A local sitting nearby had chuckled and said, “And here we thought we had another two weeks of peace and quiet.”
What Dalton meant, though, was that climate change is a trickster, luring outsiders into the wilderness before Mother Nature is ready to receive them. According to today’s weather reports, by midafternoon, Dawson City would be the warmest place in Canada, which is truly insane. Yet when we left our beds predawn to hike the Ninth Avenue Trail, we’d layered up with fleece. Those hikers were about to head into the wilderness, expecting gorgeous weather, when the truth was that they could be buried under a foot of snow tomorrow. At the very least, they’d encounter frozen lakes and muddy bogs.
As we wait for my sister, I cannot help building a potential story for this woman. She’s in good shape. Maybe thirty. Probably has some experience with the outdoors. Comes to the Yukon for her Canadian adventure. Dropped off in the wilderness. Then something goes wrong. The abdominal injury is almost certainly a freak accident. She slipped on mud or ice coming down the mountainside and impaled herself on a branch.
The next step should be to turn on your satellite phone and call for help. Had she underestimated the severity of her injury? Realized how much an emergency pickup would cost and decided she’d “tough it out”? I’d love to say that no one who bought this brand of outdoorsman wear would risk their life to save a rescue charge, but people are not always rational.
There’s another reason her sat phone might have failed, though I cringe to consider it. Our own radios barely work, and the council—who run our town from the safety of civilization—blame all kinds of environmental factors, but we think they employ technology that interferes with the signals, ensuring residents are truly cut off from the outside world.
Whatever the reason, this woman failed to get help, and what started as a coolheaded search for civilization would have turned into a panicked run, as fever set in. She keeps running until she loses her shoes and is too far gone to care. Finally hears voices, laughter even, and races toward the sound, only to collapse the moment she sees salvation.
It’s a reasonable story, and I’m sure it bears at least a superficial resemblance to the truth. There’s only one element missing. One element that tells me this is more than a woman whose adventure went horribly awry.
She is alone.
No reputable bush plane operator would drop off a solitary tourist in the forest. That means she came with at least one other person.
So how did she wind up here, injured and alone?
I’m not sure I want the answer to that.
THREE
Seventy minutes after sending the boys off, we hear the roar of the ATV. It’s dusk now, sliding into darkness, and the lights of the vehicle appear moments after I hear the engine. I run to meet it with Storm at my heels. The wide path ends where we left the horses, and they need to finish the journey on foot. I’m there both to direct April and to bring her up to speed.
The first person I see isn’t April. Not unless my sister has turned into a guy with his sleeves pushed up to show off impressive muscles and a US Army tattoo. That would be Will Anders, our deputy, driving the ATV.
Anders leaps out as he yanks off his helmet. The woman in the passenger seat is taking her sweet time removing hers and then placing it in the back seat before climbing from the vehicle.
When Dalton first met April, he’d known instantly that she is my sister. The resemblance, obviously. Except it wasn’t obvious to me. I overlook the parts we both inherited from our Filipino-Chinese mother—high cheekbones, heart-shaped face, dark straight hair. In April, I only ever see the things we don’t share, the ones she inherited from our Scottish side—her pale skin, her blue eyes, her hourglass figure, all of which mean it’s rare for anyone to ask where she came from, whether she speaks English, does she know any good local sushi restaurants …
April can pass for white, and I cannot, and this has always felt like a division that superseded all similarities. The world told us that this meant we did not look like sisters, and that made the gulf between us feel all the more impassable.
“Hey.” Anders throws one arm around my shoulders. “You doing okay?”
“Better than our patient.”
“Yeah, I know.” He hefts the medical bag in his hand. “I’ll run ahead and get started.”
“Did April pack a sedative? She’s going to need it.”
“Sebastian warned us. We’ve got extra. Everything’s good.” He claps a hand against my back and takes off to begin triage.
Anders was premed when he enlisted in the army. He’d gotten some medic training before his superiors switched him to MP duty. He’d have made a fine medic, but he made an even better cop. When a fight breaks out in Rockton, we send Anders first. Most times, he just needs to turn up the charm, and people forget what they were arguing about. If fists do fly, he’s got the muscle to subdue any resident and the equanimity not to throw any unnecessary punches doing it. He keeps up his medical training, though. In Rockton, we can always use more people who know how to set a broken bone or stitch a gash.
He’s halfway down the path before my sister makes her way to me.
“Come on, April,” I say. “Can we pick up the pace? This isn’t a garden party.”
“No, it’s a bonfire party. Or it was, until this woman intruded.”
I stifle a snort. “She’s in septic shock, April. I think she can be forgiven for party-crashing.”
“Septic shock is your diagnosis. You are a not a physician, Casey, and I will reserve judgment until I see the patient.”
“At this rate, we won’t need a physician. We’ll need a coroner. Come on.”
“Running pell-mell through the forest is a sure way to end up like this woman. Sebastian says it looks as if she fell and injured herself.”