"Snowbound"

[roleplayguy2013]

Julian came to, reaching up to his face and finding blood. He tried to recall exactly what has happened. He remembered a car stopped in the middle of the snow covered mountain road; remembered descending steeply and being unable to stop; remembered hitting the car, losing control, and going over the embankment; and remembered shooting rapidly down the hill, between huge conifers, over uneven ground.

And that was it. He looked around the cab of the delivery truck. The windows were still intact and the doors had remained closed. That was good, as the temperature outside had been hovering around 20 degrees when he left the station three hours earlier. He wasn't cold, so he knew he hadn't been unconscious long. He unbuckled and, grimacing with pain, moved to one of the sliding windows, forcing it open.

The delivery truck was at the bottom of a wide gully, surrounded by three or more feet of powdery snow. He could see where he had descended the hill; the truck had miraculously shot down the hill without striking any of the big Douglas firs standing tall below the highway.

Then, something caught his eye. On the ground outside the truck there were tracks -- Human tracks -- passing by the front of the truck. He forced the door to slide open and found a woman sitting in the snow next to the front passenger wheel.

"My god," Julian called, locking the door open and leaping beyond the woman onto the snowy forest floor. "Are you okay, lady?"

She was unconscious and, like him, bleeding from the forehead. Julian tried to talk to her, tried to wake her with gentle shakes and very light slaps on the cheek, but to no avail. She had walked to his truck from ... from where ever ... so he assumed she wasn't hurt too badly.

He jumped back up into the truck, unlocked the bulkhead door to the freight compartment, and slid it open. He had been almost fully loaded, and the packages inside were, of course, in total disarray. He cleared the area in the front of the cargo section, then cleared the front section of one of the lower shelves. He laid out some empty shipping boxes on the shelf, creating a make shift cardboard mattress, then hopped back down to the ground to retrieve the woman.

He'd been expecting a heavier woman by the looks of her, but he would find out later that her large appearance was do to the multiple layers of clothes she'd put on while stranded on the highway above in a dead car. It was still a struggle getting her into his arms, into the truck, and onto the shelf, but Julian -- not a stranger to hard work nor to the gym's weights and exercise machines -- managed to get it done. He broke into the Emergency Kit and pulled out both an body heat blanket and a chemical hand warmer. He wrapped her up in the first, then activated the second and slipped it inside her outermost jacket.

"Lady...?" She was still out, and nothing seemed like it was going to wake her. Julian had other concerns, of course. He told her unnecessarily, "I'll be back. I'm just going to check your car."

He hurried back outside, closing both doors as he passed through them, and followed the tracks in the snow. He found the woman's car and knew, as he'd expected, that it was the one he'd hit on the highway. There was no one inside it and no tracks leaving, except for her. There was a back pack in the front seat and a suitcase in the rear; he grabbed them both and headed back to the truck.

He tossed the bags into the driver's compartment, then dropped into the driver's seat ... and looking up toward the sky and the being he'd always been conflicted about believing in, mumbled, "Please, God, oh please ... let this thing start."

He turned over the key ... and shrieked with joy as the truck's engine fired up. He cranked the heaters to full and aimed all of the vents toward the bulkhead door. He removed the bulkhead door key from the key chain and opened the door -- and found himself face to face with the woman he'd rescued ... after, of course, almost killing her.

"Hi."

 

[heartofcourage]

http://i928.photobucket.com/albums/ad130/boxno216/vladabeauty8.jpg

Running from her former life was not the way that Chloe Jennings saw her evening going. After a blow up fight with her boyfriend, she had packed up her belongings to make the long trek over the mountains back to her mother’s house. She didn’t care if she ever saw the arrogant asshole again. She was ready to move on, make a new start, and get away from the abuse that she’d been suffering for so long.

She hadn’t planned on the light snowfall that had started that evening to grow so thick though. Even with her heater cranked to the max and the thick down coat she was wearing, it was already freezing in the car. Her car wasn’t the best for this kind of travel either. The poor little Mustang could barely make it on dry pavement, let along a snow pack.

Her fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly, eyes narrowing as she tried to peer out at the white sheet that was falling around her. She was nervous, her heart hammering in her chest as she wondered what her best option was. Her car slid as it hit a patch of ice, a sharp gasp leaving her lips as she got it back under control and slowly slid to a stop.

She hadn’t seen another person for an hour, the town was nearly a forty-five minutes away. Trembling, Chloe felt the hot tears of frustration pricking at her eyes as she reached down to her purse on the floorboard to grab her cell phone. She hoped it still had service this far out into the mountains.

As she lifted back up, the phone in hand, she felt a jarring smack as her car lurched forward. She screamed, her head hitting the steering wheel as the entire vehicle spun around in a terrifying manner. Everything was a blur as the car slid down a steep embankment until it came to a jarring stop at the base of a thick fir tree.

She sat there in her seat stunned, trembling, trying to figure out what had just happened. Her head ached fiercely and reaching up to push her blonde hair out of her face, she found her fingers coated with blood. Staring at her fingers for a long moment, she struggled to comprehend what had happened.

Glancing to the side, she could see a truck further down the hill, resting against a crop of trees. A man was seated in the driver’s seat, his head back against the headrest and unmoving. Still trembling, she shoved her door open, stumbling from the car and making her way to the truck.

She felt faint, her head spinning as she slipped and slid down the snowy bank. Reaching the passenger’s side door, she knocked on the glass, peering inside as her knees shook like jelly. Her body soon slid down the metal side of the truck, crumbling into the snow. Oh, please don’t let me die, she thought as she lay there, staring up at the canopy of leaves as her vision went black.

The rumbling of an engine brought her back to reality. Her head was pounding, her mouth dry, but she was blessedly warm. Glancing down at the silver blanket that covered her, a frown on her face as she tried to figure out where she was. She saw packages all around her and she realized that she had to be inside the truck. Then a door slid open and she turned, watching as a man entered the space.

“Hi.” She found herself saying back, her head instantly going back to the hard surface beneath her as her vision spun. “My head hurts.” She mumbled, her eyes squeezing shut against the pain.

 

[roleplayguy2013]

"My head hurts."

Julian just stared at the woman for a moment, unsure of what to say. He hadn't expected a statement such as that. He'd expected something ... dramatic ... or maybe accusatory, since he had, of course, nearly killed her. It hadn't been his fault, or at least he didn't think it had been. Could he have avoided hitting her...? Parked -- no, stalled -- in the middle of a down grade covered with snow and ice...? No, of course not. But that didn't mean she didn't have every right in the world to throw a fit at him.

But ... my head hurts? That surprised him...

And then, finally, his brain gave him a slap in the face, and he jumped into action. He reached down to the first aid kit, then moved over to her, laying it on the empty shelf near her head as he said in a polite but nervous tone, "I'm not surprised."

It wasn't much, but it was all he could think of at the moment. He quickly began rummaging through the very well stocked kit as he pointed to her forehead and told her, "I'm going to deal with ... clean it up, bandage it."

Julian had taken several first aid classes over the years, not that he needed them for a simple bump and laceration. He very quickly dabbed away the cold-dried blood with alcohol swabs, apologizing for the sting; then, after seeing that the cut thankfully wasn't very deep, he pulled her hair back from her face and place a big bandage over it. There was nothing to it, and he was done in less than two minutes.

As he stepped back, he had one concern, of course: concussion. As he'd been fixing her wound, he'd searched his memory for the clues that someone had a concussion. He remembered nothing. Nothing but ... don't let the injured person sleep.

"My name is Julian," he said, stepping back into her field of vision and giving her a meek wave. Keep her talking, his brain was telling him. He was about to apologize for slamming his truck into her but decided instead to not bring that up until he'd concluded whether she was going to blame him or not. "This is my truck ... duh ... sorry, guess you figured that out. Oh! By the way ... no one calls me Julian. Jules."

He offered his hand out to her...

 

[heartofcourage]

Behind her tightly closed eyes, Chloe could hear the man bustling into action. Something he was moving around rustled as he rummaged around, her eyes opening slightly as he pointed to her forehead and told her that he was going to clean her up. She nodded, the action making her head ache even more.

She sucked in a sharp breath as he dabbed at her blood and wound with an alcohol swap. His apology was welcome but unnecessary. He had no reason to apologize about anything since he was trying to take care of her. Pulling her hair back from the wound, he placed a bandage on it and she gave him a weak smile.

“Thank you.” She said softly as he started talking again, moving into her line of vision and introducing himself. “Jules…” She murmured to herself, nodding slightly as she took his hand and gave him another smile.

“Chloe. Chloe Jennings.” She shook his hand and drew the blanket up to her chin to keep the chill away. “I didn’t mean to park my car in the middle of the road. It was struggling with the snow and I was about to call for help.”

It was then that she remember her cell phone. She had pulled it out of her purse and it had flung from her hand in the crash. "Umm...my phone must still be in my car. I had a bar of service up on the road. I don't know if it would have anything down here in the woods."

 

[roleplayguy2013]

Julian grimaced and shook his head. "My cell's got nothing. I doubt yours would, but ... I'll go see if I can find it. Maybe we'll get lucky. That'll wait a minute, though."

He returned to the first aid kit, rummaged through it again, and found a couple of packets of pain killers. He returned to the cab, found his bottle of water where it had been dumped to the floor, and handing both to her. "Your gonna want this. That bumps gonna start hurting pretty soon ... if it isn't already."

He turned away from her and looked at the mess in the cargo compartment. It bothered him that the disarray bothered him so. He'd just been in a wreck -- a potentially fatal crash -- and was now stranded at the bottom of a snowy gully, and he was upset that his load was upset ... really?

Julian was, his coworkers, anal about organizing his truck for each day's deliveries. He spent an extra ten minutes some morning going through the day's work, package by package, ensuring that they were organized in the exact order that they'd be delivered.

He justified the scrutiny with his on road performance. He could deliver 10, 15, sometimes 20% more packages per hour than the next most productive driver because his truck was so organized. The just-finished Christmas season had been treacherous for the drivers who just tossed their packages in their trucks and then, at stops, had to search around for what they were looking for.

Standing there now, looking at the mess, he grimaced ... then ... smiled with delight. All that work would have seemed for naught now that the packages were scattered all about, but it wasn't. "Thomas Street ... 125 Thomas Street, if I remember right. Green box."

He looked back at Chloe and caught her confused look. He smiled, explaining, "Sometimes I don't just look at the addresses ... I look at the packaging itself."

He starting rummaging through the mess, knowing that his clarification really hadn't been one at all. She probably thinks you're a nut, Jules.

He spent two or three minutes digging through the boxes, simply tossing some of them aside while neatly stacking some aside to be looked at later. Finally, he stood tall and turned, wearing a wide smile and holding a green box about two feet cubed ... with a photo of a sleeping bag on it. "Gregory Davis, 127 Thomas Street. I was close."

Julian set the box down upon the neat stack of packages and pulled it open. As he removed the plastic and fluffed out the sleeping bag, he looked to Chloe with a bit of a guilty look. "Do ya suppose Mister Davis is going to have a problem with this...?"

He set the sleeping bag on the shelf above Chloe and offered out his hands. "Let's get you inside that ... and then I'll go for your phone, 'kay?"

 

[heartofcourage]

Chloe felt a little dazed as she tried to focus on the conversation that was passing between herself and Julian. He was talking about going to find her cell phone and she shook her head, protesting that it would be foolish in this weather, but he was already turning towards the first aid kit and rummaging through it once again.

“Thank you.” She murmured as he handed her two pain killers and a bottle of water. She quickly tipped the pills back and washed them down with a small sip.

He was moving around the back of the truck as she set aside the water bottle. Tipping her head to the side, she tried to figure out just what he was doing as he started to stack boxes. They had just been in a horrible wreck and he was concerned with being…tidy?

Then he was talking to himself and she wondered if she wasn’t the only one to have hit her head. He seemed to be searching for something, a green box, but for what? As he pulled the box from a pile, she frowned in confusion as he spoke to it, turning back to her and pulling it open.

A sleeping bag. A blessedly warm sleeping bag. “I don’t think he’d have a problem with us using it.” She said softly as he placed the bag on a shelf and held out his hands for her.

“Oh, please don’t go outside. It’s getting really nasty out there.” She said absently as she reached out for his hand, noticing how strong his grip was as he carefully pulled her to her feet. The world spun for a moment and she squeezed her eyes shut as he steadied her. “Sorry. Everything’s just…spinning.”

 

[roleplayguy2013]

"Sorry," Chloe said, standing but unsteadily so before Julian. "Everything’s just…spinning."

Again, Julian thought concussion and chastised himself for not having paid more attention during his first aid classes. She doesn't have a concussion, he tried to convince himself, grasping her upper arms in both of his hands.

"Listen," he said softly, dipping down a bit to level their faces until she looked him in the eyes. "I don't want you to think I'm pulling a fast one ... or trying to take advantage of you. I'm not. But ... you have to get out of those clothes and get into this sleeping bag. You're wet, and I could warm this truck up to a hundred degrees and you'll never get warm in wet clothes."

He helped her take a step left so the shelf she'd been laying on was before him and said, "I'm going to make you a better bed here ... and I want you to get those things off. I promise I won't peek."

Julian didn't wait for her to respond yes or no to his demand. He knew she needed to do it -- strip down, at least until she was no longer wearing anything wet -- and he hoped that she knew she needed to do it, too. He laid out a few more of the empty, flat, corrugated cardboard boxes he kept on board for when customers didn't have one of their own, then spread the sleeping bag out upon it. He kept his back fully to her, not wanting her to think he was going to take a gander.

He wanted to, of course. With the scary drama of the crash and finding a woman sitting in the snow finally out of his system, he'd been able to take a moment and truly look at Chloe ... realizing finally that she was a remarkably beautiful woman. He would love to see her in fewer than the four or five layers of clothes she looked to be wearing.

But Julian had always been very respectful of women and, more importantly, simply didn't want her to think that he was just another ogling guy. So he finished making the bed, then turned back to the boxes -- not having any idea whether she was stripping down or not -- and started looking through them once more.

"I figure since I already stole a sleeping bag," he said, chuckling at his nervous attempt at humor, "I might as well keep on going."

He moved a few boxes aside, tossed a few bags of clothing items together onto a top shelf, then found another with an "Ah ha! I knew it was here some where."

Without turning, he held up a box with the Hickory Farms label on it, asking, "Hungry...?"

 

[heartofcourage]

Chloe stared at Julian as he insisted that she needed to strip down before she got into the sleeping bag. It sounded strange, but at the same time she also felt the chill of her wet clothing clinging to her arms and legs. She nibbled on her lower lip for a moment and slowly nodded her head, taking a step away from him as he turned his back to her.

Her fingers were trembling as she pulled at the snaps that held her down coat together. Slipping it off her shoulders, she pulled off her sweater and undershirt, leaving her standing in her black lace bra. Pushing her jeans down over her hips, she was shivering even though the truck was relatively warm. She was standing there with a man she didn’t know in nothing but her bra and a pair of her favorite short cut panties.

Even her socks were freezing, she realized as she toed off her tennis shoes and pulled her soaked socks from her feet. Her toes flexed against the steel floor of the truck as she watched him rummaging through his truck, searching for something. He seemed strange…but kind. She doubted her boyfriend would have done half as much for her as this stranger had.

She sat down where the sleeping bag had been spread out, glancing up at him as he held up a box from Hickory Farms. She couldn’t help but laughing softly, shaking her head until it made her dizzy yet again.

“Sure. Why not?” She asked, shrugging her shoulders as she gathered the blanket around her shoulders and watched as he cut into the box, treating it like it were a great feast. “So, how long until someone comes looking for you?”

 

[roleplayguy2013]

The Hickory Farms box had caught Julian's attention the moment it had come down the belt to be loaded into his truck. It reminded him of his childhood. He'd grown up in a lower-income household with a spendthrift father who seldom spent money on anything but necessities. If Julian had wanted a new toy or game and neither his birthday or Christmas was near, it had been his responsibility to earn the money for it, either picking berries at one of the local farms or mowing the lawns of the Old Folks in his neighborhood.

But Christmas was special, and each year his father took the whole family to the historic, downtown shopping district -- no strip malls for the old school, Old Man -- where they would listen to the carolers, look at the lights, buy their one single present for each of the other family members ... and select their large sized, Hickory Farms gift box.

Oh, the pepperoni and little foil packs of cheese and spreads and fancy crackers and mustards... To see the box before him open now made his eyes glaze over for the memories, and before he turned back to face Chloe, he inconspicuously reached a hand up to wipe the one single tear that got away off his cheek. They were special times that simply were no more, and Julian missed them more than anything else now gone from his life.

“So, how long until someone comes looking for you?”

Julian's stomach turned at Chloe's question, and he stopped his cutting and ripping at the boxes plastic wrap. He simply stood there for a moment, staring out at the pile of boxes. He peeked back first, to ensure she was decent -- he found her sitting on one of the bigger, heavier boxes, wrapped in the sleeping bag -- then turned to face her with a solemn expression on his face and offered her out a package of salty crackers.

"They won't," he said bluntly, then seeing her reaction quickly added, "I mean, they will ... but ... it won't be for a few days. You see, I'm an independent contractor, and..."

Julian was about to explain about how he, a FedEx Ground driver, was very much different that the FedEx Express drivers that most people saw in the television commercials. He was his own boss and operated with a great deal of flexibility and independence. Oh, FedEx designated his area of operation, of course, and set the standards he had to follow to ensure the customers were happy. But Julian leased his truck from the company; he set his own hours, choosing to work a lot or work very little; he could give or take deliveries to or from any other Ground driver that he could make a deal with, allowing him to either take a few days off or earn a lot more money.

That was why he was still so busy now, three weeks after the Christmas season. One of his work buddies was a ski bum, and two others liked to get away to Mexico for the sun and babes, rather than be here for the cold and snow. Julian had taken over their deliveries for the entire month of January, which had resulted in extra money in his wallet ... and being stuck in a snowy ravine on a route he simply didn't know well.

Instead of explaining all of that to her, he gave her the basics. "Today is Friday, which means there are no deliveries tomorrow. And this route ends just four miles from my house. So ... since I lease this truck and don't have to take it back to the building until Monday ... that's when they'll start to look for me ... look for us, I mean ... Monday."

He sat down next to her, his eyes on the Hickory Farms box; he didn't want to look her in the eyes. He felt guilty; he felt responsible. She'd been sitting in the middle of the road, sure. But he'd been the one who had driven her off into the ravine, where she could have easily been died ... and, unless they were lucky, still might.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday ... three days ... maybe more if they can't find us, he thought at he used the plastic knife to spread mustard on a cracker. What the hell have I done...

 

[heartofcourage]

Monday. The very word made Chloe’s heart clench tightly in her chest. She wasn’t a stupid girl. She knew what that meant and the thought did not settle well with her. If she was lucky, her mother would notice her missing and call her ex, but it was up to her ex to actually give her mother a straight answer.

Most assuredly, the situation was bleak. She watched Julian for a long moment, seeing the guilt in his eyes. He wouldn’t look at her and she wondered what was going through his mind. What had happened wasn’t his fault. In fact, it was probably her fault more than anything and she was truly sorry that this man had been pulled into it.

“Listen, Julian…” She said softly, drawing his gaze back towards hers. “I’m really sorry that all of this happened. I shouldn’t have stopped in the middle of the road. I should have known better.”

There. She’d taken the blame from him and made it her own. Silently taking the crackers that were offered, she took on and nibbled on it, her stomach rolling with the anxiety that was currently coursing through her. Her thoughts were all jumbled up, scrambled perhaps by the knock to the head that she’d sustained.

“So, ummm…since we’re together for a while, tell me more about yourself.” She ventured, extending the olive branch and hoping that he would take it.