Dr. Grey's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

Dr. Grey woke before dawn on the fifth day and knew the season had turned. The water in the wash bucket had a skin of ice. Outside, a hard wind cut across the lot and stung her face the moment she stepped through the door. It was not the slow chill she had counted on. It was three weeks early. She walked the frame and found frost on every nail head, and on the boards the volunteers had stacked the night before. Two walls stood. The third was half up. The roof was patched but open at the gable end, and the wind drove straight through it. The builder met her at the south footing with his hands inside his coat. He said the men could not work in this. He said a logger had already gone numb in the fingers and been sent home, and the old mason was shaking by the fire pot they kept near the cabinet. The fire pot was too small. It warmed three people if they stood close. There were twenty in the yard now, and more would come at sunrise. She looked at the open gable. She looked at the wind moving the canvas on the supply tent. If she sent them home, the walls would not close before the real freeze. If she kept them, someone would lose fingers by noon. She gave two orders. She told the builder to clear the burn pit at the edge of the lot and build the fire as high as he could feed it, dry wood first, green wood after, and to keep it roaring all day. She told the old mason to take four men and raise a sweat lodge against the north fence, bent saplings, canvas, and clay from the trench, the kind he had built as a boy. Men would rotate through it in shifts, ten minutes inside for every hour on the frame. She walked to the gate and stopped the women coming up the lane with their jars and sent them back for every blanket and wool coat in their houses. By mid-morning the burn pit threw heat she could feel across the yard. The lodge stood low and round against the fence, steam leaking from its seam. Men came off the wall blue at the lips and came out of the lodge pink and swearing. A neighbor arrived with a large rescue dog harnessed with a small medical pack, and the dog lay by the fire while children warmed their hands against its flank. By dusk the third wall was up. No one had been carried home. The builder found her at the burn pit. He said the gable would close tomorrow if the wind held. Then he said a runner had come from the next lane. A roof had collapsed under the early snow. Four people were under it.