Part II: November 2000

Fantastic News

I pondered my situation as the cold crept over my exhausted body. I was standing on tiptoes on a frozen moose head with 40 below air flowing up my back. My hand holding the hammer was becoming so cold and numb I was expecting to feel the hammer bounce onto my cranium any minute and I was drooling worse than Boris waiting to be fed. The drool was freezing instantly into my beard and hanging in two icicles that were on a fast track down my neck. My beard was frozen to my jacket collar so I had to keep my neck tilted to avoid ripping my beard out. This was probably not the smartest thing I had ever done.

It was when the hammer fell from my frozen fingers and hit me on the head, pulling the bobble hat clean off my head, that I let go of the ridge beam and jumped clear of the scaffolding. I slipped on an off cut of 2x4 and rolled into a snow bank headfirst. My eyes were shut but I could hear the devastation the ridgepole was doing to my walls as it smashed earthwards. It's very hard to move when you're wearing everything you own but I rolled around in the snow bank and finally became vertical. My mouth was full of snow because my bottom lip was sagging so much with the weight of six 3-inch nails stuck to it. My teeth thought I was eating really cold ice cream and a powerful headache arched across my skull. I was exhausted. The 40 below air was sapping my strength, burning my ears and freezing the snow I was covered in onto my skin.

I wanted to lie down in the snow and give up, not to be discovered until someone drove into the yard and punctured their tyres on my mouth. It was then that Brent appeared out of nowhere on his dog sled. 'It's 45 below for Christ sake,' Brent said, looking at me very strangely. I stood up and said 'Ugggghhhhhhh'. His dogs, obviously scared out of their wits, took off into the trees. Brent gave chase, yelling all manner of obscenities about the English, and returned five minutes later with his quivering dogs. 'That got me sweating,' he said, 'I hate sweating at 45 below.'

Once Brent had stoked the stove to the hilt, boiled some water and released me from the six nails he said, 'Congratulations, you're going to be a father.' I wanted to say 'What?' but only managed a pathetic 'Uh?' because my tongue was swollen worse than a two-week dead toad. Bridget had called him on the bush phone and asked him to relay the message.

Brent has just left, my tongue is extremely sore and I have no skin on the inside of my bottom lip. I always thought the moment I found out we were going to have a baby would be perfect. Bridge would one day come home from a sneaky trip to the doctors with a radiant glow. I would ask her if she was alright and she would smile and say something like, 'I've never been better. We're going to have a baby'. I would then hug her jubilantly and lay my hand on her stomach in a protecting manner. Bridge would say, 'Oh, don't be silly, I'm alright', then go to the fridge and make strawberry jam and pickled herring sandwiches with a side dressing of gerkins.

I never dreamt in my widest nightmares that I would be looking like a frosted garden rake when I heard the news, or that I would not be able to hold Bridge in my arms. That's the worst thing of all. I can't even see her. See if she is alright, see if she has everything she needs or if she is eating a strawberry jam and pickled herring sandwich with a side dressing of gerkins. What can I do?

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