Rescue
When I was a teenager I worked with a volunteer Search and Rescue organization. I had a pager and was paged in the middle of the night. There was hiker lost on the mountain and a bad storm was coming in. I was not looking forward to seeing my team because my team leader was also my girlfriend, who I was having a fight with at the time. However, we really didn't get a choice in the matter so I got dressed, grabbed my gear and showed up at the Sheriff's office.
There we were bussed out to the camp grounds he'd left from and headed out. We searched for hours, all five of us carrying heavy packs and straining our ears to hear over the increasingly nasty sounding wind. I directed the others in the right direction as the storm really began to lay into us. I saw a flash of orange and my friend, Mike, helped me uncover the guy. with the way the wind and snow was going there was no chance of making it back to the campgrounds, but luckily there were some caves near by, probably what our hiker was aiming for. Mike and I carried the guy in there as the others began gather snow to make a "door" for the cave. once we were good and properly set up, my girlfriend and team leader, Emily, set up a fire. Me, Mike, and Xavier drew straws to see who would help warm up our victim. The best way to counter hypothermia is not a fire, but body heat. Xavier drew the short straw. He stripped down to his skivies and climbed in the bag with the guy. We'd assessed his injuries before moving, and except for his hypothermia, he seemed to be fine an hour or so into the night, with the wind still howling outside, our hiker woke up and blushed more than Xavier did. He talked to everyone, including me. He seemed to sense I was uncomfortable with my girlfriend/leader. I explained that we'd been having a fight, and even though I knew by now it was stupid, I didn't want to apologize, because I still thought I was right.
He told me that love made us into idiots for a reason. If we use logic when we're in love we won't get anywhere. Love isn't about right wrong or anything. He kept going on about romance at the top of his voice. I met Emily's eyes, we smiled at each other, I mouthed "I'm Sorry" and we slept next to each other.
When dawn broke, our hiker was sleeping. He'd been put on the basket and strappedin the night before, so we saw no point in waking him. We broke camp, and headed down the mountain. Xavier checked his vitals periodically as we approached camp, however when we were within visual range of the campsite, Xavier lost the pulse and we double-timed it the rest of the way in back to camp.
We turned him over to lifeflight who looked at us incredulously. They said he was dead. We told them it had just been a few minutes, and they contradicted us. They said he had to have been dead for hours. They took him to the hospital. My team was called in the next day. The hospital had said that he had definitely been dead since before we found him.