The blizzard was frightful. The roads were buried—impossible to walk or drive. The front door wouldn’t budge, sealed shut by three feet of snow, and digging out was hopeless. This wasn’t a northern town, after all, and the houses weren’t built for such brutal whims of nature. A proper disaster, no jesting about it.
And that night, Evelyn’s father was dying.
A stroke. No ambulance, no rescue services to call. Just her, a young neurologist, and the meager stash of medical supplies at home.
Her father had collapsed in the kitchen while putting the kettle on. Evelyn hadn’t seen it happen, but diagnosing a stroke was beginner’s work. To her, it was obvious—cerebral haemorrhage. Without a hospital, he wouldn’t last till morning.
She rang everyone she could reach, even the police. The answer was the same: “Your call has been logged. Help will come as soon as possible.”
No one was coming, that much was clear. But she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try. She dragged her father to the bed with great effort, his body limp, only groaning in response. Anticoagulants were out of the question, so aspirin first, then intravenous prednisolone for the brain swelling. His blood pressure was low—no need for bisoprolol.
All she could do was wait. Evelyn moved like a machine, following protocols, textbook steps. No emotion, just emptiness inside.
Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, the power cut out. The flat went dark, claustrophobic. The furniture seemed to swell, the air thick as syrup, every sound sharp and loud. Her father breathed—raspy but steady. No moans, at least. Evelyn herself barely breathed at all.
“Just hold on till morning,” she whispered, just to hear her own voice—to know she was still alive.
And at that very moment, a thunderous knock rattled the door.
Evelyn was torn between fear and relief. Help had arrived—who else would be knocking? She rushed forward, banging into every obstacle in the dark, fumbling for the lock. When she yanked the door open, a blinding torchlight hit her eyes.
“Evening,” said a man’s voice from behind the glare—gratingly familiar.
It was just the neighbour. A wretched fellow named Howard, the archetype of perpetual adolescence. She loathed him. A forty-year-old man with the manners of a fifteen-year-old let loose from parental oversight. A layabout who’d roam like a wildman for months, then shave his head into a mohawk or dye his hair neon green, pick fights with constables, commit a hundred follies. He didn’t work. And yet, he lived.
For her, who’d spent her youth buried in anatomy diagrams and medical journals, his existence was an affront. Men like him didn’t belong in decent society.
She tried to slam the door, but Howard wedged his foot in. A brazen intrusion, verging on criminal.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
“Remove your foot,” she snapped.
She feared him—shrank away every time their paths crossed.
“Right,” he said, pulling his foot back and lowering the torch. “Just thought you might need help.”
“Not yours.”
“So you *do* need help,” Howard observed. “Got water?”
“Good Lord, there’s the kettle! Or the tap if it comes to it!” She scoffed, trying again to shut the door.
The nerve! But this time, Howard didn’t resist. Instead, he left a five-litre jug of water on the threshold and shuffled back to his flat next door—separated by a wall too thin to block his drunken howls, clumsy guitar strumming, or failed harmonica experiments.
“Impossible wretch,” Evelyn muttered.
Then it struck her. She hurried to the kitchen. Sure enough—the taps groaned, dry. The five-litre jug sat untouched, stranded on the border between her flat and the outside world.
Soon after, Howard returned with batteries and a torch. Something she, a doctor, hadn’t thought of. She should’ve been the one saving others, even just the neighbours.
“I’d like to tell you to go to hell,” she admitted as he handed her the torch.
“Go on, then,” Howard shrugged. “But how’s your father?”
“Were you drinking with him? Why do you care?”
“No. How is he?” he asked, straightforward.
“Stroke,” she blurted. “We need an ambulance—”
Howard spun on his worn-out slippers and vanished behind his scuffed door. Evelyn was alone again. With her dying father. A jug of water. A torch.
“He’s awful, Dad. Truly. A guttersnipe—you’d have rounded up a dozen like him…”
The torch, at least, was a godsend. She checked her father’s pressure, dug out a glucose drip, set up an IV. Tried the kettle—no luck. Even the gas had choked out.
She wanted to cry. A trained neurologist, helpless to save the one person she loved. All because of too much snow? What was the point of years of study, of residency? Never had she felt so powerless.
Then Howard reappeared.
“You’re in a bad way, Evelyn. I know trouble when I see it,” he said, dressed like an Arctic explorer from old black-and-white photos. A duffel bag bulged in his grip, stuffed with thick sleeves and woollen socks spilling out.
“I don’t trust you. But come in,” she relented.
“Invitation rescinded,” Howard said, stepping inside. “We can get your father out,” he explained. “You’re the doctor—you tend to him. I can manage the snow, more or less. Your dad’s a fighter. Between the three of us, we’ll manage.”
He unzipped the bag, pulling out a heavy sleeping roll.
“Bundle him in here—Uncle Arthur… Arthur William…” Howard stammered, awkward as a schoolboy. “Your dad,” he finally managed. “Got splints?”
“Yes. I’ll set them,” she said briskly, surprised how simple it felt. Like back in the hospital when emergencies rolled in and hands were few.
“Splints first, then the roll,” Howard ordered.
Evelyn wasn’t used to taking orders. Usually, *she* was in charge. But right now, she didn’t need logic or facts—just help, hope, solidarity. And somehow, the most insufferable man was offering all three.
“What exactly are we managing?” she asked, fitting the cervical brace.
“Half a mile to the A&E,” Howard said. “If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad with all these drifts…”
“You—we’re walking to hospital? Through *this*?” she gasped.
“Right. Bet they don’t teach that in med school,” he muttered under his shaggy hood. “I can’t stick a needle in a vein. Different skills, see? How’s—your dad’s spine?”
She hesitated, recalibrating—her father, the retired Royal Military Police colonel, reduced to “Uncle Arthur” by this man.
“L5-S1 herniation, mild. Muscle relaxants advised,” she recited mechanically.
“Can I carry him two flights? Or do we need a stretcher?”
“Stretcher. Absolutely.”
“Wait, then,” Howard said, vanishing into the dark stairwell.
Metal clanged below, muffled voices—agonisingly slow. Then a shout—
“Piss off, you posh gits! And you, Elijah, keep your nose out of my yard or I’ll break it!” Howard was in fine form.
Evelyn sighed. This was hopeless.
More clattering. Voices again. Footsteps.
“Keep it quiet, no smashing,” Howard announced, reappearing.
Figures filed past him. In the gloom, it took Evelyn a moment to recognise the couple from the second floor—the Thompsons. Hardly her favourites, always in some scrape or other. The sort she privately called “shameful.” But they had a stretcher: two old plumbing pipes and an army poncho lashed together. Solid enough.
They bundled her father into the sleeping bag, hoisted the stretcher. Howard took one end, the Thompsons the other.
“You handle the drip,” Howard commanded.
Evelyn didn’t argue. It felt almost easy, light even—decisions made without her, solutions appearing as if by magic. She held the IV; the neighbours carried the stretcher.
Then chaos. Howard hauled the sleeping bag on plastic sledges like a draft horse. Evelyn focused on keeping up, shielding the glucose bottle from the cold. For the first time, she walked on snow with wooden planks strapped to her feet—”hunting skis,” Howard called them, though why a layabout owned them was a mystery.
Howard forged ahead on snowshoes like oversized tennis rackets, never faltering.
“I’ve got a profession too,” he said. “Geologist. Mostly desk work these days, but I’m old-school.”
“Why the drinking, then? Couldn’t you—live properly?”They reached the hospital at last, her father was quickly admitted, and as dawn broke softly over the snow-choked town, Evelyn realised that even the most unlikely people could become heroes when it mattered most.
