But calling for an ambulance means waiting, and waiting means standing on a porch in 22-below-zero weather with what appeared to be a frozen corpse and no clear indication that there was anything left to save.

He picked her up and put her in his truck.

This was almost certainly the correct decision, though not for the reasons Wally would have been thinking at the time.

The goal was to get her to a hospital, even though a hospital seemed unlikely to be able to do anything for a frozen body.

The instinct to do something — to move, to take her somewhere, to not simply accept what appeared to be a fact — was correct.

He drove to Fosston.