Page 1 of Gunner

Prologue

Gunner tugged the mittens on,and with a final look to make sure his grandmother was busy, he slipped outside into the frigid air of the Icelandic afternoon. Running toward the lake, he breathed in the cool air, laughing when he exhaled, his breath forming patterns. Throwing out his arms, he whirled as the sense of freedom made him giddy.

He loved his amma, but she didn’t understand his need to be free, to feel the sea air and the earth under him. She was old but she loved him, and he loved her, and if she didn’t know she couldn’t worry. She worried a lot. Milla said it was because she’d lost her child. His mother and father had died in a boating accident when he was three, but he wasn’t sad because he couldn’t remember them really, although that sometimes made him sad.

He had Milla though. She was his best friend and his sister. She was protective like amma was, but she let him have fun and kept his secrets—like the time he snuck onto the fishing boat they had at the dock instead of going straight home from school.

Stopping at the edge of the crystal clear water of the lake, he grinned when he saw that it had iced over since his last visit. He glanced around knowing he shouldn’t go out onto the ice alone. Amma and Milla had drilled it into him time and again, but he would be fine, he was strong, and he knew this lake better than anyone.

As he tested the strength of the ice with his toe and found it had no give, he felt excitement sizzle in his blood. As he slipped and skidded, Gunner moved further out and that was when he heard his sister’s voice.

“Gunner!”

He spun, hearing the anger in her voice, and as he did, he felt the ice crack beneath his feet and his heart plummeted to his belly. His arms shot out to balance himself as he stood frozen with fear.

“Milla.” He heard the terror in his voice and saw the same in his big sister, but she was calm when she spoke to him.

“Gunner, stay still. I am going to come get you, okay?”

He nodded, too frightened to speak in case the sound caused the ice to crack even more. Milla went to her belly and as she inched her way out to him, he kept his eyes glued to his sister, his hero and best friend. He would never tell the boys at school that; they would make fun of him but Milla was his best friend. He dreaded the day she went to college and left him and his grandma here alone.

“Gunner, I need you to lie flat and crawl towards me.”

Milla lay with her arm outstretched toward him. He felt numb with shock, his belly dipping until he thought he was going to be sick. With his legs almost frozen with fear, he began to kneel until he was belly to the ice, the cold burrowing under his clothes until his skin prickled with it or maybe it was the abject terror he was feeling. Inching forward with the slightest movements, he almost wept when his fingers brushed his sister’s outstretched arm. Her eyes held his as she nodded her encouragement, and he focused everything on Milla.

“Come on, Gunner, keep going.” He felt his belly lurch into his throat when the ice moved under him and he heard the frantic desperation in his sister’s voice.

“Move, Gunner, now.”

Her voice ringing in his ears, he crawled his way toward the shore, his breath seizing in relief when his knees hit the hard-frozen ground of land. His fright began to abate and for a split second he felt euphoria that he was okay. As Gunner spun to hug his sister and thank her, he heard the booming crack as the ice gave way. His entire world stopped in that moment as time suspended.

The smell of the air, the feel of the cool breeze on his cheeks, the way the winter sun-dappled the ice, making it shine like the most brilliant of diamonds. Most of all, he saw the look of love on Milla’s face followed by the realisation that she was going under the ice and there was nothing either of them could do.

As the hiatus ceased and everything began to move at speed again, he moved to set foot on the ice.

“No!” Milla’s scream made him look up as she held up her hand to stop him as the ice gave way and she sunk like a boulder beneath the frigid water. Gunner stiffened, his body refusing to move as his entire world came crashing down around him. Then his brain kicked in and his fight or flight response sprang into action as he ran for the road, screaming and waving his arms to get the attention of the fishermen heading home for the day.

More experienced than he would ever be in this situation, he watched as they quickly moved into action. Securing a blow-up dinghy to his body, one of the men rowed out over the top of the ice until he got to the gap where Milla had gone in. With the others holding the man and the dinghy secure, he slipped into the water. Gunner looked on with wild, tear-filled eyes as the seconds ticked by and still, he didn’t see her, the guilt inside him a storm of destruction whirling through him as his fists clenched by his sides.

As he was about to scream his grief to the world, the man pulled Milla from the frigid lake. Her body was limp, her soaking wet hair hung over her face obscuring the smile he was desperate to see.

As the men sprang into action and pulled him to shore with an unresponsive Milla in his arms, Gunner knew that his life, and certainly Milla’s life, would never be the same again and it was his fault. His selfish desire for fun had cost him his sister, his best friend, and the one person who he adored above anyone else.

Gunner sat in the hallway outside his sister’s room a few days later, his head bent as he watched a spider crawl up the wall toward a web where a fly was caught. He knew how the fly felt, he was the same. He was trapped in a hell that he couldn’t wake from as he saw the nightmare he’d created barrelling down on him like a freight train.

For three days he’d sat there as his grandmother spoke with doctor after doctor about his sister. He kept hearing words like vegetative state and coma and didn’t know what any of it meant. All he knew was that his sister wouldn’t wake up and it was his fault.

He’d done this—his selfish actions had caused it and now every time his amma looked at him all he saw was sorrow and pain. He’d hurt the two people he loved most in the world. As a strangled cry came from the room where his sister lay, he stood on the chair to try and get a better look and saw his amma on her knees as the doctor tried to comfort her. He knew the anguish and pain would stay with him until the day he died, and he deserved it.

He glanced at Milla; she had tubes coming out of her mouth, needles in her arm and her eyes were open and staring up at the ceiling. His heart hammered for a moment and he jumped down from the chair to tell his amma that Milla was awake, that everything would be okay now, but he stopped with his hand on the door at the voices inside.

“I’m so very sorry, but Milla will never be able to walk or talk or feed herself. Her brain was so damaged by the lack of oxygen that she will never recover her motor functions.”

“Does she understand what is happening?” His grandmother sounded wrecked, her voice barely a whisper, gritty with distress.

“We need to run more tests, but it seems she has some cognitive thought process and recognition, but we don’t know how much.”

He heard footsteps come closer and quickly got back on the chair in silence, his head down to hide the tears. He didn’t know what all the things the doctor had said meant but deep in his gut, he knew they were bad. As the two adults stopped at the door, the doctor lowered his voice. “My advice, Mrs Eivinsdóttir, is to find a good government assisted home and let them take care of it. The girl you know is dead and gone, and she is not coming back.”

Gunner clenched his hands into fists as he listened to the hateful doctor utter those words. He was about to get up and tell the doctor he was a horrible mean man when his grandmother spoke.

“She is not an it. She is my granddaughter and I will care for her the same as I have always done. A person does not become expendable when they are hurt or because they can no longer do the things they once did. That, young man, is how you treat family. You care for them no matter what.”

“Mrs Eivinsdóttir, I didn’t mean—”

His amma cut him off. “I know what you meant, and you can forget it. Milla is my family and she’s not going in a home while I’m able to look after her.”

“Have you any idea of the work involved in caring for someone with her special needs? It is a twenty-four hour, seven days a week task.”

“I don’t care, she’s family.”

Gunner heard the masculine sigh as the door was pulled open and the doctor looked down at him as Gunner glared at him with defiance.

“You have no idea what you have caused, do you, child?” The doctor shook his head as he walked away and Gunner fought the tears that stung the back of his nose, the guilt like an anvil he thought he might never stand again the burden was so heavy.

A strong arm came around him and he leaned into his grandmother’s familiar hold, taking comfort he didn’t deserve. The man might be mean, but he was right. This was his fault and he would do whatever it took to ease the burden his reckless behaviour had placed on his amma. As for Milla, that was something he would have to live with. It would be his penance for the life he’d stolen from her. He would live for both of them, do the things she’d dreamed of and serve those who needed him. But he would never again let anyone in. He wasn’t worthy of love and loving someone made you open to the pain that he now felt as he cried against his grandmother’s shoulder.