Ivy thought this over. It probably wasn’t any riskier than heading out on foot with no money in her pocket. “It’s going to take me forever to get the car dug out,” she said.
“I’ll wait.”
Ivy thought for another moment, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then she picked the lady’s gloves and boots off the floor and went upstairs.
• • •
The forest still had that wrapped-in-cotton quietness about it, so every slap of the paddle against the snowdrift sounded sharp and clear and extra loud. Ivy stopped periodically to look at the snow-piled trees around the driveway, listening for creaks and cracks. It felt like the forest was watching her too, waiting for the moment she turned her back so it could smash her to the ground.
She worked the paddle as fast as she could. She’d tried various techniques and decided it was best to use it as a sort of crowbar, levering chunks of snow away from the car’s tires, then scooping the paddle under the chunks and tossing them toward the woods. More often than not, though, the snow just slid off the paddle and resettled in the wells she’d already dug. It was aggravating. Ivy kept reminding herself that the car would be hers soon, provided she could get the lady into it and delivered to a hospital. It was like a test—one of those super-hard challenges you had to pass before being leveled up in the game.
She’d been doing all right so far. She couldn’t believe she’d managed to pull the tree off the lady and get her up the hill to the house. And using the pee pads as bandages was kind of smart. She wasn’t sure if the lady could really die from a hole in the leg, but who knew—maybe Ivy would save her life. That was something she could carry in her pocket for a while: Ivy the hero. Ivy the lifesaver. Ivy the badass who stuck around and did what needed to be done.
She took a break and leaned against the car, her damp skin meeting the cold air a little more comfortably than before, her feet and fingers finally coming to life. She hadn’t ever really thought about the tough, rescue-type stuff smoke jumpers had to do; her fantasies had mostly been about the jumping-out-of-airplanes part. But maybe she was cut out for the job in ways she hadn’t thought of, in ways that proved her heart was kind of okay after all, that it hadn’t completely rotted away.
After digging a while longer, she went inside to wake up Mary Ellen, give her some water, and change her dressings. The bleeding was slowing down, which was good, but the pain seemed to be getting worse, judging by the lady’s shrieks whenever she moved her leg. Ivy gritted her teeth and tried to move fast, but her hands were shaking and clumsy, and she kept getting the pee pads stuck to the couch, her arm, the lady’s leg.
Finally, she got everything back in place and tied up. “Okay, I think that’s good,” she said finally, giving the pajama pants a last tug. “I’m going back out. The tires are almost done, but I need to get to the snow under the car.”
“Thank you.” Mary Ellen had seized her arm and was looking intensely into her eyes. “You’re doing a good thing. It’s…good, what you’re doing. I’ll never forget it.”
“Ohhh-kay,” Ivy said, pulling her arm away. “I’m going back out there.”
Mary Ellen was crying again. “I don’t want to die here,” she whimpered. “I need to get back to my girls. They need me.”
“Okay, you’re not going to die. Geez.” Ivy pulled the lady’s gloves back on. “Just give me a little more time.”
Getting the snow out from under the chassis was impossible. It was mashed down, rock solid, and the paddle could only scrape little shavings from the sides. Ivy decided to go the other way and build up the ground under the tires. She searched the edges of the woods for fallen sticks and branches, which she shoved under each wheel. The branches were thin, so she needed a lot of them, which meant venturing farther and farther into the woods. The light was fading, especially under the snowy treetops, and the combination of oncoming darkness and menacing trees made Ivy extra jumpy. She walked fast, freeing branches from the snow with impatient yanks.
Eventually, she got so much stuff jammed under the wheels it was impossible to add any more. Ivy brushed her hair out of her face, pausing for a moment to admire her work, then went inside to see about getting the lady up the stairs and out the door.
Mary Ellen was asleep again, but her color looked better and she was breathing deeply, with a faint trace of a snore, so Ivy let her be for the moment. She ate the sandwich she’d left on the kitchen counter, then gathered up Mary Ellen’s belongings and took everything out to the car. She went through the house one more time, putting useful things into the backpack: soap, toilet paper, a kitchen knife, extra socks.
She paused at the dining room table and picked up the journal Mary Ellen had left there. She expelled a puff of air through her lips, noticing the rose on the cover for the first time. Even now, after Ivy had come clean, the lady couldn’t stop calling her Rose. She’d really fallen in love with the character. Ivy laughed a little to herself, trying to imagine soft, pink Rose dealing with this kind of situation. She wouldn’t even be able to look at the hole in the lady’s leg, much less bandage it up well enough to stop the bleeding. Ivy thrust the journal into her backpack, then took the canoe paddle and went downstairs.
“Hey,” she said, shaking the
