I cranked open my eyelids. I was alone, but somewhere in my sleep addled brain I knew I had heard something.
I forced my eyes to focus. The fire in the stove had crumbled to glowing embers. The faint signs of dawn tricked though the window. As I watched, the wind threw more snow against the rattling glass. But that wasn't what I had heard.
I rolled over to check the rest of the room. And there she was. Sitting at the table, wrapped in a blanket. One hand toying with the handle of a large kitchen knife stuck point first into the wood table. She pulled back the knife and let it go, the steel twanging backwards and forward. That was what had woken me.
"Hi." I croaked.
She dragged her gaze from the vibrating knife and onto me. Her face an expressionless mask. I recoiled into the tangled blankets, but her eyes forced me to freeze, and then she spat out,
"Who the hell are you, and why the fuck am I naked?"
Eight hours earlier.
I threw another log into the stove, grabbed a sliver of kindling, lit it from the roaring fire and used it to start up a joint. Taking a deep drag, I looked around, thinking, "Not a bad place to shelter in place."
This was not a planned stop. I was three days into a Coast to Coast hike across the Highlands of Scotland when my weather app pinged with a warning of an incoming snowstorm. Forty eight hours of high winds and temperatures below freezing, before the wind chill. I had come prepared, winter weight tent, sleeping bag and clothing, but this looked dangerous. I figured I would be safer with stone walls around me. So I had diverted to this Bothy.
Bothies are a kind of mountain refuge hut, scattered all over Scotland, Wales and Northern England.
This one had been difficult to find. No phone signal, no internet, no GPS. When I finally spotted the low building tucked under the lip of a steep sided valley, dusk, and the first snowflakes, were falling.
As I got closer, I could make out two small windows, a rough wooden door and a turf roof. The last few hundred feet were a steep climb, but it was worth it.
Most Bothies are simple stone huts with bare floors and, hopefully, a waterproof roof, but this one was a little special. Running water, cold but beggars can't be choosers, a table, chairs, solar powered lights, and a sleeping platform with mattresses and blankets. However its crowning glory, considering this was Scotland in winter, was a large cast iron stove and a pile of ready to burn logs. I had lit it the moment I walked in and was now basking in almost sauna like temperatures, despite the snow piling up outside.
A laminated sign on the wall explained that all this had been provided by volunteers from a local mountaineering group. I made a mental note to send them a donation when I returned to civilisation.
I took another pull on the joint and felt myself drifting. It was full dark, and the storm was getting worse, but I was happy. I had eaten, I was warm, I was safe, and I was alone.
My work involved endless talking, meetings, and workshops, all crawling with backstabbers and empire builders. Hiking is my decompression time. Out here in nature, I could happily go days without talking to another human.
The rattle of the door broke through my musing. I hunkered further into the blankets, thankful to be out of the wind. And then it rattled again and again.
I bolted upright. Cannabis is still illegal here, and years of paranoia kicked in. Unthinkingly, I jerked open the stove door and threw the half-smoked joint onto the fire.
It was only as I watched it burn that I realised my stupidity. There was no way the local police had tracked me here and were outside, ready to pounce.
And then the door rattled again.
The paranoia returned. Nothing good could be out in this storm. Three quick strides took me to the door. I put my eye to the keyhole but just got an eyeful of wind and snow. And then I heard a low moan, a human moan.
The moment I unlatched the door, the wind snatched it from my hands and smashed it open. Something fell against me. I staggered backwards, both arms automatically wrapping themselves around the soaking wet bundle.
The snow whipping around the inside of the Bothy was blinding me, but I knew I had to get the door shut. I felt for a chair with my foot and dumped my burden.
It was only a few strides back to the door, but the wind was being funnelled through the doorway, supercharging its force.
I worked my way into the storm, the snow soaking my clothes, my face already freezing. Finally, I grasped the door, spun around to put my back to it, and began to push. It had been difficult enough to muscle my body into the wind, but now I was trying to force a six-foot by three-foot slab of wood into the teeth of a storm. My feet slipped on the wet floor, the metal latch dug into my kidneys, and the door refused to move. But then, for a brief moment, the wind dropped, as if the storm was building up its energy for a final killer blow. I slammed the door shut and bolted it closed.
Wiping the snow from my face, I turned to look at what the storm had delivered.
They had not moved from where I had dropped them, hunched over, snow covering every inch of them. Water pooling around their feet.
"Hi. Are you OK?" No answer. I took a step closer. "Hello?"
Nothing.
I crouched down to get a better look. Their hair was plastered over their face, but I could see enough to assume that they were female. I tried again.
"Hello."
This time there was a response, but it was an incoherent mumble. As I watched her lips move, I suddenly realised they were blue. A random thought about goths and blue lipstick flashed through my head, quickly followed by,"Oh shit." as I had a flash back to one of the boring first aid courses my company forced me to attend.
"I'm going to touch your face. I need to check your temperature."
More mumbling. I gently brushed the hair from her forehead. Her skin was ice cold. I tried for a pulse in her neck, it was there, but dangerously weak. I took hold of her head and lifted it until I could see into her eyes. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks against her bright blue irises.
All the signs pointed to hypothermia. And then I realised she was not shivering. If I remembered correctly, not shivering was a bad sign.
"We need to get you out of these wet clothes and get you warm." I stood and tried to pull her upright.
S'alright," She tried to tug her arms out of my hands. "Leave..alone."
What the hell was I to do? She clearly needed help, needed to get dry and warm, but we were miles away from another human and, although barely conscious, she had told me to leave her alone.
There were so many ways this could go horribly wrong.
I felt her forehead again, still ice. Fuck it, I had to do something.
I tried for a commanding, no nonsense parenting kind of voice. "Come on, let's get these clothes off you." It must have had something because she did not resist as I pulled to her feet.
It is incredibly difficult to undress someone who is not helping. She nearly fell as I lifted her rucksack free. Every layer I managed to peel off was soaking wet. Jacket, fleece, thermals. Finally I got her down to a sports bar and Lycra shorts, both soaked through.
I grabbed my travel towel and started patting her dry. It was a hopeless task, every inch of her skin was wet, cold, and wrinkled as if she had spent too long in a bath. Each drop of water I removed was replaced by the water running from her hair. She needed to be wrapped in a blanket and as close to the stove as possible, but what to do about her underwear.
Obviously, it would be better if she were completely free of wet clothes, but I hesitated. This felt like a line I did not want to cross. As I weighed up the options, she swayed and would have collapsed if I had not caught her. I guided her back to the chair and made sure she was not going to fall.
I dragged a mattress from the sleeping platform to the front of the stove, laid a blanket over it and turned back to her. Again, I pulled her to her feet and said, "I'm sorry, but you need to have these off" I plucked at the sports bar. No response. I grasped the cold, wet Lycra and peeled the bra top upwards to her shoulder, then an arm at a time slipped it over her arms and head. Then, kneeling, rolled the soaking shorts down her legs.
Snatching up the warmed blanket, I wrapped it round and round her, then encouraged her to lie in front of the stove. My little travel towel, I wrapped around her hair. And then I sat back and observed her. The skin on her face was still ice cold, and her eyes were closed. I desperately tried to remember all I could about hypothermia.
Make sure the patient is warm and dry was the limit of my knowledge. The only other thing I could think of was to use my body heat to bring her core temperature up. I checked my phone and was shocked to see it was gone eleven.
I threw another couple of logs into the stove, picked up her wet clothes and hung them on the huts drying rack. It was only then I realised my own tee shirt and shorts that I had planned to sleep were also soaking. I turned off the light, quickly stripped off, threw my clothes onto the drying rack, wrapped myself in a blanket and laid down next to her.
I rolled her so she was on her side facing the stove and spooned against her back. Hopefully, trapping her between my heat and the stove would revive her, if not I was in for some interesting discussions with the authorities.
"I'm waiting." She pulled the knife back and let it go. I am not sure which was more scary, the knife or the look on her face.
"Hi, erm, I erm, I take it you don't remember last night?"
She lifted one eyebrow. "Obliviously."
"You turned up at the door, about ten, ten thirty, Completely out of it, just mumbling nonsense. Soaked to the skin, blue lips, hardly any pulse. I thought you were hypothermic. The only thing I knew to do was get the wet clothes off and warm you up," I paused, hoping she might say something while I tried to find the right words.
She continued with the stare.
"I'm sorry, I know how this looks, but I didn't know what else to do. Your clothes might be dry now," I waved a hand at the drying rack. "Once I got you wrapped up in the blanket, I put you in front of the stove and then... and then I laid down behind you. I figured my body heat would help. Are you sure you don't remember?" I added hopefully.
