A/N: Thanks to all those who have reviewed, subscribed and favorited so far! I hope you'll continue to enjoy.
One note – I realized I neglected to state the timeline for this story. The last chapter, with the scene at Bemelman's, took place on Thursday, January 10. We're now overnight onto January 11. Just in case anyone was wondering.
Also, in case anyone is interested in listening to music to accompany chapters, I'll supply what I'm listening to when I write it when appropriate. For this chapter, I listened to Harry Escott (End Credits, Brandon, Unravelling) on repeat.
Happy reading!
The first thing he sees as she turns is a gash on the side of her face. It's doesn't look particularly deep, but it's wide and jagged, with dried blood on the edges. The cut is open and looks raw and vulnerable and ugly.
Her full lips are tinged blue.
Her lower lip is split, off to the left side, and this cut is deeper than the other. It's not bleeding, but there's a mess of dried blood over her chin and jaw, like it bled for a while before drying up. She looks like she got in a schoolyard fight and someone punched her in the mouth, except her lip isn't swollen – it's cut open.
The arm that he touches is cold as marble and wet. She's not shivering. She looks off to one side, eyes in the distance, unfocused.
"Blair," he breathes.
She registers nothing. He moves so he's in her line of sight. Now she's looking not at him, it seems, but straight through, to whatever is beyond his back.
He grasps her other arm, trying to rub it a little, a futile attempt to warm her. He's freezing himself, and he's dry. He wants to shake her. "What happened?"
She backs up as though offended. Yanks her arms away. She makes it two steps before stumbling – not over anything but her own feet – she doesn't fall, but she does yelp in surprise.
"Hey- Blair, stop," he goes after her again. "I think you need to see someone. A doctor. How long have you been out here?" It's obvious that she's not going to answer him, but he doesn't know what to do other than keep talking and hope she snaps at him or slaps him sharply across the face – something.
He tries to spin her around, but she twists away, somewhat violently, and again goes in another direction – this time, back the way she came, toward the footpath.
The snow is coming down around them, finer and fluffier now – the temperature is dropping. The scene would be charming, even soothing, under different circumstances.
She staggers to a stop and seems to be looking around, but her gaze is still blank. She presses her lips together, rolling them inward hard as though deep in concentration, and this seems to aggravate her split lip enough for it to bleed again. The fresh trickle of blood on top of the dried blood is the last straw. His coat is off in a second, and he drops it on her shoulders before she knows what he's doing. He reaches for her, and she pushes at him feebly, but she's no match for him in her best condition and he hauls her off her bare feet, negotiating her unwilling body into his arms. She struggles against him as he sets off for the footpath, whimpering a little as he shifts her into a more compact position, and he hopes he hasn't hurt her somehow. He looks down at her as they pass under a lamppost. She's looking upward, though not at him- maybe at the snow?- and he realizes her pupils are dilated. Vaguely he wonders if she could be hypothermic, but she's not shivering. It's not possible that she's been wandering around the park for the last several hours. Maybe she was at Serena's or something and they got drunk and she- what? Decided to stroll through the park alone at 3 AM? Fell and got a gash on her face and split her lip?
Where are her shoes?
Calming now that she's off her feet, she shifts against him, puts her head against his shoulder.
It's the worst possible moment for this, but there's a rush of fluttering in his stomach. She's put her head on his shoulder more than once before. He lowers his own head, cheek touching the tip of her icy nose, and tells her that he's going to get her help.
They're nearing the end of the footpath; the spot where he was standing when he first glimpsed her is within view. He's freezing and getting wet himself without his coat, but barely registers any sensation other than hot tension and anxious need to look at her every other second.
Mercifully, almost as soon as he stumbles onto view under a streetlight on Fifth, with her in his arms, a cab slows. The driver, a small man with dark hair and kind eyes and an accent he can't place, even jumps out in alarm: "Sir, what happen?"
"I'm not sure," he says. Blair is still and quiet in his arms, blinking slowly like a little girl fighting bedtime. She lifts her head at the exchange – maybe a good sign? – and then drops it, heavy as lead, back onto his shoulder.
The cab driver takes one look at the blood on Blair's face and her hair and looks back at the park. "In there?" he asks, as he opens the back door to the cab.
"She was- I'm not sure for how long," he tells him absently, side-stepping toward the car, tightening his grip on her. He lowers his head down sideways, covering hers, and eases her through the door, pulling her legs in closer so the cab driver can shut the door behind them. She winces again at this, and he looks down at her legs, wondering if she's twisted an ankle or bruised a knee that he's hurting. He glances at her legs – nothing seems to be out of sorts or bent at an odd angle – while he waits for the cab driver to get back into the car.
It's then that it hits him: yes, she's barefoot – freezing – toes a bit blue themselves, now he sees them under the light of the corner lamppost-
Where are her stockings?
Something dark curls in his chest. He frees the hand that was under her knees and uses it to tilt back her head and look closely at her face.
What happened to you?
ii.
She's still bleeding a bit from her lip. He pulls his sweater over his thumb and dabs at it uselessly. He smooths back the hair from her temples and forehead.
Perhaps- perhaps, she took off her own stockings. He can't imagine why she would, but he can't imagine why she'd remove her coat either.
Her eyes actually seem to be looking at him now, but there's no recognition or focus in them. They still look distant and vacant. Still dilated.
"Sir?"
He looks up with a start. The cab driver is turned around fully. "Where?" It's clear that it's not the first time he has asked.
"Hospital," Chuck manages. "Lenox Hill."
The cab driver cringes a little. "I just came past Lenox Hill," he says, "and there was a multi-car accident on FDR. All the people were sent there. Ambulances everywhere. It is a mess."
He nods. "Mt. Sinai, then. As quickly as possible." It's closer to her home anyway. Surely she'll be fine and he can drop her off afterward. He fumbles in his wallet, pulls out a handful of bills, drops them over the seat. "Heat. All the way up."
The cab driver clicks the thermostat and the fan begins to blow hot air.
He resumes watching her. Only in the quiet of the cab, the stillness of having her this close, does he realize that her breathing is slow and ragged. He fumbles for her wrist and feels for her pulse, which also feels sluggish. His own heart picks up speed in response: maybe it's trying to even hers out.
She squeezes her eyes shut, almost a frown, and her head sways side to side a little. He rubs the back of her hand briskly, trying to warm it. The air around them is getting hotter by the second – the drive is much slower going than he'd like, but there are inches of snow on the ground, under which is a sheet of ice, and the last thing they need is to get into a car accident, so he bites down his impulse to throw more cash at the cab driver to step on it.
He picks up her hand and brings it to his mouth, blowing a hot puff of air into her palm.
"It's freezing," she murmurs, the last time she has his coat wrapped around her.
"I'll warm you up." He smiles against her lips.
"Mmmmmmmm-" she hums, luxuriously, into his mouth. "Next time, warn me, and I'll wear thicker stockings-"
He grabs the lapels of his own coat, drawing her in tighter. She's against a concrete wall, thank God for the plush lining of his coat, and he presses himself against her for body heat.
"Consider this a standing warning, but wear whatever stockings you want. I'll make do."
He presses his lips against hers, and although they're both still fully clothed, hikes her legs up around his waist and pins her to the wall.
"Your hands are freezing," she complains, leaning forward, mouth to his neck. She tugs his scarf and collar aside and blows hot air down his shirt, once, twice, three times. The heat pours, thrillingly, over his chest and stomach. Into his ear: "It seems like I'm warming you up; not the other way around."
"Is that a challenge?"
He turns her hand over and blows on the back of it. Once, twice, three times.
He reaches for her other hand, which is nestled in the depths of his coat, a different coat, against his own torso, but for good measure-
And stops.
Her hand is swollen in the middle. He thinks he's imagining it at first, but then holds it up against her left, which he's just been blowing on, and there's no mistaking it. The back of her right hand is significantly swollen. He swallows, hoping he hasn't injured it further by holding it against their bodies. Hesitantly, he bends his head to it anyway, and blows hot air on it gently.
The cab is bordering on stiflingly hot at this point, but he doesn't dare turn it down. He has to warm her up as quickly as he can. Tucking her hands back into his coat, he leans down with his free hand and briskly ribs at the tops of her feet, her ankles, shins, calves. It's been a long time since he touched her in any of these places, and he thinks soberly that he'd have traded ever doing so again if offered the choice to spare her this- whatever this is. Her lip, the gash, the swollen – broken? – hand sift fragmentedly through his mind. He's becoming less and less perplexed at what might have happened, and a blind fear is settling in his chest, tugging his heart along at a gallop. His own nerves at wanting to speak to her before school in the morning seem unbelievably trivial now, so much so that he shakes his head at himself as he finishes rubbing at her knees and his hand moves to warm the outside of her left leg, the one furthest from him. And stops again.
Her skirt has fallen up her legs a little, given her curled-up position across his lap, and a short space above her knees his hands brush across something rough. Yes- dried blood. A cut. More than one cut.
He glances up at her face. Eyes closed. Head lolling, blissfully unaware – well, maybe not blissfully – of the heart-stopping discoveries he's making.
He glances at the cab driver, who is focused on winding his way carefully through the rough-hewn streets of the Upper East Side.
He tugs her skirt up, just on that side, almost to her hip. Cranes forward. He can see several scratches – just the tips of them – and the one that he just pulled at, unaware of its existence, is freshly bleeding. He pulls his hand away and, yes, there's her blood on his fingers. He swipes his hand on his sweater.
What matters is that he can see the marks don't look random – she didn't scrape against a stick after tripping. They seem, to some extent, evenly spaced. He cranes, but can't see that side of her thigh; it's shrouded in darkness, and too far away for him to get a good, even fleeting, glimpse of.
He slides his hand back under her knees, grasps her shoulder where his other hand is holding her up, and tries to roll her toward his body a little- just enough to angle the side of her leg up – and stretches forward.
Her eyes jolt open. She whimpers, high-pitched and startling, and balls her left fist, her arm seizing up to brace against whatever pain he's just put her through. The cab driver glances in the rear-view mirror, then back to the road.
He puts her back the way she was, cursing himself to Hell and back. "I'm sorry," he tells her. "Are you okay?"
She melts – absolutely melts – against his shoulder. Dried blood is rubbing off of her torn cheek and onto his shoulder now that the heat is thawing her. Her eyes stay open, half-lidded, but she sighs, her vocal cords behind it. Relief. Discomfort. And she still doesn't recognize him.
They're only a third of the way to Mt. Sinai. He clenches his teeth and observes the roads, reluctantly concluding the driver is doing the best that could be asked of him under these conditions.
"Please tell me you're okay," he pleads with her, low enough that the driver won't hear them. "Please say something."
When he looks at her face again, she's blinking rapidly. He wonders if he hurt her leg enough to jolt her back to consciousness. Gingerly, he touches his fingers to her lower thigh to see if she's still bleeding. She is. Because of him. He closes his eyes.
Blair…
Maybe he's being paranoid. Maybe she has cuts all over. Maybe she was climbing a fence. Maybe she did them to herself.
Not that that's better.
He looks down at the sides of her calves, but he knows the answer already from rubbing heat back into them. He can't see the other thigh, which is pressed against his body. He nudges her knees apart to see if there are any scrapes on her inner thighs, nothing at all sexual in the gesture.
She tenses, draws in a sharp breath through her nose. His head snaps back to her as she squeezes her knees together. Even so, her thighs don't touch; there's room for his hand if he wants to put it there; but he doesn't.
Her eyes are still vacant, but it's by far the quickest and most reflexive movement she's made since he first saw her – what – thirty minutes ago? Squeezing her legs together, body suddenly rigid, at the touch of a hand on her inner thigh. His hand, although she doesn't know that. He's had his hands, his mouth, in that very spot how many times? But he's a stranger to her right now, and even in her half-conscious, half-present mind, where she doesn't know him or herself or to keep her coat on or how to walk out of the park, she makes it clear that she understands a hand between her knees, and does not want it. More than does not want it: seizes and contracts, breathless and rigid, desperate to get away from it. The sound she made was fear. Distrust. Panic. Don't.
He looks slowly over her legs. And then back at her face, bleeding from the lip, cut open on the cheek.
His head sinks toward his chest, five words splintering through his brain, even as he grits his teeth to keep them out:
Where are your stockings, Blair?
His eyes fill with tears then.
He doesn't want to touch her intimately anymore – not to rub heat into her, not to make love to her – nothing. He wants to wrap her in layers and layers of thick fabric and put his arms around her and have her lay still and sleep and be at peace and know she's safe.
He swallows hard. This is not the moment to go to pieces.
"Can we go any faster?" he asks the cab driver softly.
"I try my best, sir- I am very sorry, the road is ice- "
"Not at all." Low, not to the driver: "Let's be safe."
iii.
Blair's eyes open, close, open. He holds her, looks at her, tells her things silently. I didn't mean any of those things. You know that, right?
Please wake up and be fine. You cut yourself shaving and tripped in the park. You're back together with Nate and went out celebrating. You're engaged to Baizen- anything. You're the ringleader of a drug kingpin. You got drunk and robbed a bank and…
"Aidez-moi, s'il vous plait?"
He starts and stares down at her. She peers up at him, head now in the crook of his elbow.
"What?"
"Aidez-moi?" Her mouth dances over the words.
"Help you?" He's taken French since kindergarten. He doesn't speak it fluently like she does, but this is far better than nothing.
Her brow furrows like she doesn't understand him.
"Oui," he tells her. "Oui. Yes. I'll help you."
"Oui?"
Yes, God, just tell me what you need, what happened, anything. "Comment puis-je aider?" How can I help you?
She stills. Beside himself, he gives her a shake, startling her.
"Qu'est-ce qui est arrive?" What's happened?
They hold each other's eyes for a long moment. Then gladness dawns in her eyes, which, he notes with pleasure, look more normal. Finally.
Relief floods him. "Blair-"
"Monsieur Petitdemange," she breathes in reply. "Tu m'as manqué." I've missed you.
Before he can stop himself: "Qui?"
Her face relaxes. "Tu m'as tellement manqué."
"Non- non," he breathes, his free hand drifting up, hesitating, resting uselessly on her left shoulder. "Je suis Chuck." He takes his hand away, and then lays it again on the side of her head for emphasis. "Vous etes Blair."
Again, she frowns at him. "Monsieur?" A hint of a smile plays at her lips, like she's trying to work out what joke he's playing on her. She's blinking rapidly.
He swallows. Okay. "Oui, Blair," he murmurs, his tone warm.
"Ah. Devons-nous chanter?"
She waits expectantly. Shall we sing?
He clears his throat. "Oui. Apres vous." Yes – after you.
Blinking, and apparently pleased, she licks her chapped lips – wincing absentmindedly when her tongue strikes the open wound – and, really, murmurs more than sings: "Alouette, gentille alouette."
She looks at him, waiting for him to join in. "Alouette, gentille alouette," he parrots. He doesn't know this song, but to be fair, he probably doesn't know any French nursery songs, other than Dansons la Capucine.
"Alouette, je te plumerie." She murmurs softly. Her blinking is still rapid, and she's beginning to sweat – which must be a good sign – glancing up, they're two thirds of the way to Mt. Sinai. The heat in the cab is beyond hellacious; he himself has certainly sweated through his shirt and is in the process of soaking his sweater. He wipes his face on his sleeve, avoiding the spots with her blood. He looks for her other hand to see if she's warmed up.
She gives him a somewhat impatient look, ignoring how he fumbles for her hand, which has long since relaxed from fisting up when he parted her knees. "Monsieur," she half-whine, half-scolds.
"Je suis desole." He looks at her, even as he lays his hand against hers, hoping she won't tense up. She doesn't. He turns her hand over and presses the front and then the back of his hand against it. She's warming up steadily. Relief floods part of his brain, while the rest holds onto various other emotions with a grip that won't loosen until she's standing on her own two feet, yelling at him in English for- anything. What he wouldn't give for her to call him a pig right now.
He moves his hand up to her wrist. She seems to be waiting patiently for him to sing along with her. "Une fois de plus?" Once more?
She gives a little sigh, an exaggerated, impatient Blair-sigh.
She's still in there somewhere.
"Oui, d'accord." She parts her lips, closes them, parts them again. He turns her hand over, feeling for her heartbeat, laying two fingers against her pulse point like they do in the movies. He frowns, waiting for the thumping and it doesn't come, but she's clearly-
He realizes it's beating fast. Very fast. Twice as fast as it was when he checked it before. And it's faint. He looks up; they're passing 92nd. Mt. Sinai is on 99th.
"Alouette, gentile alouette," she murmurs, perhaps lower than last time, or perhaps it's his imagination. "Alouette, je te plumerie."
He repeats her words, trying to gauge her heartbeat to see if it's slowing down, but it's consistently fast, skittish, like a frightened mouse.
"Je te plumerie le queue," she trips on, eyes drifting shut, "Et la queue, et les pattes…"
His hand has dropped her wrist and is fumbling in his pocket for his phone. He curses himself for not doing this sooner. As soon as he saw her.
"Et le ventre, et le ailes…"
Vocabulary lessons click through his mind. Flashcards before a quiz. These are body parts she's listing: tail, legs, belly, wings.
Plumer. To pluck.
iv.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Hello," he rushes out, glancing at Blair, who is humming the notes to her song, but missing every third one or so. "My name is Chuck Bass. I'm in a cab with Blair Waldorf on our way to Mt. Sinai. We're about seven blocks away, but the roads are icy and it's slow going."
"How can I help you, Mr. Bass?"
"Miss Waldorf has been out in the winter storm for some time tonight – I don't know how long – I ran into her about a half hour ago" – he doesn't know where to start, what to say, how long he has before Blair – what? Loses consciousness? – "I think she'd been outside for a while. She was wet and she didn't have shoes on, and- " He breaks off. "Her heart is pounding. Really fast." The desperation oozes from his voice at last.
Blair chooses this moment to half-hum, half-say: "Et le dos, et le cou…"
And your back, and your neck.
He watches her face while he continues: "We're almost to the hospital, but I – her heart was beating slowly before, and now-"
"How quick would you say?"
"I don't know," he bites. "Too fast. It's not normal. But it- she was freezing cold and she…"
"It sounds like she might be going into shock in coming out of hypothermic conditions."
"No, she wasn't shivering, at all."
"In late-stage moderate to severe hypothermia, patients stop shivering. The body stops trying to warm itself through those muscle contractions. Did you observe any lack of coordination or mental confusion?"
"Et la tete, et les yeux," Blair breathes – he can barely understand her now.
An icy grip wraps slowly around his heart.
"Yes. She was…" he looks down at Blair. "She was taking off her coat when I first saw her. She didn't know who I was…" She still doesn't.
"This sounds to me like paradoxical undressing, Mr. Bass. Hypothermia patients often remove their own clothing as their temperature drops. It's a phenomenon that medical professionals don't fully understand."
The grip loosens a bit. The stockings. She took them off herself.
"Is she verbally responsive?"
"Sort of. She's speaking French."
"Is she French?"
He looks at her, looking drowsy or drunk on his forearm, remembering Blair the child, French children's books, frequent trips to Paris with one or both parents, and apparently, though he doesn't remember it- alouette, alouette. "It's not her first language, but she speaks it fluently. I'm doing my best to keep up. She's reciting what I think is a nursery rhyme or song."
"Verbal connection in any language is a good sign," the operator continues encouragingly. "How far are you from the emergency room? I'm alerting them of your impending arrival."
"Thank you," he breathes, "thank you- we're still six blocks out." Snow is falling in waves so thick he can hardly see the street signs.
"Mr. Bass, just a few precautions. Please keep Miss Waldorf as horizontal as possible, and no rough movements. In hypothermic patients, the body redirects blood away from the skin and toward the vital organs – heart, brain, lungs – and as a result, the skin in particular is next to defenseless. No vigorous friction- "
Oh, my God.
"I…" he gulps for air. "I tried to warm her up. I rubbed my hands on her skin."
The operator pauses for a few seconds.
"Please stop doing so immediately."
He closes his eyes. "Okay."
"If she's wearing any wet clothing, it will need to be removed, but since you're so close to the hospital I would advise you to wait for the professionals to do so to minimize risk. I also advise no other sources of direct heat until she can be evaluated. Her basal body temperature will be a strong factor in how she's treated if she is in fact hypothermic. Any intense direct heat on her body, below a certain body temperature, can have a strong negative impact on her vital organs."
Like blasting the heat in a confined vehicle for thirty minutes when she's hypothermic? He covers the receiver with his thumb. "Kill the heat. Roll down the windows."
Simultaneously, Blair murmurs, "Et le bec." And the beak.
The cab driver complies and with a click and a buzz, cool air floods the cab. He can't bear to admit this second grievous failure on his part to the operator.
"Is there anything else?" He looks down at Blair, whose eyes are closed.
"Is her heart still beating the same way?"
He cradles his phone against his left shoulder, frees his right hand, finds her wrist again. "Maybe it's a little better," he conjectures. "It still feels too fast." He looks around. Snow is swirling in the open windows around them, landing everywhere – her hair, their clothes, his coat that she's wrapped in. He tucks her hand away. "We're four blocks out."
"I've been advised that emergency personnel is standing by waiting for you in the emergency bay." He hears typing, fast, frantic, completely at odds with the operator's late-night DJ intonation.
"Anything else I can do? Should we stay on the line?"
"If her heart feels the same, you can put the phone down and I'll hold the line until you've reached the hospital. Keep talking to her. Get her to engage with you by any means possible."
He glances down at her face. She's still. His heart lurches. "She's not talking."
"Put the phone down, Mr. Bass, and talk to her."
The cab is crawling. It looks like uptown got more snow than downtown. Snow twirls in, dancing like ballerinas, cooling his overheated skin. Blair doesn't look flushed. He should have noticed that. It should have alarmed him.
He puts his other hand near her head, but doesn't know what to do with it. He touches her nose, awkwardly. "Blair." Her eyes have been closed for some time, but now she's not murmuring song lyrics about body parts any longer. It finally clicks in his mind, inconvenient and irrelevant, that alouette means lark.
He's too nervous to touch her anywhere else. He's done enough damage.
"Un, deux, trois." He holds up fingers, though she doesn't open her eyes. The beat of his own words provides him a small measure of comfort, so he repeats it. "Un, deux, trois."
Two and a half blocks. They're at a red light. They've just passed her street. He'd trade his own life, at this moment, for her to have spent the night warm and safe at home in her bed. He'd trade it now if he could go back and erase this.
"Un, deux, trois. Quatre, cinq, six."
The light turns green, and they creep through the intersection.
He repeats, showing his fingers all the way up to five, but he has only one hand. "Quatre, cinq, six."
He's watching the light at the next intersection, willing it to turn green, when her voice floats up to him.
"Six."
v.
He looks down. "Six." He holds up one hand, five fingers.
She lifts her hand – not arm, just hand – with her index finger pointed up. Five plus one. Six.
He starts over again as they roll to a stop. "Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six." He counts slowly, ticking off on his fingers.
Slowly, with concentrated effort, she raises her thumb also. "Sept" – middle finger; he counts along with her – "huit" – ring finger "neuf."
Green light.
Her pinky comes up last. "Dix."
She almost smiles; it reaches her eyes more than her mouth. They look at each other – his eyes alert and watchful, hers slower but, if he's not dreaming, clear now? – ten fingers in the air, and he moves his open palm forward, wanting to press it against hers, to touch her fingertips and clasp her hand in his palm. But he doesn't.
He touches two fingers to her pulse point, and frowns. Her heartbeat is still too fast.
"Chuck."
He jolts, goosebumps blooming on arms and chest in an instant, and then regrets it, remembering he's not supposed to jar her. "Yes?" is all he can manage.
"I'm okay?" she blinks slowly. It could be a question or a statement.
He doesn't miss a beat, like there's no question at all. "You will be. We're getting you help right now." She opens her mouth, eyes narrowing as she tries to process this, and he rushes ahead before she can ask him something he can't answer: "Are you in pain at all? Does anything hurt you?"
"I c… I don't know." She just watches him. "I don't think so."
In shock. Like the operator said. His fault. Thank God he called when he did.
"We're going to make sure everything is good," he soothes, hoping someone can fill her with painkillers before the adrenaline or shock or whatever it is wears off and she can feel the cuts and bleeding and swollen hand. "Then you can go home."
Last intersection before the hospital.
"But am I hurt?" She seems more interested now, trying to raise her head from his arm.
He cradles her more, helping her raise her head. "You're perfectly all right," he lies, pretending she's a child he needs to shield from the truth, and he's always been good with children. Perhaps because he is one. "Just a quick check-over, and then straight home." He's fully aware he's making promises he doesn't remotely think will come true.
Green light.
She tilts her head back again, exposing her graceful pale neck. His hand, forgotten against her now-limp wrist, tentatively clasps her fingertips. She turns her hand over and lets him slide his palm back against hers.
She doesn't move; addresses the ceiling of the cab. "Is it snowing?" she says suddenly. "I thought it wasn't start supposed to start until the middle of the night."
She has no idea what time it is; how long she was out there; this means that she didn't just vacantly wander into the park shortly before he found her.
They pull carefully into the emergency bay, rolling to a halt under the overhang as a team of quick-moving people in scrubs rush out from the warm, dry safety of the hospital and approach their door.
Only as the cab stops moving does it occur to Blair to tip her head toward his shoulder, with a deep breath that she struggles a bit to take, and look up and ask: "Why don't I feel cold?"