Melting the Surgeon's Heart
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Becky Wicks
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16
CHAPTER ONE
THE SNOWSTORM SEETHED with the ferocity of a wild beast as Mahlia strode with her face down, her hair whipping violently around her face. Flakes of snow the size of boulders flew past the rim of her hood like an unrelenting army under the sinister sky and she shivered, knowing her chapped lips were probably turning a deathly shade of blue. No sign of the northern lights tonight, she thought. If they were up there somewhere, they were hiding away in fear of this storm.
Even as an experienced search and rescue paramedic, it was hard for her not to fear the unknown out here in Iceland. She was fast becoming a snowman. A snowwoman. One who could easily merge with a snowdrift and never be seen again.
Leaning into the wind, she trudged through the snow, wrapping her arms around herself, shivering. Just over a month in the country and already the New Zealand sun felt like a distant memory.
‘Almost there,’ her search team leader Erik called from ahead, where he was walking with Ásta, their search technician.
Mahlia’s breath caught in her throat as a row of buildings suddenly emerged from the snowy mist. She quickened her pace, thoughts of hot chocolate and heat and light propelling her forward. The cold had long ago permeated through her thick coat and thermal trousers, and they’d only been following the compass from the road for fifteen minutes. The chopper would be with them as soon as it was safe to fly, and then they could recommence the search.
Inside the warm hut, she drew back her hood and shook out her mass of corkscrew curls. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window and frowned. Her lips were indeed an eerie shade of alien grey.
‘Drink?’ A small, hunched woman beckoned her forward to the worn wooden table and chairs.
‘Yes, please...thank you,’ she said gratefully through her chattering teeth, taking a seat by the fire.
The flames reached upwards like spindly hands from the hearth, their bright orange light spilling over the walls and across the wooden ceiling. It was snug in here, cosy, like a warm hug after all that walking. She grasped her mug, sipped her drink, and was vaguely aware of the murmurs of her crew and the kindly villagers who’d taken them into the community centre.
They all knew about the search. There were places like this set up for the volunteers all over the Thingvellir National Park now. But the raging snowstorm outside only served to heighten her discomfort and sense of dread. It was nearly two days since the Cessna plane carrying a male pilot in his mid-forties and two Swedish tourists in their thirties had gone missing. Over three hundred search and rescue volunteers had taken part in the search yesterday and over a hundred more had got on the case this morning. Everywhere they searched, all they seemed to find was silence.
Hopefully it didn’t show on their faces, but everyone here shared the same unspoken worry—what if this mission ended in failure? With each hour that passed, the chances of finding the missing people alive were getting slimmer and slimmer. It was almost impossible to believe that anyone could survive in freezing conditions like these for so long. Iceland’s weather was brutal, unpredictable, and in the middle of storms like this one it felt like the kind of savage cold she imagined her mother must have felt consumed by during the darkest patches of her depression. Thank goodness she was better now, Mahlia thought; well enough to survive the thought of her only daughter being all the way out here.
Mahlia was still deep in thought when the sound of the helicopter’s thrumming blades burst through every crack in the hut like a torrent of falling water. The storm had subsided, and Sven had finally been able to land. She ran to the door ahead of the others, flinging it open.
Sven, their pilot, whom she’d been working with for three weeks already, was stepping from the cockpit, the blades above him spinning their way to a standstill. He squeezed her shoulder on his way past, motioning that they both had to get inside. The kind old lady was already waiting with more hot drinks. But there was another pair of feet on the ground now—someone else who’d just jumped from the helicopter and slammed the door behind him. Mahlia stared at the new winchman and felt herself draw a long, deep breath from some place inside her she hadn’t known was there.
Was this Gunnar? He’d come to join their crew after Elias, Ásta’s husband, had fallen awkwardly and broken his left femur yesterday. The poor guy was still in hospital in Reykjavik. Ásta had stayed on the search, at his insistence.
Mahlia realised she’d been holding her breath almost too long. What? She kept her eyes on him, pulling her jacket more tightly around herself. The man was striding straight towards her now. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a determined jawline. Ruggedly handsome, she found herself thinking. Mid to late thirties, like her. Maybe even early forties, but he wore his skin and features well, not like some of the other Icelanders around, who seemed more weathered than the mountains.
He was blocking the snowdrifts now, stepping up to her in bulky snow pants and a heavy jacket, his hair shaggy and unruly, sticking out in all directions from under his woollen hat. He stopped in front of her, not too close, but close enough that she could feel the intensity radiating off him.
‘I’m Gunnar,’ he said, pulling off his gloves. ‘You must be Mahlia.’ He studied her face for a moment in silence, sizing her up. ‘You look just like they described you.’
Mahlia was amused, even as his eyes bored into her, unsettling something deep in her belly. How had they described her? A Kiwi girl? A fragile, five-foot-five half-Maori woman, completely in over her head?
‘That’s right,’ she said, picturing the first time Javid had looked at her like this. If only she’d known back then to run a mile. ‘I’m a rescue paramedic. I’ve been here a month already. Good of you to join us.’
He huffed a laugh. ‘I go where I’m needed.’ His hand was big and strong and heat emanated straight from his palm right into her own. ‘It sounds like you must have something special,’ he said, cutting through the snow with her to the hut and opening the door for her.
His words made Maliah smile; she wasn’t used to such compliments. Then he spoilt it.
‘But you look tired,’ he added. ‘When was the last time you slept?’
She bristled. If there was one thing that annoyed her most it was people thinking she wasn’t up to the job for any reason. ‘We’re all tired. But we go where we’re needed,’ she said, mimicking his earlier words. He bit back a smile, which seemed to settle something between them and send her heart flapping at the same time.
He pulled the creaking door shut behind them, shutting out the snow-covered mountains as well as her reply, then walked to the table, shaking off his jacket to a chorus of, ‘Gunnar Johansson!’ and ‘Gunnar, my man!’
Everyone seemed to know him. Some jumped up from their seats, enthusiastically shaking his hand, and he reached out to them with a nod here, a friendly smile there. Some were old friends, no doubt. The women all threw their arms around him. Several seemed to hold on just a little longer than necessary. There were a couple of guys, though, in the far corner, who were frowning now, throwing each other knowing looks, nodding his way and huddling in to talk about him.
Her instincts were primed. They didn’t like Gunnar. Why?
She watched him and Erik hunch over the map he’d pulled out, their fingers tracing circles. The outermost ring followed natural boundaries—a river, a mountain ridge, a coffee-coloured lake. They’d been methodically erasing possible scenarios from the list all day. Gunnar caught her eye again across the table and Maliah’s heart lodged tight in her throat. Something about him made her feel simultaneously excited and cautious at the same time.
Someone had said earlier that he was a big deal, or his family were a big deal in Iceland—not that she’d been listening, really, and she hadn’t the time to look him up. He was a trained renal specialist and surgeon. And he was taking some time off, like he did every year, to volunteer on the search and rescue teams.
Her radio flickered to life. Someone with a drone had just spotted an orange item of clothing, out by one of the lakes.
‘We should get going,’ she heard herself saying, just as Erik said the same thing in unison.
Her crew were already on their feet.
Maliah saw it first. The orange crumpled heap of something that looked a lot like a jacket tangled in the branches that swept the ground. ‘Someone’s here!’
‘I see it,’ Sven said, steering them back towards it.
The lake was iced over, a sheet of white, thanks to the fresh snow from the storm. From up here in the helicopter, the fjords held the look of giant serrated teeth around the perimeter. The iced-over craggy tops of the mountains on the horizon told her just how stranded they’d be without each other. Helpless. Like the people they were looking for.
Having flown in from New Zealand, she was only in her third week of the four-month contract she’d taken with this SAR team, but already Erik, Ásta and Sven were her family by proxy—the ones she had to rely on, day in, day out. As for Gunnar, she thought, shooting him a glance. Time would tell.
‘I think I can land here,’ Sven called back now.
His words were barely audible over the din of the helicopter’s engines and rotors, but Gunnar was beside her in a second, his face pressed to the window, assessing the situation. Erik and Ásta checked the terrain through the opposite windows.
The trees below were sparse, a few broken stumps poking up through the snow. It was impossible to tell if it was a person’s jacket from here or not, now that she thought about it.
‘Hang in there,’ she said under her breath to the people who were lost out here somewhere. One of the Swedish tourists had been wearing an orange jacket—they all knew it.
‘Sven’s a pro, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ Gunnar said, sensing her concern. ‘I’ve known him since school—he wouldn’t put anyone in danger.’
‘It’s not his flying I’m worried about,’ she replied, but her cheeks grew hot at the way he was looking at her, closer than close. He smiled as the chopper lowered to the ground. His teeth were slightly jagged at the edges, milky white, still baby-like in their perfection.
‘You’re a tough one, aren’t you?’ he observed in his thick Icelandic accent.
‘Is that a compliment?’ she shot back, and one thick blond eyebrow shot up to his hat.
He sounded slightly American, despite his accent. She was about to ask him where exactly he was from when Sven slid the chopper almost to a stop and Gunnar sprang into action, opening the door before they were even completely stationary.
Her eyes traced his movements as he skidded down a bank and onto the frozen lake, motioning at them all to stay where they were for now. She watched from the open door with her heart in her mouth as he picked his way carefully across the ice. He crouched where the fuzzy fir trees began and started to carefully remove snow from around the object with one hand, clutching a branch with the other.
‘It’s a coat,’ he called back to them, and her heart skidded at the confirmation.
In seconds she was on the ground, crunching over the heavy snow in her boots towards the base of the bushy tree.
‘There’s no one here,’ he said grimly.
‘Are you sure? I’ll help you dig.’ This was her job—to make absolutely certain there was no one here who needed their help before turning back.
She slipped, and Gunnar lunged forward with gloved hands outstretched.
‘I’m fine,’ she insisted, swerving his grip.
He didn’t look too sure. But when he saw she wouldn’t relent, a determined fire lit his ice-blue eyes and he reached out, wrapping his gloved hands around her elbows. He drew her close to him on the ice, till their faces were only inches apart.
‘Careful. One wrong movement out here, one slip-up. is all it takes...’
‘I know,’ she interjected, taking in the severity etched in his ice-blue gaze. ‘You don’t have to tell me that! I’ve done this before in New Zealand, remember?’
His face softened and he nodded at her, amusement flickering on his mouth for just a second. ‘OK, then. Sorry.’
His voice was deep and strong, his speech measured and in control, but there was a hint of gravel in there, like a trapped cough, as if he’d been screaming and had only just stopped. What was his deal? she wondered. He seemed pretty protective of her, and he barely knew her. She knew nothing about him at all, but suddenly she wanted to.
Together, they continued to remove the snow from around the coat but, just as he’d said, there was no one with it. Gunnar stood up and took off his hat, running a hand through his hair. Mahlia watched him silently from her haunches, feeling the disappointment settle in her own chest. Maybe they’d just been too late.
‘We’re running out of time,’ she heard herself mutter. Exhaustion was seeping through her bones now.
He fixed her with an understanding gaze. ‘We won’t give up. We’ll keep searching, no matter how long it takes. We won’t abandon them.’
His voice resounded with utter conviction and it threw her, then sent her heart into a spin. Erik and Ásta were on the edge of the ice now, zipping up thick, padded parkas.
‘We’ll split up,’ Gunnar said firmly. ‘Mahlia, you and I will take that ridge over there. Erik and Ásta will take this one here.’ He gestured to an icy slope. ‘That way we can cover more ground, faster.’
Mahlia turned to the sky. It was difficult for an outsider to understand how swiftly the weather in Iceland could take a turn for the worse, but she’d grown pretty used to it over the last few weeks.
Even when Sven radioed in from the chopper, saying, ‘Don’t go too far, guys...’ Gunnar didn’t look fazed at all. He was already striding purposefully across the frozen lake.
Mahlia hurried after him. The snow crunched beneath Gunnar’s boots ahead of her as he made his way slowly and carefully towards the trees at the other side of the lake. Mahlia watched his eyes scanning his surroundings like a hawk, matching his stride as best she could, aware of the distance between them and the chopper. That was how far they’d have to carry someone injured back to safety, if they were lucky enough to find anyone alive.
Suddenly he stopped and crouched down, motioning her over with a wave of his hand. ‘Here!’
‘What is it?’
Cautiously, Mahlia made her way towards him, till she got close enough to see what he’d spotted: fresh footprints in the snow, leading away from where they were standing.
New hope and excitement surged through her. ‘You don’t think...?’
‘Maybe they made their way out here from some hiding place, and headed back again when the storm hit,’ he said, whipping out a flashlight. Technically, it was daytime. But now, in mid-March, after a storm, they needed all the help they could get.
Together, they traced the footsteps, slowly heading deeper into dense, dark forest. The crackle of fallen leaves and twigs crunched underfoot now, and Gunnar made sure to keep her slightly behind him at all times, like a bear watching out for its cub. This whole over-protection thing would have annoyed her usually, but out here, coming from him... It was weird, but she actually felt comforted by it.
‘We shouldn’t go too far,’ she warned him, her eyes darting around vigilantly.
The air felt brittle and cold, and the wind whistling through the trees sounded a little too much like voices. This was like New Plymouth in some ways, but in so many others completely different. Alien. Full of elves, trolls and fairies, apparently, always watching. She was almost starting to think the lady from the homestead back in Reykjavik might have been onto something with all the fantastical stories she’d pretended to believe. Mount Taranaki was famous, and was swarmed with visitors in New Zealand, so picture-perfect it barely looked real. But it was more than something pretty to the Maori people; it was an ancestor...a living thing. No one was even allowed to climb to the very top.
She almost wanted to turn back, suddenly fearing the Icelandic tales might be real, but something about Gunnar’s steadfast demeanour kept her going. This man was clearly a force to be reckoned with; she was safe with him. Whoever he was. She’d known him less than an hour and here she was, alone with him in an Icelandic fjord. Javid would have a fit.
She caught herself. Javid’s feelings were not her concern—not any more. No more manipulation, no more sly asides or cutting passive-aggressive remarks. No more gaslighting. He was probably going out of his mind now that his control over her had been broken for good. She was just wondering what might have happened to her wedding ring after she’d slid it into an envelope and pushed it through his letterbox on her way to the airport—the bravest thing she’d ever done!—when Gunnar stuck a hand out behind him to stop her. She almost slammed into his back.
A small hut was visible just ahead, tucked away amongst the trees. The footprints cut through the snow, heading towards it, and Gunnar picked up his pace. Mahlia held her breath as he eased open the creaking door and followed him cautiously into the cabin, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.
‘Look,’ she whispered, touching his arm as her heart leapt to her throat.
She could just make out a shape in the corner. A person. Moving closer, she could tell the figure was a man, lying on his side. He wasn’t moving, covered in dirty blankets that he must have salvaged from this tiny abandoned squat. The remains of a burnt-out fire sat charred and black in the hearth.
‘He’s alive, but injured,’ Gunnar said, pulling out his radio.
He spoke to Erik while Mahlia knelt down beside the man, gently touching his shoulder as she spoke softly, so as not to alarm him. ‘Are you OK? Can you tell us what happened?’
No response. Mahlia shuffled out of her backpack. She could see the extent of the injuries now—scrapes along his neck, cuts on his forehead and beneath a rolled-up trouser leg, and one of his ankles was swollen to twice its size.
‘Can you move?’ she asked him.
He was stirring now, unable to do more than emit a pained groan. Taking off his coat, Gunnar carefully wrapped it around him and offered his hand for support as the man attempted to push himself up into a seated position. Together, they managed to sit him upright, but he winced in agony when they tried to move his arm.
Mahlia assessed his wounds, trying not to focus on how cold she was. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out the necessary supplies: sterile cotton swabs, antiseptic solution, gauze pads and bandages. Gently she cleaned his wounds, taking care not to cause him any further discomfort, feeling Gunnar’s eyes on her the whole time.
Outside the wind was howling again, bending trees at its whim, their branches and leaves crackling like fireworks.
Sven was radioing in. ‘Hurry up, guys. Get back here as fast as you can. The weather’s turning.’
The man’s skin was cold and clammy to the touch, but thankfully his pulse was steady and strong. Mahlia wrapped a bandage around his neck wound. She would have to treat the gashes on his head in the chopper. Gunnar helped support him as she moved to address his injured ankle.
‘It’s not broken, but it could be dislocated,’ she told him.
‘Erik’s on his way across the lake,’ he replied, helping her wrap a tight elastic bandage around the man’s ankle for support.
This was definitely the pilot; he matched the description they had of him. But where were the Swedish couple who’d been in the plane with him? Where was the plane? All this would have to be resolved, but for now all they could do was get this guy back to the chopper as fast as they could.
Mahlia slung his arm around her neck and asked him to put his weight on her, while Gunnar held him up from the other side. ‘This is probably going to hurt,’ she warned him. ‘But we need to get you mobile. The chopper’s not far.’
The pilot winced in pain, but with their support he was able to stand. His breath was laboured and heavy as slowly they made their way from the cabin, back out through the snow and across the lake where, to her relief, Erik and Ásta were ready to help him back to the helicopter.
‘No sign of the others?’ Erik asked hopefully, as he and Gunnar lifted the man inside.
Mahlia felt ill with worry. The two Swedish tourists couldn’t have gone far, if the orange jacket was indeed a sign that at least one of them was around somewhere, but the snow was picking up again now. They had no choice but to abandon this location for the meantime and get the chopper out to a safe location, where their injured pilot could be transported to Reykjavik.
‘We did all we could,’ Gunnar told her, as the air turned grey around them and the rotors churned like a machine gun above. Soon they were flying blind through a haze of snow, but thankfully Erik was the pro that Gunnar had told him he was, and all that mattered now was getting the man to safety.
Mahlia pressed her lips together; she was soaking wet and freezing. ‘But maybe we overlooked something, guys. The other two are still out there.’
‘We’ll find them,’ said Gunnar, fixing his blue eyes on hers, making her pulse quicken. ‘Someone will find them.’
She watched his lips, waiting for a word like eventually, or two words like dead or alive. He seemed to know without her saying that she didn’t think they’d find the others alive, because he folded his arms and shook his head wryly, even before Ásta spoke.
‘Miracles do happen out here sometimes. We can never stop hoping for them, anyway.’
‘We’ll start again in the morning,’ Erik said. ‘First thing. We all need sleep,’ he added, before turning directly to her. ‘Mahlia, you’ve been on your feet since six a.m.’
The look in his kind eyes moved her. Gunnar, who’d stayed quiet, fixed his concerned gaze on her again. Suddenly it mattered what he thought of her.
‘I’m used to being tired,’ she said, to Gunnar, not Erik. ‘I’m fine.’
Then she turned back to the pilot, who was slipping in and out of consciousness with hypothermia. It was taking every last ounce of her energy to stay awake in the biting cold.
When they touched down at the hangar just outside of Reykjavik, the bitter wind whirled snow into her eyes and she felt her eyelids droop, even as the doors sprang open on the waiting ambulance. The medics rushed out to assist with transferring the pilot onto a stretcher, and she watched as they ushered him into their care.
Gunnar was pacing the ground, talking on the phone. Sven, Erik and Ásta said their goodbyes and piled into a Jeep together. Mahlia made for her own vehicle, thankful yet again for the snow chains on the tyres. Sleep was all she wanted now. Sweet, beautiful sleep.
‘Hey, would you mind giving me a ride?’ Gunnar asked suddenly, hurrying up behind her now, shoving his phone back into his pocket.
The presence of his bulk behind her sent a tingle down her spine. He gestured to the pockets of his snow pants, now pulled inside out. Then he pointed to his SUV, alone in the car park, slowly gathering another layer of thick white snow.
‘I must have lost my keys somewhere on the lake,’ he said. ‘I have spares back at my place.’
Mahlia sucked in a quiet breath, realising how gorgeous he actually was up close, even if she couldn’t really read him most of the time. Well, maybe if she drove him home she’d find out more?
