First snow cloaked Calgary overnight on Friday, October the 13th.

Daya glanced out of her rental basement window at the frosted lawn, ignored the forecast and shrugged into a black hoodie. Then she jogged to VITAL community center where she worked as a fitness instructor, just like she did every morning. First snow on Friday the 13th, big stinking deal.

The soccer fields reflected the predawn light at her, coloring the world gray. The air steamed with her breath. VITAL loomed ahead, squat and sprawling. Lights should flood from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the library any minute now, fooling her senses into ignoring the winter chill... or at least she hoped they would. 

The building, however, remained dark this morning, and the wind nipped through her clothes. She picked up the tempo. Since her feet pounded the frozen ground faster, her not bad, not bad, not bad mantra banged inside her skull more urgently. These were the words she lived by. They  helped her cope with her freezing toes, her life in general and her polite coworkers.

And truly, her life was not that bad when she skidded to a stop at an unexpected obstacle—

A lone guy who was crossing the parking lot with his shoulders hunched, his head bowed, jerked his head toward her... right when one of his feet lifted to step on the curb. It slipped off, sideways, on the icy concrete. He yelped, flapped his arms in the air, fighting for balance, and tumbled by her feet on the pavement.

And, yes, that was when she skidded to the full stop in front of the unexpected obstacle in her routine. Now, here was someone whose day was starting out badly.

Blasted Friday the 13th at work!

Her mind searched for a charitable way to describe the sight. A beached whale? Starfish with legs? An unhappy panda?

"Are you okay?" she asked, leaning over him. "Sorry, I didn't mean to spook you. Normally, no one shows up this early..." Except whoever turns on the lights in the library.

Maybe she should have given him a wide berth and let someone else handle it, but she was the first on the scene. It might have even been her fault. And she couldn't get rid of the impression that she knew him from somewhere. Not trained him no, but—

So she extended a helping hand.

Not that she expected to pull the fallen hero back to his feet: the physics objected with vehemence. Daya was five-three in her running shoes. The guy obviously drank every glass of milk his momma gave him. On top of winning the height game, he wrapped himself in pounds of winter gear for the arduous trek from the car to the side entrance of the VITAL, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

He grabbed her hand, making her wrist and half of the forearm disappear inside his rated-for-outer-space-exploration mitt. He squirmed, she braced—and ta-da!—he sat up.

"Are you okay?" she repeated, impatient for the yes that would let her off the hook.

"Oof," he said midway through a valiant attempt to bend further forward at the waist. "No, I'm not okay. My foot's in agony."

"Then get up, go home and ice it," she said. "You know the drill." Okay, this sounded a little rude, but they were lingering in the cold at five in the morning, for  goodness' sake!

"Elevate, ice, something, something sort of thing," he murmured.

The mustard-yellow toque he had pulled over his ears could not have flattered his complexion at the best of times. Under the harsh parking lot's lights and in a combo with sweat beading on his forehead, his pallor alarmed her. Pained wincing didn't help her peace of mind either. Despite herself, she started to worry about her martyr.

He proved to be a chatty martyr though. "As much as I like the idea of turning ice from foe to a friend, I doubt it's going to do much."

"Trust me, it works," Daya said after she sorted out the foe-friend-ice parallel. "I have loads of experience with injuries. Nothing's better than ice. Go home."

Please, go home.

As an answer, he clutched her arm, while patting the ground with his other hand. She didn't think her recommendation required this much pondering: get up, go home, put some ice on. Or not. Whatever.

"Are you inviting me to sit down and have a medical debate or what?" A perfect thing to do on a frosty Friday for a proud owner of a bottom padded with down feathers. Her butt sported new materials designed for sprinting, not lounging in the snow banks.

"Ah, no. Glasses." With the helpless squint of a near-sighted man, he swapped the wince for an apologetic smile. "Sorry. Don't mean to hold you up. I'll call an ambulance."

What a drama queen, a helpless, dangerously overdressed drama queen! Also, did he tutor lab puppies on how to tilt head to one side and gaze at strange girls with helpless adoration?

Daya sighed, the rusty humanitarian gears in her heart starting up. "I'll wait with you until help arrives." By the book, yes.

She freed her hand from his hot grip and rummaged through the snow. The snowflakes coated her hand like poplar fluff, deep enough for his stupid glasses to sink without a trace.

A vein pulsed on her temple. Oh, please! She was not a surgeon searching for shrapnel inside a patient's heart. Which would have been far more fun.

Her fingers finally bumped into a solid object, the wire-rimmed glasses. "Success!"

After tapping the snow off, he restored the glasses on his nose. And jerked them off. "Ouch. The bloody thing is cold!"

Genius. "New to Calgary?"

"What?" He shook the mitts off and rubbed the glasses between his palms before slipping them back into place. The lenses matched the shape of his full-moon face, so three circles stared at her owlishly. "Oh, yes, yes. Started this job three months ago, because of... nevermind. But how did you..?"

"The Michelin tire man fashions. That toque on your head so horrifying you must've purchased it in a panic after you saw the snow in the forecast."

"Bingo." He rubbed the knitted hat in question against his temples, as if mentioning it gave him a headache.

The long-fingered hands with neatly trimmed nails were probably the only trim thing about him. His cheeks, chin and neck hinted at a generous layer of natural padding under the clothes.

"I better call for help." He searched the nooks and crannies of his parka'd person and came up empty, except for his car keys. "Ah, you don't have a cell handy, ah...ma'am?"

Oh slow down, lady-killer! What girl doesn't just love being called ma'am?

"Forget it, pal." If she was roped into helping, she'd rather be in a warm car than sitting with him in the snow waiting on an ambulance. And the ambulance cost an arm and a leg... and she could no longer call him a complete stranger. Instead, he became a whole-lot-of-helpless stranger. "Give me the keys, I'll take you to the trauma center. You need it."

"I thought ice was the answer?"

She exhaled, white steam pouring out of her mouth, the next best thing to spitting fire.

He blinked at her before handing over the keys so trustingly that it made her think of all things rural, apple pies and grain elevators. Except, an aura of a big city clung to him. "My car is—"

"The only one in the parking lot?" The generous parking lot in front of VITAL was empty on account of it still being before the opening hours. Except for one car, a silvery Hyundai SantaFe, in the farthest corner reserved for the employees.

He snorted, winced and snorted, humor and pain fighting over control, humor winning. That leg wasn't broken, Daya figured, but better get a doctor's opinion, and the sooner the better.

She jogged across the parking lot to the car, and popped the driver's door. The first thing that caught her eye was his cell phone wedged into the cup-holder. With a sigh, a chuckle and a slight eye-roll, Daya scaled the too-tall driver's seat. Her feet barely reached the pedals, but she'd deal with it later.

She drove over, shoved the passenger's seat all the way back for him, helped him up, ran around the car, hopped back behind the wheel, and adjusted the seat.

Meanwhile, the slip-and-fall victim plucked the cell out with a muttered "Oh, here it is..." He secreted it away, as inconspicuous as a hot-air balloon on the passenger side.

The second eye roll lacked the subtlety of the first. She pulled the car out of the parking lot, biting her lips, ignoring his recycled faintly apologetic smile, the puppy one. Not bad, not bad, not bad...

***

"Mike," he volunteered after a few streets of silence, just before they merged onto the main drag leading out of the Heatherton Heights suburb.

The traffic had not picked up yet, so she glanced his way to see that he was wriggling out of his parka. The toque peeked out one of the half-dozen pockets unashamed of its ugliness.

Daya Dhawan, she nearly said, even though she had not the slightest desire for him to call her Daya Dhawan or Miss Dhawan, like her coaches, her fellow skaters, and her teachers. "Daya."

"Pretty," Mike said.

"Sums up my mother's hopes for me, a pretty name for a pretty daughter."

He produced another throaty snort. "My mom must have aspired for me to stand out with my oh-so-rare name. Mothers dream big, eh?"

"Mike's not that bad. Everyone has a friend named Mike. The memories warm people up to you, and stuff." She was also warming up to the car's purr, babble on the radio, and the comfortable lump in the seat next to her. Did she miss having someone to talk to that much?

Mike had said something Daya had missed, as she sped up into the Deerfoot Trail exit over SantaFe's passionate objections. They built this SUV for bulk, not the juice. She kept her foot on the gas to put them behind a dirt-caked eighteen-wheeler that splattered her windshield with slush for her trouble.

Once she was comfortable with the freeway, she darted a side-way glance at Mike. Like his SUV, he seemed to run low on juice, his head lolling against the headrest, a painful grimace on his face. Oh, come on! Don't swoon!

She blurted out the first thing that popped into her head, "You know, Mike, it's dangerous to hand over your keys to strangers."

The neurotic scraping of the wipers ruined her light tone, but he squeezed out a smile, an encouraging sign. And it made her smile in return, like yawning does.

"You aren't a shoe-in for grand theft auto. The way you drive, I can catch you even on a broken foot," Mike said.

"Want to try it? I can push you out of the car no problem."

He brought his hands together, pleading. "Mercy, please, mercy!"

"Or I could be kidnap — Oh, nuts!"

A red Toyota cut in front of her on the right, then zipped into the left lane. She gripped the wheel tighter, till her knuckles turned white, controlling the impulse to race.

"You're not a stranger." Mike acted oblivious to the people driving like bats outta hell. "Not a complete one at any rate. I see you running up and down the hill from the library windows with the boot camps every afternoon. Heh, I keep thinking, this lady must really like that damn hill."

"Hill sprints," Daya supplied the correct word. That's why the guy looked familiar. She must have seen him around the VITAL. Did you unknowingly turn on the lights for me every morning?

"Hill sprints it is. Even thinking about it hurts more." His eyes fixated on the foot. "Now I know how it feels to be wounded in battle."

"What?!"

"Oh! I often wondered. I play video games, and my characters... well, they get hurt a lot." Mike shrugged. "Now I know. The pain expands, like I have a walrus' flipper made of lead. I don't know how it even fits in the boot."

"Take the boot off." A frown pulled her brows together. "Can you, or should I pull over and help?"

Please say yes, I can do it... The morning commuters swarmed Calgary downtown, the apartment buildings closed in on the narrow streets around Chuimir's Medical Center. The last thing she wanted was to look for street parking this close to their destination.

"No need, we're almost there." Mike pointed at the GPS. "Plus, I won't be able to pull it back on to walk to the clinic."

"I'll grab a wheelchair, get you in, then drive back to VITAL, so you don't have to pay for parking here. You can call me once they are through with you."

"A wheelchair... ye gods." He yelped and muttered while wrestling with his boot, then sulked through the rest of their epic journey, the parking at the medical center and her punching the numbers into his cell. Weirdly, he expressed no concerns about lending her the car.

***

When she brought the wheelchair down to SantaFe, Mike turned sourer than curdled milk for paneer cheese.

"Maybe I can hop or something?" he asked hopefully.

His sourness spread to her like the smiles did beforehand. Gosh, what's with the manic-depressive tandem? She had to break out of it. "Stop being a baby, it's only 15 minutes for drop-off."

The big-sister voice worked its magic. Mike hopped out of the car seat into the chair, while she steadied it for him. The chair groaned. The entryway was shoveled and sanded, but she still had to put her hamstring into pushing him inside.

The tenuous sense of emotional connection intensified with being linked through an object, the chair, a voice in her mind whispering about samsara and past lives. Mike twisted laboriously, straining his double chin. "Daya, look—"

"This is the triage line, they will get you assessed, it should take about four hours from here. Busy today, with the first snowfall, but it would take longer in a hospital." She parked him behind two other walk-ins. "I've got to run."

"Technically, you've got to drive." He caught her hand before she made her escape. "Sorry for sulking. I imagined the worst: my mother flying in to care for an invalid. It messed up with my mood. I'm sorry."

She nodded. "I would be grumpy too if my mom parachuted down."

"You're an angel."

If she was an angel, he was cherubic.

The indoor fluorescent lights changed his hair from muddy-brown to fair with a reddish tint, the one that drugstores call strawberry-blond when they pack it in tubes. The lighter brown eyes went with it. They reflected light back at her, not absorbed it like she was used to seeing in her family.

Like her, Mike had started off better than many, at least as far as his looks went, and like her, he ended with a not too bad of a deal, courtesy of pasta, chips and whatever junk.

In ten years he'll be a blob.

Hot waves of shame flooded her face at once. Did her job make her into a bitch? She had wanted to become a fitness instructor when things didn't pan out. Thinking of others' problems was supposed to help her, take her to the next level.

Instead, she turned to snap judgments, just like the coaches who summed her up on the spot. It too will pass. In ten years I'll be forgotten, and I will forget.

"See you in a few hours, Mike," she said more gently than she had intended.

***

Daya drove back to VITAL in half the time, because the traffic was light from the downtown core to suburbia.

The parking lot in front of VITAL filled with the early-morning fitness enthusiasts. The streetlights were still on, but there was enough daylight to see the three soccer fields and the slope climbing toward a high school and a mall. Straight ahead, the land dipped towards a large storm-pond.

She faced the rising sun, stretched and emptied her mind of worries until her phone's alarm buzzed to announce her first client, a new mother with baby weight to lose.

The woman arrived right on time, and, once inside, waved the number on the scale away. "Never mind that! Look here!" She patted under her chin. "No more flab. I feel like a goddess!"

The job did not feel so bad after that. Daya gave the clients thumbs up, talked to them, made notes, all the usual things.

But her thoughts kept drifting back to Mike. His face swam up in her imagination. She mentally chiseled away the extra padding from his cheeks and wondered what regimen could have worked for him if he were her client...

Definitely not cardio, at least not for a while... she thought once he had called, and she had returned to pick him up at the medical centre.

Mike hopped on crutches between the injured, the relatives and the friends toward her, with an embarrassed grin that tugged at heartstrings she had forgotten she had.

Just as he smiled with his Hi, her phone vibrated, eager to share its message.

She popped it out of the sleeve pocket, ran over the polite words twice. Once they turned into reality, Mike, his crutches, the crowd, the room, and the rest of the unsentimental city fell away from her.

While she was playing at saving this bird with a broken foot, her life nose-dived to shit in a dumpster fire. Lips flapping fish-like in a desperate bid to release the lock in her throat, Daya struggled to pull a breath in.

This is bad. Real bad.