The blizzard was monstrous. Roads vanished beneath drifts—no going forward, no turning back. The front door wouldn’t budge, buried under ten feet of snow, impossible to dig out. This wasn’t a northern town; the houses weren’t built for nature’s fury. A proper disaster, no exaggeration.
And that night, Natalie’s father was dying.
A stroke. No ambulance, no rescue crew—just her, a young neurologist, armed with scraps of medicine and tools from home.
He’d collapsed in the kitchen, kettle in hand. She hadn’t seen it happen, but spotting a stroke was first-year med school stuff. Easy. Apoplexy. Without a hospital, he wouldn’t last till morning.
She rang everyone—police included. Same answer: *Call logged. Help will come when possible.*
No one was coming. Clear as day. But she’d hate herself if she didn’t try. Dragging him to bed was grueling. He only moaned, paralyzed. No anticoagulants. Aspirin, then IV prednisolone for the swelling. Blood pressure low—no bisoprolol.
Just wait now. Natalie moved like a machine. By the book. No emotion, just hollow inside.
Then the lights died. The flat turned claustrophobic—furniture swollen, air thick as syrup, sounds razor-sharp. Her father breathed. Raspy but steady. No groans—small mercies. Natalie herself might’ve stopped breathing.
“Dawn can’t come soon enough,” she whispered. Just to hear her own voice. To know she was still alive.
Then—a thunderous knock at the door.
Fear and relief hit at once. Help! Who else would brave this? She bolted, bashing into every corner, fumbling the lock. White torchlight blinded her.
“Hello,” said a voice from behind the glare. Hideously familiar.
Just the neighbour. A wretched man named Jeremy, stuck in perpetual adolescence. She loathed him. Forty going on fifteen—a layabout who’d vanish for months, then reappear with a neon-green mohawk or fresh bruises from brawling cops. No job, yet somehow alive.
For her—who’d sacrificed her youth to textbooks and anatomy sketches—his existence was an insult. Men like him didn’t belong in decent society.
She tried slamming the door. Jeremy wedged his foot in. Brazen. Criminal, almost.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“Move your foot,” she snapped.
She feared him, recoiled at every interaction.
“Fine.” He actually stepped back, lowering the torch. “Just thought you might need help.”
“Not from you.”
“So you *do* need help,” Jeremy deduced. “Got water?”
“For God’s sake—the kettle! Or the tap!” She tried shutting the door again.
Insufferable. But this time, he left a five-litre jug on the threshold before vanishing into his flat—the one whose thin walls failed to mute his drunken rants or mangled harmonica solos.
“Absolute rotter,” Natalie muttered.
Then it hit her. She hurried to the kitchen. The taps gasped dry. The water jug sat untouched, straddling her doorstep like a peace offering.
Later, Jeremy returned with batteries and a torch—things she, a doctor, hadn’t thought of. She should’ve been the neighbourhood saviour.
“I’d like to tell you to sod off,” she admitted as he handed her the lit torch.
“Do it,” he shrugged. “But first—how’s your dad?”
“Since when do you care?”
“Just answer.”
“Stroke,” she blurted. “Needs an ambulance…”
Jeremy spun on his battered slippers and vanished. Natalie was alone again. Dying father. Jug of water. Torch.
“He’s a rotter, Dad. Proper lowlife. Street drunk—you’d have arrested a battalion of his sort…”
The torch, though, was a godsend. She checked his blood pressure, found glucose, rigged an IV. The stove wouldn’t light—even the gas had quit.
She wanted to cry. A qualified neurologist, powerless to save the one person who mattered. All because of snow? What was the point of med school then? She’d never felt so useless.
Then Jeremy reappeared.
“You’re in trouble, Natalie. I know it,” he said, clad in some Arctic-grade fur, straight out of a vintage explorer’s photo. A stuffed duffel bulged with woolly sleeves and socks.
“I don’t trust you. But come in,” she relented.
“Invitation revoked,” he said, stepping inside. “We can get your dad out. You’re the doctor—oversee him. I can walk snow. He’s a fighter. Between us, we’ll manage.”
He unzipped the duffel. A thick sleeping bag unfurled.
“Bundle Uncle Vic—Victor—your dad in this,” Jeremy stammered, suddenly boyish. “Got splints?”
“Yes. I’ll set them,” she said briskly, surprising herself. Like hospital triage.
“Splints first, then the bag,” he ordered.
Natalie wasn’t used to orders. Usually, *she* commanded. But tonight, logic didn’t matter. She needed hope. And the man she despised most had brought it.
“What exactly are we managing?” she asked, fitting the neck brace.
“Half a mile to A&E,” Jeremy said. “If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed…”
“We’re *walking*? In this?!”
“Your med school didn’t cover snow treks. I can’t stick a needle in a vein. Swings and roundabouts,” he grumbled from under his shaggy hat. “Your dad’s spine?”
“Who?”
“Your *dad*,” Jeremy barked, digging out more gear.
“L5-S1 hernia, mild. Muscle relaxants advised,” she recited.
“Can I carry him two floors? Or need a stretcher?”
“Stretcher. Definitely.”
“Wait.” He disappeared into the dark stairwell.
Metal clanged below. Muffled voices. Too long. Then a shout:
“Piss off, you posh gits! And Ilya—show your face round here again, I’ll break your nose!” Classic Jeremy.
Natalie sighed. This wouldn’t work.
More clattering. More murmurs. Footsteps.
“Quiet now. No breaking anything,” Jeremy announced, reappearing.
People filed past him—the second-floor couple. Unpleasant sorts. Always skint. Natalie called them “the shamed ones.” Yet they’d crafted a stretcher from old pipes and a rain poncho. Sturdy.
They bundled her father into the sleeping bag, hoisted him up. Jeremy took one end, the couple the other.
“Hold the IV,” he commanded.
No arguing. For once, things happened without her effort. She clutched the IV; the neighbours bore the weight.
Chaos followed. Jeremy hauled the sleeping bag on plastic sleds like a draft horse. Natalie focused on keeping the glucose warm, shuffling on wooden hunter’s skis—miraculously stored by alcoholic Jeremy.
He plowed ahead on snowshoes like tennis rackets, never straying.
“I’ve got a profession too,” he said. “Geologist. Mostly desk work now. I’m old-school fieldwork. Hard to retrain.”
“Why’d you turn to drink then? No better options?”
He just shrugged. Silence held till they reached the dim A&E glow. Inside, among diesel generators and order, Natalie regained control, bossing paramedics, demanding scans. Jeremy, shaggy as a bear, gently reined her in.
Only when her father was wheeled away, the empty glucose bottle prised from her fingers, did she unravel.
Natalie slept on a sticky bench in a windowless corridor. Jeremy sat beside her, quiet, as if guarding something unseen in the hospital’s nocturnal hum.
Doors banged. Exhausted medics ghosted past. Time oozed like treacle. No dreams—the night had scraped her hollow.
“Natalie,” a night-shift doctor roused her. “Your dad’s stable. Well, as stable as post-stroke goes. Moved to Ward Five.”
“Thank you,” she croaked. “I mean…”
“Go home. Sleep. You’re a doctor—hellish week ahead. Rest while you can.”
She glanced around.
“There was a man with me… shaggy…”
“Ah, our superhero?” The doctor laughed, stinging her. “Brought in two critical cases already. Husband?”
“No,” she sighed.
A thought flickered: *Pity…*
