A night at the cabin.

The thing is, the longer you stay away the harder it is to come back, but yet here we are.

The year started like any other, I was working and Austin was going to school, his last semester. It was a Friday night on late January, I was wrapping up work when a text came in, from my sister. "There's a possibility that we are going to L***'s cabin, we are doing canvas painting, hot tub, hanging out, anyways..., it would be just an overnight thing and then we would leave around noon to come back home...Let me know if you wanna go, we could share a room to sleep, plus you've never been to the cabin, it's really pretty up there." I replied back saying I would love to. We decided 5:40 PM at her house. I quickly finished up work, locked the office, and headed back home to pack the overnight bag.

Within the hour all the girls were in the car and we were on our way to the cabin. By that time, the sun had set already, you know winter time in Utah, so on the drive up I couldn't see much outside but the loud conversations inside the car were very entertaining. We met up with another group of girls and after some slippery snowy roads we were almost at our destination. "Look on the left, that's where that accident happened a few years ago", "which accident?", "the cabin that exploded. The woman who lived there was with her kids outside and she got hurt pretty bad but she survived", "that must have been so scary". Within a few minutes we were at our cabin. We started with a tour of the place, and everyone got to pick their room. The clock was showing a little past 9 PM and the hunger had really set in so we headed to the kitchen to put together some burrito bowls. We ate, then we set around the table and talked, which was followed by some games in the living room, and lots of Karaoke in the basement, we decided to leave the hot tubing and canvas painting for the next morning, little did we know.

I couldn't remember what time we went to bed but as I was writing this post I decided to scroll through my pictures from that night and the last picture before we went to sleep has a time stamp of 2:33 AM. My sister and I were sharing a bed in one of the rooms in the basement. The closet had a lot of blankets in it and after a deep discussion about which one offered the best balance between warmth but not too hot, we took our pick. "Should we lock the bedroom door?" she asked "Did you see the glass doors outside? beautiful during the day, but at night, if the lights are on inside, then we are in a fish bowl, with no idea of what could be lurking out there", we both agreed the bedroom door was getting locked. You might be thinking - if someone can break through a glass door, they can probably break through an average bedroom door lock - and to that I say, you are probably right, but we were tired and convinced that the little lock would do nothing but keep us safe. So I locked the door, turned off the light and ran back into bed.

Knock, knock, knock. I opened my eyes slowly, was I dreaming? Is someone knocking on the door? What time is it? It's still dark. What is this smell? Knock, knock, knock, knock. Ok, now my eyes are really open, this is not a dream. I stumble out of bed, the room was pitch black so I started feeling the wall with my hands, trying to find my backpack that had my pants folded on top of it. "Girls, wake up! Can you hear me? Your door is locked. Wake up!". My brain was fuzzy and everything felt like it was going in slow motion. I call for my sister, she wakes up, and gets out of bed. Where is my backpack? What is this smell? "We are coming" I reply, still not having identified the voice coming from outside the bedroom. "Everyone is already out. We need to leave the house now!" she says through the door. Pants on, now the shoes. Dang it, our shoes are upstairs. Okay let's go. My sister makes it to the door by the time I'm opening it and right outside is one of our friends. She says "we think there's a gas leak, we checked the house and we are not sure where it's coming from, it doesn't really smell like gas so we are not sure. We are all feeling sick though, so we need to leave the cabin right now." I look at my sister and she doesn't look well, something is not right. I don't feel well either.

We walk fast up the stairs, grab our shoes by the door and walk out. We were the last ones out of the house, everyone was sitting outside. Nobody looks well. "I need to throw up" my sister says and she starts walking away from us towards the other end of the balcony. I see her walking away and I notice her steps are off, something really is wrong. I'm still processing that, when "flop" her body hits the ground. It was one of those seconds that might as well be minutes. Some of the girls that were closer to her start running towards her then so do I. "Wake up! wake up! Are you okay??" We turn her on her side, she opens her eyes and tries to talk but her speech is slurred. We keep her laying down on her side as one of the girls calls 911. I suddenly become aware of the cold, it's freezing, in the literal sense of the word. The wintry breeze coming from the woods right ahead of us feels sharp on the skin.

"...Yes one of us passed out, but she is awake now...No, we are outside...okay we can do that...yes, we have a car parked outside the garage...okay...how long do you think?...okay...yes we can do that...no, I think we are fine, we will just go there and wait for them....yes, thank you". The 911 call ends. K*** tells us that the a firetruck and cops have been dispatched. They are on their way, but since we are so far up the mountain, it will take 15 to 20 minutes. We help my sister up and we walk to the car that was parked outside the garage. We all get in and close the doors of the car, but we can't turn the car on, because if there really is a gas leak it could cause an explosion. So we wait.

We are cold, dizzy, and some of us have a pounding headache. As the adrenaline starts to go down the deep cold and nausea starts to settle in. I was scared. I think we all were. This beautiful cabin in front of me, felt like a time bomb, and there was nothing to do but wait in the cold, dark car. We were still not sure what was going on inside the cabin. Those few minutes felt very long, as we waited for the firemen. Woof Woof. Someone was coming up the driveway. It's an older man and his dog. "Hello there, are you ladies okay?". He gets closer to the car, he has an oxygen tank. He says he was contacted and had come to help since he lived in a cabin just down the road. It was our first sight of relief. About 5 minutes later the firemen get there, then the cops and an ambulance. We are walked one by one to the ambulance where we all get tested for our oxygen levels.

One of the firemen got back to the ambulance to check on us. "You ladies were very lucky tonight" he says. "We tested the air inside the cabin for carbon monoxide, and it was about 4 times more than normal levels. It seems like the boiler was malfunctioning." If you are not familiar with it, the problem with carbon monoxide is that it's a silent killer; carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell, so it can kill you in your sleep. He continued, "you know, for some reason, there was a strange smell coming out of the boiler closet, which was not from the carbon monoxide, and we are not sure why. You gals must be doing something right, someone is watching out for you because you really could have died tonight."

The radio was playing quietly on the background and I could barely make up Deer Creek Reservoir out of the window when we drove by it as the sun had not risen yet; we were on our way home. I kept looking at my sister every so often to make sure she was still doing okay. We had stayed in the ambulance for a while getting the oxygen level in our blood up to a safe level. We had been advised that it was safe enough to go back in and grab our things, so we did that, then we said a prayer together, before leaving the cabin, because maybe it was coincidence but maybe it wasn't and if it wasn't then it felt like the right time to say thanks to being watched over and given a chance to walk out from a situation that some don't get to walk out from. We got in the car and headed down the mountain.