Edie Kiglatuk's Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

his teeth. She could tell from the way the sound of his breath moved that he was shaking his head.
    â€˜Hold while I check the plane schedule and the forecast.’ Waiting, Edie dug around in her pannier, drew out a sheet of polyurethane, took out her knife and hacked off a rough square.
    The phone crackled and for a moment she could hear the faint intimations of another call, two voices speaking in some language she didn’t understand, then Sammy’s voice tinkled through the handset.
    â€˜Edie, there’s a blizzard coming.’
    â€˜Yeah.’ Holy walrus, the man could be irritating. ‘Looks like one of those spring blow-overs.’
    â€˜We can’t send a plane until it’s gone through.’
    â€˜Air ambulance from Iqaluit?’
    â€˜I checked already. They’re weathered out.’
    Edie scrolled through the options. ‘We get a medic here we might be OK. Robert Patma could make it on a snowbie.’
    Silence on the phone, then another voice:
    â€˜Kigga.’ It was Joe. Edie felt her body give a little. Kiggavituinnaaq , falcon, his nickname for her. He always said she lived in her own world up in the air somewhere. Strictly speaking she wasn’t his stepmother any more, not officially anyway. Still Kigga though.
    â€˜Robert Patma left for the south yesterday. His mother was killed in a crash, dad’s in hospital. They said they’d send a temporary nurse but no one’s shown up.’
    Edie groaned. ‘They’ as in feds, held to be responsible for everything and nothing, as in, ‘The spirits were angry with my sister so they made sure the feds didn’t get her treated for her TB in time.’
    â€˜That gets out, Autisaq can forget its guiding business.’ She was angry, not with Robert, but with a system that left them all so vulnerable.
    Joe said: ‘Right.’ He sounded impatient with her for focusing on such a thing, even for a moment. ‘But your fellow’s breathing, right?’
    â€˜Just about. If we can stabilize him and stop the bleeding . . .’
    â€˜You got any plastic?’
    â€˜I already cut a piece.’
    Some energy passed between them. Love, admiration, maybe a mixture of the two.
    â€˜Gonna pack the clinic’s snowbie and come myself,’ Joe said. ‘Meantime, if the blizzard blows over, they’ll send the plane. Keep doing what you’re doing and don’t give him anything by mouth.’ His voice softened. ‘Kigga, nothing you can do’s gonna make it worse.’
    â€˜Joe . . .’ She was about to tell her stepson to be careful, when she realized he’d already hung up.
    Edie went back to the two men, pulled out the bivvy from Taylor’s trailer and in a few minutes had it up and over the injured man. It had started snowing. In a couple of hours the blizzard would be upon them. Pushing Taylor back, she leaned over Wagner’s face, fingered his neck for a pulse and temperature, took the square of polyurethane from her pocket, opened up his fleece with her knife and tamped the plastic over the wound. A small thought scudded across her mind. Only three days ago this stout little man thought he was setting out on a grand adventure, something to boast about at the clubhouse bar back in Wichita. The odds on Felix Wagner ever seeing the clubhouse again had just lengthened considerably. She turned to Taylor.
    â€˜Do everything you can to make sure no air gets into the wound or the lung could collapse. I’m going to get a snow shelter up. The blizzard goes big, this bivvy won’t hold. Anything changes, call me, OK?’
    Taylor said: ‘You’re not going to look for whoever did this?’
    Edie bit back her irritation. One thing she couldn’t abide was a whiner.
    â€˜Look, do you want to play detective or do you want your friend to live?’
    Taylor sighed. She watched him disappear into the bivvy, then drove the snowbie to the old drifts