Chapter 2 - TEN MINUTES BECAME SIX HOURS
The first thing I learned about dying was that it wasn't dramatic.
There was no sudden realization.
No beautiful montage of childhood memories.
No peaceful acceptance.
It was cold.
Painfully, brutally cold.
The mountain wind pushed through the broken walls of the school and slipped beneath my torn clothes until my teeth knocked together hard enough to hurt.
Captain Rostova's helicopter had disappeared so completely into the clouds that, after a while, I started wondering whether I had imagined it.
Whether I had imagined Kalin turning away.
Whether I'd imagined Isla's arms locking around his neck as he carried her toward the aircraft.
I pressed the bent strip of metal and part of my torn jacket against the wound in my thigh.
The bleeding had slowed.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
There was an important difference.
"Aara!"
I heard the shout somewhere below.
I tried to answer.
Nothing came out except a broken sound.
Then again.
"Aara Shaw!"
"Here."
The word barely left my throat.
Boots scraped over concrete.
A man appeared through a gap in the collapsed wall, wearing an orange rescue jacket and a climbing harness. Blood streaked one side of his face.
I recognized him.
Mateo Alvarez.
He was one of the regional engineers working with the local emergency team. We'd argued two days earlier because he wanted to shut down the western stairwell until additional bracing could be installed.
I had agreed with him.
Kalin's site superintendent hadn't.
Now Mateo dropped beside me.
His gaze moved over the beam trapping my leg, the blood, and my breathing.
"Where's your husband?"
The question hurt more than my ribs.
"He left."
Mateo glanced toward the sky.
"With the helicopter?"
I nodded.
"With Isla."
Something changed in his expression, but he didn't comment.
Instead, he crouched closer.
"Listen to me, Aara. I'm going to check your leg."
"I'm still attached to it."
"That's encouraging."
Despite everything, I laughed once.
The laugh turned into a gasp.
Mateo immediately steadied my shoulder.
"Broken rib?"
"Probably two."
"Breathing getting worse?"
"Yes."
His face became serious.
He called to someone behind him in Spanish.
Two rescue workers squeezed through the opening.
One carried an oxygen cylinder.
The other brought hydraulic equipment.
Mateo fitted a mask over my face.
"The weather grounded the second helicopter."
"I know."
"Road?"
"Gone."
"Most of it."
He looked directly at me.
"But you're not staying here."
I closed my eyes.
"Kalin said ten minutes."
Mateo was silent for a second.
Then he said quietly, "Forget ten minutes."
My eyes opened.
"We get you out now."
For the next forty minutes, they fought the mountain.
They stabilized the beam.
They cut twisted reinforcement bars.
They built a temporary support beneath a section of ceiling that looked ready to collapse.
Mateo stayed beside me through all of it.
Every few minutes, he asked me something.
My birthday.
My college.
The name of my first professor.
Anything to keep me awake.
At one point I told him he was irritating.
"Good," he replied. "Stay angry."
Eventually, the hydraulic jack groaned.
The beam lifted.
The moment pressure left my leg, pain exploded through my body.
I screamed.
Then everything went black.
When I woke, I was moving.
Four men were carrying the stretcher down a muddy trail through rain so heavy I couldn't see more than ten feet ahead.
Mateo walked beside me with one hand holding an IV bag above his head.
"How long?"
"Three hours since the helicopter."
"Kalin?"
No answer.
"Mateo."
His jaw tightened.
"The base station contacted the hospital."
"And?"
"Your husband arrived safely."
My throat closed.
"Isla?"
"Stable."
Of course she was.
I stared upward at the gray sky.
"Did he ask about me?"
Mateo hesitated.
That hesitation told me everything.
"Eventually."
Eventually.
I turned my face away.
The trail beneath us had become a river of mud.
Every step sent shocks through my leg.
Yet somehow the word eventually hurt worse than all of it.
We reached a small medical outpost close to midnight.
There was one doctor.
Two nurses.
No operating room capable of repairing the damage to my leg.
A portable X-ray revealed three fractures.
One of my ribs had partially punctured my lung.
My blood pressure kept dropping.
The doctor told Mateo in Spanish that I needed surgery within hours.
I understood every word.
I'd spent six months working in Chile after graduate school.
The doctor didn't realize.
Mateo did.
He crouched beside my cot.
"The storm should break before sunrise."
"Should?"
"Yes."
"That's not reassuring."
"No."
The lights flickered.
A nurse brought a satellite phone.
She looked at me.
"Your husband."
My entire body went still.
Mateo took a step backward.
I lifted the phone.
"Kalin?"
"Aara."
His voice cracked.
For one stupid second, hearing him almost broke me.
Then anger came back.
"Where are you?"
"The provincial hospital."
"With Isla."
"Yes, but listen—"
"Is she dying?"
Silence.
"Kalin. Is she dying?"
"No."
Something inside me went very quiet.
"What did the doctors say?"
"Her rhythm stabilized. They think the pain was mostly stress-triggered."
Mostly stress.
I stared at the stained ceiling.
"My lung is collapsing."
"Aara—"
"My leg is broken in three places."
"I know. The rescue coordinator told me."
"I lost enough blood that the doctor here is talking about transfusion."
"I know."
"Then why are you still there?"
He inhaled sharply.
"The road is closed."
"You took a helicopter."
"There aren't any aircraft flying."
"You have Shaw Construction equipment across this region."
"I've been trying—"
"Have you?"
He stopped.
Rain hammered the roof.
I could hear voices behind him at the other end of the call.
Then Isla's voice.
Faint.
"Kalin?"
A second later he covered the phone.
I heard muffled words.
Then he came back.
"Aara, please. Isla had another episode."
I actually smiled.
I didn't know why.
Maybe because there are moments when your heart breaks so completely that the pain becomes almost ridiculous.
"Then go."
"What?"
"Go take care of her."
"Aara, don't do this."
"Do what?"
"Turn this into something it isn't."
My fingers tightened around the phone.
"What is it, Kalin?"
"An emergency."
"No. The emergency was your wife bleeding under a steel beam."
"I thought another helicopter was coming."
"You didn't know."
"The medic said—"
"The medic said the next bird might make it through in ten minutes."
"I had ten seconds to choose."
"Exactly."
Silence.
That was the center of everything.
Not Isla.
Not the weather.
Not the helicopter.
Ten seconds.
When there wasn't time to explain, justify, soften, or reassure me, Kalin had chosen instinctively.
And his instinct had not been me.
"I want you to understand something," I said.
"Aara—"
"I'm not angry because you helped someone who was sick."
"I know."
"No, you don't."
My voice remained strangely calm.
"I'm angry because you looked at two women. One had a scraped knee and a medical history. The other was trapped under a steel beam and actively bleeding. And you didn't even ask the rescue captain which one was in greater danger."
"That's not fair."
"Was I wrong?"
Nothing.
"You didn't ask."
"I was scared."
"So was I."
"Aara, I love you."
I closed my eyes.
The words arrived seven hours too late.
"Maybe."
"What does that mean?"
"It means loving someone isn't always the same as choosing them."
A burst of static crossed the line.
Then I heard Isla again.
Closer this time.
"Kalin, please don't leave."
I laughed softly.
He heard it.
"Aara."
"Stay with her."
"I'm coming as soon as the weather clears."
"No."
"What?"
I stared at the wedding ring on my bruised hand.
For years, I had thought it meant partnership.
Now it felt like a promise I had been keeping alone.
"You don't need to come."
"Aara, stop."
"I'm tired."
"We're both upset."
"No, Kalin. I'm physically tired."
My voice shook for the first time.
"And I need whatever strength I have left to survive the night."
I ended the call.
Then I removed my wedding ring.
My fingers were swollen.
It took almost a minute.
Mateo was standing near the doorway pretending not to have heard.
I held the ring out.
"Can you put this somewhere safe?"
He looked at it.
Then at me.
"Are you sure?"
"No."
That was the truth.
"But put it away anyway."
He took it and sealed it inside the small plastic bag containing my passport and identification.
At 4:13 in the morning, my blood pressure collapsed.
The doctor began shouting.
Someone squeezed my hand.
Someone else increased the oxygen.
The room blurred.
I heard Mateo arguing into a radio.
Then a nurse leaned over me.
"Stay awake."
I tried.
I really did.
But the darkness felt warm.
For the first time all night, nothing hurt.
Then I heard the distant thudding of helicopter blades.
Mateo appeared beside me.
"Aara."
I couldn't open my eyes.
"The storm broke."
He took my hand.
"We have an aircraft."
Somewhere far away, I heard another voice crackling over his radio.
"Regional hospital to Outpost Four. Be advised, Mr. Shaw is requesting transport to your location."
Mateo looked down at me.
Then the radio continued.
"His request has been denied. Weather corridor is closing again. Evacuation aircraft has capacity for patient and one medical escort only."
The doctor pointed toward the stretcher.
They began moving me.
As I was lifted toward the door, I found enough strength to whisper one question.
"Did he ask to come before or after he learned Isla was stable?"
Mateo didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Because by the time my helicopter lifted into the gray morning sky, I understood something I would spend the next seven years refusing to forget.
Kalin had eventually chosen me.
But only after he had already chosen her.
And as the mountain disappeared beneath the clouds, the plastic bag holding my wedding ring rested in Mateo's pocket.
May you like
Three days later, Kalin finally walked into my hospital room.
By then, I had already asked a lawyer to prepare the papers.
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