When they asked for your name, you stuttered your way through the first four letters. I gave in and blurted out your name like the answer to a 1st grade geography question.
How else would they have figured out you weren’t okay. “Okay Captain Obvious, I‘m Lieutenant Sarcasm. You would think a shivering, stuttering, twitching, pale-faced, young woman would be just fine, Right?” You promised me you’d never go to far beyond eye sight, and that you wouldn’t do anything stupid to put yourself in harms way. You broke one of those promises that night. My mom always says “Never make promises you can‘t keep.”
Generally someone with any common sense would be smart enough to do the proper check. History, Inspection, Palpation, and Special Tests. Who knew that the ones that we would have to trust with our lives, would leave us to hope and get better on our own while they went to the bathroom. So I took matters into my own hands. I fought off the chills and the feelings of doubt that you would never get out of it. I stayed close by, ready to hear what ever you stuttered to say.
Five minutes go by … Ten minutes go by … You hadn’t changed at all. I went to take a walk to think about all the training I’d ever taken to prevent this. I tried to remember everything I’d ever heard in emergency classes, health classes, anything and everything I had learned about the human body. Just when I was about to give up on finding the answer, I was called over because you had spoken your first word completely through. You told me to not leave you. I stayed the rest of the night in one place. One state of mind.
I carried you on my back to our much colder cabin to where I figured you would need rest and warmth from all the extra blankets. Rest and warmth were the first things in my check list. I remembered that when someone is enduring hypothermia they need an airway.
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