A Time in Heaven (18 page)

She quickly
realized that the
reason
it was so cold, was that
t
here was no fire in the fireplace
. Neither of them had thought to build the fire for the night – well, at least Katie hadn’t.  Jesse obviously wasn’t thinking at all!

Katie worked at building a fire that woul
d last the rest of the night.  Satisfied that it would burn until morning, s
he looked at Jesse hanging off the couch.  She was angry with him
, but she still cared about him.
  She started to pick him up
to put him entirely
on the couch.  As she touched his arm, h
e was cold to the touch.

“Oh, my God!  No!”  She
rolled him onto the couch and
listened to his chest.  There was a faint heartbeat.
Katie struggled to get him
completely
on the couch.
“Jesse, stay with me!” She pleaded.

Realizing that he was suffering from hypothermia
from the cold and the alcohol
,
Katie ran upstairs and grabbed all the blankets from the bed.  She ran back to the lobby and put one blanket on the floor next to the fireplace.  She pulled Jesse onto the floor and then onto the blanket.  With the rest of the blankets she covered him in several layers.  Knowing that her body heat would help warm him she crawled under the blankets with him.  She held on to him tightly in hopes of warming his chilled body.  She rubbed him from head to toe with her hands. 
Finally
,
he started to warm up and
move around a little. Katie
laid
her head on his chest again.  His heart was beating stronger.  His breathing was almost normal.

Sh
e could still smell the alcohol on his breath. 
Katie started to cry.  Even though she was
infuriated
with him about the whiskey, she realized she loved him beyond belief.
  If he made
it
through this
, she would make sure they
worked through this
.
She wasn’t about to lose him.

She stayed with him the rest of the night. When he woke the next morning Katie was lying next to him propped up on her elbow looking at him.

“Good morning,” he said sheepishly
trying to avoid her gaze
.

“Jesse Danvers, do you realize you almost died last night?” 

“What?” He asked
bleary-
eyed
.

“You passed out down here with no fire in the fireplace.
You’re just lucky that
I came down to see why it was so cold.  Jess, I found you with your heart barely beati
ng. You were hardly breathing.  It took me
most of
the night
to warm you.
” She sat up still staring at Jesse.
“
And why?  Because
of
you
r
affair with the whiskey.
Why couldn’t you have come to me instead of the damn alcohol?
”

“You stayed with me?” Jesse asked.  He was still groggy from the ordeal
and not really hearing what Katie was saying
.

“Jesse, I am not going to lose you to a
lcohol! 
I love you too much!” she yelled at him.

Jesse was too hung over and too tired to listen to her.  He fell asleep again.

She slapped his face demanding, “Jesse, wake up.  Do you hear me?!”

“Leave me alone.  I want to sleep\.” was his response.

Katie was determined to find his whis
key supply.  She got up and stomped
to the store.  She started looking behind
shelves but found nothing. It was beginning to seem that he had it stashed somewhere else, when
she pulled
out some shelves that were against the outside wall.  And there it was.  In a small closet
,
she found six cases of whiskey.  She grabbed the first box and took it to the garbage dump in the gully.  She
hurled
the box
as hard as she could
.  It hit the other garbage shattering the glass bottles inside. She
made five more trips.  She sighed with
relief
to know that all Jesse’s booze
was gone.

She turned around to see Jesse standing in the doorway of the lodge.  He was blocking her entrance
back
into the lodge.  He
stood there glaring at her.  His
stare
frightened Katie
for a second, but she was going to stand her ground
.
She was determined to bring back the man she had grown to know and love.

“Why did you do that?” He
glowered
at Katie. 
“
Without the whiskey I have nothing left. 
Nothing at all.
I’ve lost my music, my
son,
you
,
and now
you’ve taken
away the
only thing that could take away the pain
of all that loss
.”

“Jess don’t y
ou see? 
We should be helping each other. But, f
or some reason y
ou f
elt you couldn’t come to me so that we could deal with Matthew’s death
together
. Instead y
ou turned to the damn alcohol.
I don’t understand.
How could you think the alcohol could help more than me? It feels like you betrayed me.
”

Jesse’s expression changed from anger to regret.
His posture changed from defiant to submissive.

Katie saw the change in her love. She went from
being
afraid
of Jesse
to
having empathy for him
.
  She went to him and put her arms around this defeated man
.  “You
haven’t lost
me.
  I love you.” She looked into his eyes.
“We
can work this out.”

Jesse collapsed in her arms sobbing
. 
As they sat huddled in the doorway,
Sadie came to them tail wagging. She gave Jesse a big wet doggy kiss.  “See Jesse you have me
and
Sadie. He put his arm around the lab.  Katie kissed him on the cheek.

Jesse spent the next two days sleeping off the effects of the alcohol and the hypothermia.  He didn’t want to eat, but Katie insisted.  She
also made him drink water; a
lot
of water.

When
Katie awakened the third morning
after his binge
, she heard Jesse in the shower. She resisted the urge to join him.  She missed the man
that she had fallen
in love with.  She was determined to get him
back.  But right now she had to be the strong one in the relationship
and he had to know she was serious
about working out their feelings together
. S
he went downstairs to make coffee
.

Jesse came downstairs a few minutes later.  Katie went to kiss him, but he stopped her saying, “First I have to do something for us.”  He took her by the hand and led her to the store.  He went behind the desk that held the
dead
radio.  From
one of
the drawers there, he brought out two bottles of wine.  “This is all the alcohol I know of. I swear.”  He took the bottles to the sink and poured the contents down the drain.  When it was all gone, he set the bottles on the counter and turned to Katie.

She kissed him. “Jess,
now
we have to talk.  I mean really talk.”

She poured them
each
a cup of coffee and they went to sit at a table in the dining room.  They sat and stared at each other until Jesse finally started.  “Katie.  I am so sorry.  All of this is my fault.  I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me.”

Katie reached across the table and held his hand.  “
Jesse Danvers, I could never hate you.
You have to know that none of what
has
happened was your fault.  It was no one’s fault.  It just happened.”

Jesse pulled his hand away.  “Matthew’s dying was all because of me.  I should have never let you carry all that stuff from the cabin.  And, that first snow, I threw you into the snow.  You hit the ground hard.” He held his head in his hands.

“The doctors told me I couldn’t father a child.  There must have been a genetic reason.  My genes doomed our son from the beginning.  Katie however you look at it, the death of our son was my fault.  You don’t have your son now because of me.”
He kept his head down, not looking at Katie.

“No Jesse – that’s not true!  You have to understand that in most cases miscarriages happen for no apparent reason.  Nobody ever knows why.
 
You cannot blame yourself.  I don’t blame you.”

“We don’t have our son with us now.  There has to be blame somewhere.”  Jesse
, with tears in his eyes,
looked at Katie.

“Jesse, i
f you have t
o blame someone, blame God. He had a plan for Matthew that we don’t know right now
.” 
Jesse got up and went to Katie.  They hugged.  The healing had started for the couple.

VISITORS

January started cold and snowy and stayed that way the entire month.  Carrying wood
inside
was a never ending job.  On really frigid nights, Katie and Jesse would drag a mattress downstairs and sleep in front of the fire.  Sadie loved it when she could sleep next to her masters.  Katie continued to try to persuade Jesse that the death of their son had nothing to do with him.  Slowly Jesse started to believe her.  In his grief, however, he couldn’t bring himself to make love to his lady.

One cold and snowy night, Jesse lay asleep with Katie in front of the fireplace.  A loud snap of a burning log woke him.  He looked over at the woman sleeping beside him.  “How could I have been such a fool?
”
he thought.  He softly spoke to Katie, “I know now that I should have shared my grief over Matthew with you.  Can you forgive me?  It’s just that sometimes those old habits haunt my mind and I find it so hard to open myself up to the one I love.  In my head, the booze made it better, but I know that it doesn’t.  It
makes it worse.  So much worse.”
  He ever so softly kissed her cheek.  “You have become so important to me these past
months;
I don’t want to do anything to lose you.  I promise to share my feelings, both good and bad, with you from now on.”

Katie had also awoke with the snap in the fire, but she had stayed still thinking Jesse would go right back to sleep.  She wasn’t expecting to hear him open up like this.  She was so touched that she opened her eyes and took his face in her hands.  “Jesse, I love you so much
,
words can’t describe how much.”

They kissed and held each other until they were both asleep. 

February brought
a few days where the temperature went a few degrees above freezing.  The clouds broke and the sun came out.  It didn’t provide much warmth but at least it brightened Katie and Jesse’s spirits.  There seemed to be renewed hope in their demeanor.
  Katie could see that Jesse was
coming
back to her from his dark, scary place.
That night by the fire had been the beginning.

Early one morning when they were sleeping in the lodge lobby, Jesse woke to a noise at the door.  He looked at Sadie but she hadn’t responded to anything.  He thought that he was probably just dreaming, when he he
ard it again.  He looked out the window in
the door and there looking back at him were the wolves
.  How magnificent they are he thought.  They just stood there looking at Jesse and wagging their tails high in the air. 
He recognized this behavior as an expression of welcome among pack members.  Did they consider him as a member of their pack?  Jesse shook his head as he thought how ridiculous that seemed.  But then there they were, looking directly at him and wagging their tails.

Katie woke up and
went to see what Jesse was looking at.  She
saw the wolves looking into the lodge.  She looked at Jesse watching them.  He
finally
was at complete peace.  He looked at her with new fire in his eyes.  “I love you Katie Warner.  Can you forgive me for being so self-absorbed for so long?”  He drew his hand along the side of her face and kissed her ever so
tenderly
.

“I’d like to thank those wolves for whatever they were telling you just now. 
I saw the old Jesse Danvers come back to me.” 
She kissed him.  “There is nothing for me
to forgive.  You had to grieve
your own way.  I just wish you could have included me more.”