Page 20 of Amelia and Her Prince Charming
I put her on her back in a rescue hold I’d learned as a lifeguard in high school and fought with every bit of energy I had to get us to shore. I had always been a strong swimmer, but I’d never had to swim in the ocean in the middle of a storm while savingsomeone I loved. Pure adrenaline pushed me forward. The pain in my body disappeared, the water crashing into my face and stealing my breath again and again disappeared. The only things that existed were me and Amelia, and the constantly disrupted motion of swimming in a wild storm.
After a million years, the shore came into sight. I closed the distance and got to a place where I could stand, and I picked up Amelia. I stumbled up onto the rocks and let her gently down in a patch of seagrass. I pressed my fingers to her pulse and tried to count the beats, but I had to keep restarting. My mind was too scattered, filled with only two thoughts: Amelia’s alive. We made it.
But her lips were blue, and her eyes closed.
It was the worst image I’d ever seen in my life.
“Amelia, please.” Desperation wrapped around each word. “Wake up. I can’t live without you. Please.” I didn’t know if I was pleading with her or with heaven, but I said the words over and over again.
I eased off her life jacket and rolled her onto her side to pound her back. Chill bumps covered her arms, and she shook with cold and shock, but she still didn’t respond. “I love you, Amelia. I love you. You have to wake up. For me. For Quinn.” Words poured out of me, words I couldn’t even hear, a litany of begging for Amelia to wake up.
Suddenly, her entire body jarred, and water spurted from her mouth, all over the rocks. She shuddered and her eyes shot wildly around, her brain still in fight or flight mode. I took her face in my hands and held it until she met my eyes. “Amelia. You’re safe. You’re okay. You’re here with me.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until her hand reached up and wiped the warm tears from my cheeks. Her right hand cupped my face affectionately before it dropped weakly down at her side. We were safe from the ocean, yes, but we were not out of thewoods. Hypothermia could set in before too long if I didn’t get her warm and dry.
And me too. Shock and adrenaline would only protect me for so long.
I stood with effort and fuzziness creeped in on the edges of my thoughts. I shook my head to dispel it.Not yet.I tried to get my bearings through the gray haze of the storm. There, not too far from shore, was the path that led to the old, dilapidated cabin most of Winterhaven thought was haunted.
Well, haunted or not, it was the only shelter we had.
“Can you stand?” I asked Amelia, but her eyes had a glazed look as she blinked at me. She was definitely in shock. I leaned down to pick her up. My right arm was more sluggish than my left, but it was something I’d have to worry about later. I stumbled over some rocks as I headed toward the cabin.Focus, Hudson. You can do this.
The hike to the cabin was a blur. Just like the swim, I focused on one foot in front of the next, and nothing else. I shut down every other sense. I felt no pain, no cold, no wetness. My entire existence was plodding forward, Amelia’s trembling body in my arms, the cabin my goal.
The trail to the cabin felt like a mile but was no more than a couple hundred feet.
The cabin was falling apart. The boards were rotted. The ceiling crumbling. And the surrounding areas were overgrown with Devil weed and moss. But I’d never been happier to see four walls in my life. It would protect us from the wind and rain.
The boards held as I stepped onto them and took her inside. It was dark, musty, and cobwebby. The rain leaked through some holes in the roof, and nature had started encroaching on the walls with vines. But it had a stone fireplace with a pile of wood next to it. The wood was half a century old, but I didn’t care.
I set Amelia down on the rough plank floor, and she whimpered. Her soft skin was going to get chewed up by splinters if she wasn’t careful, but there weren’t any blankets. I could get moss, maybe. I stood over her and tried to work through the cobwebs in my mind to problem solve this.
A violent tremble racked through her body.
I brought my hands to my head and took a deep breath.Oxygen for clarity, Hudson.
Splinters would heal. The biggest problem facing us now was getting warm. I took my sopping wet clothes off as quickly as my numb fingers and shaking limbs would allow, leaving on only my boxers.
Every part of me wanted to lie on the floor next to Amelia and let myself go to sleep, but I couldn’t yet. It still wasn’t safe.
Digging deep into the last dregs of my energy, I used the rusty fireplace poker to knock down the leaves and old nests that had been built up in the fireplace and stacked up the logs inside.
My brain, growing foggier by the moment, realized I didn’t have a way to start a fire.
Amelia was still trying to get her clothes off and hadn’t gotten farther than her boots before she was zoned out, trying to sleep again.
“Hey, you’ve got to stay awake until you get undressed,” I told her, brushing my too-cold hand over her cheek. She flinched at the freezing touch, but it got her to open her eyes. “Come on, Amelia. Wake up. You can do this.”
I untied her dress, and she shrugged it off her shoulders, but it was twisted around her legs. She tried to pull the fabric away from her legs but then stopped as if she had no more energy left to give. It was like a second skin as I peeled it from her legs.
I needed to wrap myself around her, get our body warmth working together, but a fire would help Amelia, who I was getting more and more worried about. Sometimes I wished Ididn’t have the medical knowledge I possessed, because then I could convince myself this wasn’t as dire as it was.
I went through the drawers in the cabin, growing frustrated, until I got to the last one and found a fire starter. Tears sprung to my eyes. It felt like an actual gift from the grieving man who had once lived here, as if he’d known one day, someone would need this and so he had left it there. “Thank you,” I whispered to him, and then raced over to start the fire.
Within seconds, I had a spark, and then the miraculously dry wood caught fire.
I tucked myself behind Amelia and pulled her close to me, wishing we had a blanket or tarp, or something to put over us to hold in our warmth. It was important for our cores to get warm first, so I wrapped my arms around her stomach and pressed my chest into her back. I’d had her rotate in a few minutes so I could warm the front of her more. And we’d continue this until we were both warm enough to make it to the main cabin, where I knew they had a generator, which meant a heater and hot water.
