Peak District
"Mountain rescue volunteer Helen saves stranded hiker Marcus—then discovers his gratitude extends well beyond the initial rescue."
The call came at three AM—hiker stranded near Mam Tor, weather deteriorating, phone signal dying. I'd been on mountain rescue for twenty years, and this was the call that always made my heart race. Someone needed help. I could provide it.
We found him on a ledge halfway down a ravine, ankle clearly broken, hypothermia setting in. Mid-thirties, city gear that wasn't designed for this terrain, eyes that widened when he saw me leading the team.
"Didn't expect rescue to look like you," he managed through chattering teeth.
"What did you expect?"
"Not a woman built like a Viking shield-maiden. No offense."
"None taken. Now shut up and let us save your life."
Extraction took four hours. He screamed when we splinted his ankle, nearly passed out on the stretcher, but never complained. By the time we got him to the ambulance, I'd developed a grudging respect for the idiot who'd climbed in completely wrong shoes.
"Thank you," he said as they loaded him up. "Seriously. Thank you."
"Don't come back until you've learned how to check a weather forecast."
"I'll take courses. I'll buy proper boots." His hand caught mine. "Can I at least know your name?"
"Helen. Now go get that ankle fixed."
Three months later, he walked into the rescue station with proper boots, a box of fancy chocolates, and the look of a man on a mission.
"I took courses," he said. "Six weeks of navigation, wilderness survival, weather reading. I can identify rock types now. I know what hypothermia actually does to the body."
"Congratulations. Why are you telling me?"
"Because I wanted you to know I listened. And because I'd like to buy you dinner. As a proper thank-you."
"I don't date people I've rescued. Too weird."
"Then don't think of it as a date. Think of it as... ongoing education. You can tell me everything else I should know about not dying on mountains."
Against my better judgment, I said yes.
Dinner became drinks, became a walk in the peaks (in daylight, with proper gear), became something that felt increasingly like dating no matter what we called it. Marcus was a software developer from Sheffield—smart, funny, genuinely passionate about the wilderness now that he'd nearly died in it.
"Why rescue?" he asked one evening, both of us watching the sunset from Stanage Edge.
"Because I grew up here. Because I can." I gestured at the landscape. "Because every call could be someone's last chance, and I want to be the one who gives them another."
"That's heroic."
"It's practical. People get lost. People get hurt. Someone has to help." I looked at him. "Why'd you come back? Really?"
"Because I couldn't stop thinking about you." He was closer now, close enough that I could see the way the light caught his eyes. "Not the rescue—you. The way you took charge. The way you talked to me like I was an idiot but worth saving anyway. The way you looked, backlit by torches, like something out of legend."
"I was wearing a waterproof and covered in mud."
"And you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."
He kissed me on that edge, sunset painting us both in gold. His mouth was warm against the evening chill, and his hands on my waist were steady—no hypothermic shaking this time.
"My place isn't far," I said when we broke apart.
"I remember. I've been thinking about it for three months."
My cottage was small, practical, decorated in "mountain rescue volunteer chic"—maps on walls, gear in corners, the particular aesthetic of someone who valued function over form.
"I love it," Marcus said.
"You don't have to lie."
"I'm not lying. It's you. It makes sense." He pulled me close. "Now please stop making excuses and let me show you how grateful I really am."
Gratitude, it turned out, was very thorough. He worshipped my body like it had saved his—which, to be fair, it had—finding every curve and muscle and learning them the way he'd learned navigation. When he finally moved inside me, it was with the steady confidence of someone who'd done his homework.
"There," he breathed. "God, Helen, you feel—"
"Don't stop. I've been waiting three months too."
Three months of wondering. Three months of telling myself it was inappropriate. Three months of pretending I didn't think about him every time a callout came in. All of it released in waves that left me gasping, clutching him while he followed me over the edge.
"Stay," I said afterward.
"Which rescue protocol is that?"
"The one where I don't want you to go."
He stayed. Moved to the village, got a job he could do remotely, became a regular volunteer at the station. Now when callouts come, we go together—him proving that city boys could learn, me proving that rescue could mean more than extraction.
Some people meet through apps, through mutual friends, through careful choreography. We met through near-death experience and the particular bond of someone saving someone else's life.
It's not conventional. But neither is volunteering to drag idiots off mountains at three AM. And the gratitude—genuine, ongoing, frequently expressed—never gets old.