked.
