The Cure

Deep in the Alaskan wilderness, a mission of mercy has gone terribly wrong. Logan Scott, the son of champion Iditarod racer Lewis Scott, has stowed away on a Carry the Cure ministry plane hoping to find his mother, who left the family years ago. The plane has gone down, leaving Logan unconscious in an abandoned cabin, and Lewis and ministry leader Will Baccarin have set out by dog sled to reach him, taking a shortcut across a glacier where the ice gave way beneath Lewis.

The story opens with Lewis clinging to a narrow ice shelf inside a crevasse while Will, anchored above by his ice axe and the sled dogs, scrambles to rig a rescue pulley. Before he can, the ice begins breaking loose. Meanwhile, pilot Jeff flies Wooton Bassett and a nurse toward the downed plane. When the nurse hears the names Lewis and Logan Scott, she rushes ahead without a word, and Wooton pieces together the astonishing truth: she is Amy Scott, Logan's long-lost mother, working for the doctor they came to fetch. At the cabin, Amy tends her injured son, and when Logan opens his eyes and whispers, "Mom? Am I dreaming?" she assures him she is really there. Wooton gently tells Amy he doesn't believe chance brought her to this cabin; it seems to him that God wanted her with her son.

While a rescue helicopter is delayed by fierce winds, Will finally staggers in from the cold, alone. He breaks the terrible news: the ice collapsed, and Lewis fell into the crevasse. Amy is devastated, but she insists on being the one to tell Logan, and only after he is stable. As she gathers herself, Will leads the others in prayer. In the next room, Logan, not knowing what has happened, begs his mother to come home, insisting that his stubborn dad still loves her. Amy promises her son she will never leave him again.

The helicopter carries Logan, Amy, Will, and pilot Marty to the hospital in Anchorage, where Logan recovers well and Amy tells him about his father. Later, at Amy's request, Will visits Logan to share what really happened on the glacier. Tethered together over the chasm, Lewis knew Will could not hold on much longer. Refusing to drag his friend down with him, Lewis said he had done things his own way his whole life and it had cost him everything. He asked Will, "Be a spiritual father to him, will ya?" Then, with his last words, "Tell Logan I'm sorry. And that I love him," Lewis cut the tether and gave his life to save Will's. Logan, who never once heard his father say he loved him, is deeply moved to learn that his dad's final thoughts on earth were of him.

The story closes at the Carry the Cure outreach in the village of Nikolai, where Will shares his own testimony with the young people: abandoned by his parents, abused by the man who took him in, and trapped in drugs and despair, he was rescued and made new by Jesus, and was even able to forgive and baptize the very people who hurt him. Chief Tom, once wary of outsiders, thanks Will for coming in honor and humility, and gives the young people a word in his native tongue meaning, "Keep your head up, for there's much to live for." As Will and Wooton lead the closing song, a girl named Rain sits down beside Logan. She shows him a silver eagle coin Will once stomped on and hammered at an event years ago, proving it was still worth just as much afterward - a picture of how every person, no matter how beaten up by life, is still precious to God. That message, she says, saved her life when she was depressed and suicidal. Logan quietly pulls out a matching coin of his own. Touched by everything he has heard, he decides it's time to go forward and ask for prayer, and Rain walks up with him.