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“I do feel a little better,” she admitted.
I stuck my tongue out and blew a raspberry at her, but I couldn’t really be mad about it. The not knowing was killing both of us.
Suzie went to bed around midnight, promising to sleep with her phone next to her pillow in case there was word from Michael. She gave me a blanket and pillow to make the couch more comfortable. I tried to sleep but mostly I stared at the darkened ceiling, torturing myself since Suzie wasn’t there to do it for me.
Was he alive? Was he cold? Had he lost fingers and toes to frostbite? What happened to a person if they lost all their toes? Would he have to learn to walk again?
I woke up stiff and sore. A couch, even a big comfy couch like Suzie’s, was no place for a thirty-five-year-old. I winced, remembering how I stole Michael’s bed the night we met. So many stupid regrets.
I was groggy enough that I didn’t understand why I was awake before dawn and also why my arm was wiggling.
“Nora!” Suzie whisper-shouted.
I turned my neck, wincing, to see Suzie’s face two inches away from mine, Andy balanced on her hip. My heart leaped into my throat and then I realized…
Suzie was grinning.
Oh, thank god.
“Michael?” I asked hopefully.
Suzie nodded. “They found him. He’s alive. The National Park Service didn’t give me much details, except to say he’ll be okay, and they sent him to the hospital for treatment.”
My chest squeezed again. If he was going to be okay, why did he have to go to the hospital? Maybe their definition of “okay” did not exclude things like frostbite. On the other hand, who cared? He was alive. Who needed toes, anyway?
I sat up. “Did you talk to him?”
Suzie shook her head. “No, just NPS. I’m his emergency contact. Michael will call when he can. He’s probably passed out from exhaustion at this point. Don’t worry.”
That all made sense, but I checked my phone anyway. No missed calls, no texts, no anything. It might be hours before he could call, and I needed a distraction. “Let’s make breakfast. Sam deserves a break.”
“Pancakes and bacon?” Suzie suggested.
“Sounds good to me.”
We got to work. Suzie entertained Andy at the kitchen table while I mixed together flour, salt, baking soda, eggs, and buttermilk. I added some sliced strawberries because, in my humble opinion, there was nothing better than strawberry pancakes. Sam wandered in wearing his flannel pajama bottoms and a tee shirt, kissed his wife and Andy, and started the coffee going.
I managed to glance at my phone only a half dozen times while the food was cooking. The kids stumbled in, lured by the smell of bacon no doubt, rubbing their eyes and looking all kinds of cute with their hair sticking up all over the place.
“Everything okay, Mom?” Becca asked as she sat down with her plate heaped high with pancakes.
I paused in the act of handing Dimitri a plate and glanced between Becca and Suzie. We hadn’t told the kids about Michael, because why worry them before we knew anything for sure? But it was no surprise that Becca sensed something was amiss.
Suzie looked at her daughter and Andy whacked her in the nose. “Sure, honey. Everything is good.”
Becca’s eyes narrowed as she studied Suzie’s face. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied. “Okay.”
I focused my attention on the kids during breakfast—wiping up spilled juice, passing out seconds. I managed to eat a few bites, enough to keep anyone from asking if something was wrong. It was hard to have an appetite, even for strawberry pancakes and bacon, when my phone hadn’t rung or buzzed or beeped since I had woken up.
I could think of three reasons why Michael wouldn’t call me.
One, like Suzie said, he was exhausted from the effort of rescuing hikers and being stuck on a mountain for six hours, so he hadn’t checked his messages and would call when he woke up.
Two, he lost all his fingers due to frostbite, and now he had to learn how to dial a phone with a pencil in his mouth.
Three, he was awake, in full possession of all his fingers and toes, and he got my messages, but he had an epiphany up there on the mountain, that epiphany being that I was not worth all this trouble.
Oh, god.
