It seems to take forever to get them out. They are curled into the fetal position and folded into each other, one man's head buried in the other's belly, nested together in a bitter mockery of yin yang balance and symmetry. First they have to be disentwined, not an easy task with their stiff limbs. Then the curved bodies have to be gotten through the freezer door and into the kitchen. They have to slip the jacket off James's shoulders; trying to move him without doing so is impossible. Both women set their mouths firmly, not allowing themselves to think about the physical state of the two men. Or the body they see hanging in the corner. When they get the detectives out, they go back for the woman, but one glance at her tells the pathologist that the woman is already dead from other causes.
As soon as they get out of the freezer, Jean calls 999, requesting ambulances, backup, and a SOCO crew. She directs the ambulances and one backup unit to the back of the house, describing their location in the kitchen. The other units are to secure the house and anyone they find in it.
Laura presses her ear to Lewis's shirtfront. It occurs to her she's worked on corpses that were warmer than this. When Jean finishes her call, she sadly watches the doctor, who is intent on listening. Her efforts seem futile. The two wax-like figures are most certainly dead.
"Laura . . ."
"Shh!" Laura frowns in concentration. Then she hears a thump so slight she must wait for another to be certain she heard it. There! Almost two seconds later, but she is satisfied.
"Robbie! Robbie, wake up!"
She is rewarded by the fluttering of eyelids. Two pale blue eyes lock on to hers.
Her head snaps up and as she swivels toward James, she throws a glance at Jean. "Get a kettle going!" She places her ear on James's smooth, cold sternum, and realizes the other woman is staring in amazement at Lewis.
"MOVE!"
Unused to receiving barked orders, Jean snaps out of her stunned immobility and grabs the kettle. Laura continues with her directions. "When you've got that on, find a knife or scissors and cut off his trousers and briefs, and anything else that got wet and froze on him." She ignores Jean's horrified look and focuses her attention on James's still chest. "Come on, James." Then it's there, the quiet thump that could almost be mistaken for her own, except Laura's heartbeat is going a good four times faster. Two long seconds later, another. "Yes! Good lad!"
She peers at him closely. "James? Wake up, James!" There is no response.
Laura sits up, a grim look on her face, drawing the abandoned jacket over James's bare torso. Then as the kettle starts to steam, she jumps up, turns down the flame and starts checking cabinets.
Innocent cuts with difficulty the frozen fabric encasing Lewis's legs, relieved that for now, he has slipped back into unconsciousness. She peels off the front of his stiff trousers and manages to work the back half out from under him. Then she contemplates her next task, removing his briefs. "He'll be horrified if he wakes up and finds me doing this." She tries to make light of the grim situation, but Laura isn't buying into any humor yet.
"He won't remember it even if he does wake up. And besides, he won't be as horrified as he'll be if they have to amputate." She nods toward his groin.
"Ah. I see your point."
At last finding what she seeks in the cabinets, Laura sets up a teacup in which she mixes powdered Horlicks with the heated water, and adds enough cold water to make the mixture merely warm. By the time she is done, Jean has both men naked from the waist down. Their legs appear to be made of alabaster.
"Good. Now see if you can find something to wrap them in."
Jean heads for the pantry as Laura turns her attention to Robbie.
"Robbie, wake up. Wake up, we need to get you warm." She gently props him up as his eyes flutter open again. She holds the half-full teacup against his chin and carefully tries to pour a tiny bit of the warm liquid between his blue lips. "C'mon, Sweetheart, try to drink this."
Jean mentally notes the endearment but concentrates on her own task. The pantry is full of boxes and tins of things, bottles, bags, and baskets. There is nothing useful here, no tablecloths, towels, or anything that might help. Not even a dust rag. Frustrated and fighting a feeling of hopelessness, she blows out her cheeks and pulls her thoughts back as they begin to stray toward the inert, white body of her junior officer. How could he possibly be alive? She shuts her eyes for a moment, feeling tears rising. Stop it, Jean. Deep breath. She opens her eyes, and finds herself staring at a large wicker picnic hamper. Starting forward, she lifts the lid: two checked wool picnic rugs.
When Jean returns to the men, Laura is kneeling on the floor, staring sadly at Lewis and holding the nearly-forgotten teacup in both hands. It is still half full. "He's gone again," she says simply.
Jean says nothing, but lays one of the rugs on the floor next to Hathaway, and rolls him onto it. Laura comes over and helps her wrap him up as well as they can, and they both work on wrapping Lewis. It's difficult; the bodies are stiff but not straight, and they are dead weight. The women haven't been at it very long when the first police cars arrive.
Innocent shifts into her police officer role, directing the SOCOs to the body in the freezer. Two ambulance crews come in, and the women move aside so they can work. Jean is happy to cede her place to the trained medical technicians, but Laura fidgets, jockeying for a position where she can see what they are doing without getting in their way. The crews tape electrodes to the men's chests, then roll them on their sides and insert rectal temperature probes.
Laura gasps when she sees the numbers appear on the LCD readouts. Jean edges nearer to her.
"What is it?"
"That one is heart rate." She points to the monitors with electrodes. Lewis's reads 32; Hathaway's 27. "And that one is internal body temperature." The numbers are in the same range as heart rate: Lewis's core temperature registers at 31.7 degrees and Hathaway's is even less, 29.0, a full eight degrees below normal body temperature.
The crew manages to straighten Hathaway's stiff limbs well enough to get him onto the cart and strap him down after wrapping him in a thermal blanket. One of the technicians inserts an IV shunt, and soon they are dripping heated fluid into his arm.
The crew working on Lewis is doing much the same. His arms and legs have been gently straightened and they begin to wrap him in a thermal blanket. The IV is inserted and warm fluid starts to flow into his veins. But within moments, his heart monitor quits beeping and emits a steady tone of alarm. Lewis's heart has stopped, and his temperature has dropped another two-tenths of a degree. The crew chief curses. Laura's breath catches in her throat.
The crew hustles to bring a defibrillator near, and a technician calls, "Clear!" One jolt from the machine restores the beeping, and everyone sighs with relief. Laura bites the knuckles of her hand and shuts her eyes for a moment.
Then she approaches the crew chief. He blinks when he realizes he knows her.
"Doctor Hobson! I didn't recognize you in civilian clothes. You know these two officers, right?"
She nods. "Yeah, I do. Y'know John, I was wondering if there's anything more I can do. I mean . . . isn't it helpful if another person wraps up with the hypothermia victim? I'd like to help him if I can."
"Sure, that would help, if you want to crawl in on top of him." He looks at her sharply. "But skin-to-skin contact is best. I don't know how willing you are to get down to your underwear for him."
"Whatever will help the most." Her chin juts out as though she is daring him to comment.
"Fine, that's great." He hands another thermal blanket to a WPC, and directs her to shield Laura while she undresses. When that is done, Laura wraps the blanket around herself, climbs onto the cart on top of Lewis's nearly-naked body, and slides the blanket out from between them, gasping at the touch of Lewis's cold flesh on her bare skin. The technicians wrap the two together and strap them down as one.
"Be ready to jump off if we need to defibrillate him again, right?"
"Absolutely."
The crew chief glances at Innocent, and then at James, lying still as death. "What about . . .?"
Realizing the topic of conversation, Jean's eyes grow wide and she begins to shake her head. "I mean, it's one thing for him and her, they're . . ." But she has to stop. She's not certain what the Lewis/Hobson relationship is, after all.
Laura's eyes narrow. "All I know, Jean, is if this has a bad outcome and there was something I could have done to help but didn't, I'd never forgive myself." The challenge in her gaze is unmistakable.
The Chief Super lets her breath out in a hiss. She studies James's pale face one more time. So young, so much potential. So lifeless. Like a marble Michelangelo sculpture.
"Of course. Unwrap him. Get me a blanket." Giving orders helps restore her comfort level, and soon she, too, has stripped to her undergarments and can feel the cold touch of Hathaway's bare skin on hers. She shivers a little at the sensation.
One of the WPCs bags up the women's clothes and tucks them into the waiting ambulances. The two carts are loaded and secured, and the ambulances are driven speedily toward the Radcliffe. Laura calls Lewis's name throughout the trip but gets no response. Her head is turned to the side away from the monitors, and she can't tell if his temperature is increasing at all. She can't feel his heartbeat, and the time between beeps is so long she expects each one to be followed by the steady tone of cardiac arrest. What she does know is that she feels a deep, penetrating chill, like a frozen hand, squeezing her heart and numbing her skin wherever it touches Lewis. A cold despair settles a heavy weight on her back. He's not going to make it.