Part 4
Daniel called Walt again as he crossed the yard. This time he could hear the phone ringing beyond the workshop door. Snow curled through a gap at the bottom, gathering on the floor inside.
Mica stopped at the threshold and braced against the lead.
The flashlight picked out Walt’s boots, then the rest of him stretched beside the bench with an arm underneath it. Close enough to reach from the doorway, Daniel thought, though he couldn’t see Walt’s face clearly. Heat still came from the unit on the wall. Outside, snow rose toward the rear window and surrounded the place where its exhaust emerged.
“Walt. Can you hear me?”
The phone kept ringing.
Daniel called 911 and told the dispatcher what he could see. He couldn’t identify the hazard, but he didn’t trust the air in a workshop with combustion equipment and an unconscious man. He pulled the door wide from outside and reached for Walt’s boots.
One ankle was barely within reach. Keeping his head outside, Daniel dragged him toward the opening, scraping backward through the snow until he could get both hands around his legs. He needed several pulls before Walt’s hips cleared the sill.
The effort left Daniel breathing hard. He got Walt into the open air, checked him, and followed the dispatcher’s instructions. Walt was breathing, but he didn’t open his eyes.
Mica circled behind Daniel, making a high, anxious sound. He shortened the line without turning away from Walt. The glove lay where she’d dropped it beside his own mudroom, a small dark patch almost covered by new snow.
A county plow brought the volunteer fire truck through. Captain Ben Alvarez sent his crew to Walt while another firefighter approached the workshop wearing a meter. Its alarm cut through the sound of the wind.
Nobody else went inside unprotected.
The crew put Walt on oxygen and prepared him for transport. While they worked, Daniel retrieved the glove and held it against his palm, feeling the stiff leather he’d seen sticking out of Walt’s pocket. Mica pressed against his leg.
Walt opened his eyes as they settled him on the stretcher. He pulled weakly at the edge of the mask and asked about the heater.
“They’ve got it,” Daniel said. “Leave that alone.”
“Notebook. Blue one. On the bench.”
Walt couldn’t get the notebook himself, and Alvarez wasn’t sending anyone after it yet. They waited for fresh air and a safe meter reading. Only then did a firefighter approach the bench, seal the notebook in a clear bag, and carry it to the stretcher. Walt pointed while the medic tucked a blanket around him.
“Make sure Janet gets that.”
Daniel bent closer. “I’m making sure you get to the hospital.”
Walt kept pointing until Daniel took the bag. The ambulance doors closed, and Mica tried to follow the stretcher tracks. Daniel carried her back to his house, cleared the ice from her paws, and readjusted the harness she’d nearly slipped.
She paced inside while he stood on the porch with Alvarez and Deputy Erin Cole. Erin knew Walt from the outreach program and opened the notebook beneath the porch light. Six names filled the last page; four had question marks beside the dates of supposed home visits.
At the top, Walt had written a reminder to verify them before the storm.
Erin worked down the page, making a note whenever someone answered. A visit to a son in Duluth accounted for one resident; a second was already at the high-school warming center. Two more confirmations came through volunteers who had checked with neighbors.
Edith Kline and Henry Pruitt remained unaccounted for, their phones ringing unanswered. Henry needed his oxygen concentrator through the night. Erin called Janet at the county emergency operations room and read from Walt’s notebook while Janet searched Lakeshore’s electronic board for those two addresses.
“I’ve got completed visits,” she said. “Edith at four-ten. Henry at four-forty.”
Daniel could see firefighters digging out the workshop exhaust across the yard. He looked back at the two names nobody had reached. Whether the green boxes on Janet’s screen were wrong by accident or design, they couldn’t answer a phone.
Daniel listened while Alvarez assigned a crew to each house. Getting to Edith presented the problem: the ambulance would bog down, and the plow they needed was clearing a fallen tree near the warming center. He passed the bagged notebook back to Erin and looked toward his shed.
“The tracked rig’s in my shed. It’s fueled. Winch, tow strap, evacuation sled.”
Alvarez looked at Daniel rather than the shed. “Can you drive it?”
He could have said yes and stopped there. Instead he told the captain about the myeloma, the missed oncology appointments, and how quickly he sometimes ran out of strength. He kept his voice low, though Erin was already close enough to hear.
Alvarez had a medic check him before assigning him to transport. “You stay outside buildings. No carrying people. If you start having trouble, I need to know then.”
Daniel nodded.
“Tell me you heard the last part.”
“I’ll tell you.”
He secured Mica in the enclosed rear cabin with a short harness tether and placed Walt’s glove beside her. At Edith’s house, snow had buried the steps and climbed halfway up the storm door. Daniel kept the vehicle ready while Alvarez and a firefighter went around back.
A firefighter looking through the kitchen window located Edith on the floor. Kindling lay beside her; she had fallen carrying it, beyond reach of the phone. She’d been saving fuel with a low thermostat, and the evening cold had overtaken the house. Secured in an evacuation chair, she lifted her head as they approached the rig and recognized Daniel.
“Where’s my scarf this time?”
“Home, I hope.” He tucked the loose edge of her blanket where the firefighter indicated. “Walt had your name on his list.”
Her next objection died before she finished it.
At the warming center, the other crew had already brought Henry in. His concentrator had stopped when the power failed, but his portable oxygen cylinder had lasted through the trip. Volunteers made room for his equipment near a backup-powered outlet while Daniel helped secure it under a table.
His fingers began to shake.
He found Alvarez and showed him before he could decide to wait. The captain told him to sit, drink some water, and let the medic look at him again. Mica leaned against his knee while he obeyed.
Janet called before his five-minute break was over. Paige Nolan, Lakeshore’s scheduler, had reached the two aides assigned to Birch Lodge, a converted lakeside lodge sheltering six older residents. Management had canceled one aide’s shift to avoid overtime; the other had reported being snowed in before dusk.
The board showed both of them on site.
A resident, June Avery, had called former caregiver Tessa Kim when nobody arrived. That was two hours earlier, and now Janet couldn’t reach either woman. Across the room, Alvarez was already pulling his gloves back on.
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