Truth is Stranger than Fiction
The icy wind blew. Minnesota in December could be an inhospitable place. The digital thermometer on the car’s dash read -22 °F. But Jean needed to get home. It was almost Christmas, and she wanted to be with her with family, so she made the 400-hundred-mile drive from her dorm at Winona State University.
The trip normally took about 7 hours. Jean timed it well and avoided rush hour traffic in the twin cities. But it was late at night when she entered the White Earth Indian Reservation. The back roads were curvy and isolated, but she had grown up here and knew the road well.
Jean’s eyes burned from the dry air blowing on her face from the windscreen defroster, and the car’s headlights glared on the snowbanks as she made it down the curvy highway. She skidded off the road in a sharp corner and the car stalled. It was unfortunate, but she was only two miles from her friend Wally’s home, so she thought she’d rough it in her western boots, coat and mittens.
He found her the next morning, 15 feet from his door. The cold weather froze her solid, and she was so stiff he had to place her across the back seat of his car for the drive to the regional hospital.
At the hospital, Jean’s skin was ashen and so frozen they couldn’t initially place an intravenous catheter. Her body temperature was so low, it wouldn’t register on a thermometer. The pupils of her eyes wouldn’t respond to light as the cold had frozen them solid and her heart rate was unbelievably only 12 beats per minute.
After several hours of warming via an electric heating pad, it seemed a miracle had occurred. Jean revived. From literally stiff like a piece of meat in the deep freeze to alive and well.
This short fiction piece is based on the actual story of Jean Hilliard from the January 3, 1981, New York Times.
See: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/03/us/dakota-teen-ager-recovers-after-being-frozen-stiff.html
