by L. A. Larkin
‘You did the advanced first-aid course, didn’t you?’ She looked up at him, seeking reassurance.
Luke nodded.
‘Me too, but this is real, Luke. It’s my leg. All we practised on was a dead pig. And the injections were into oranges, not people.’ She chewed her lip. ‘I need to think about this.’
‘Have something to drink.’ He reused the teabag he’d kept and handed her Mac’s old beaker.
‘I could do with something stronger,’ Maddie joked weakly. She sipped the warm liquid, considering her options. ‘Oh, all right. Do it before I change my mind.’
‘Right. I’m going to clean my hands,’ Luke said.
Taking the smaller pan of hot water outside, Luke added some snow to cool its contents and then cleaned his filthy hands as best he could. On the way back, he detoured to the tools room, searching for some pliers. He was going to need something tough to grip the piece of shrapnel. He found a pair and pocketed them.
Back in the kitchen, Luke used antiseptic wipes on his hands and began to lay out everything he might need: gloves, sutures, needle holders, more antiseptic wipes, morphine, syringes, a vial of amoxicillin trihydrate, dressing, bandages. He was missing forceps and scissors but he would manage without them.
‘You’re not allergic to penicillin, are you?’
‘No.’
She reached out and held his arm. ‘I want to clear the air,’ she said. ‘You know, in case … I’m sorry about what I said. About your son. I just wanted you to know that.’
He smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She still clung to his freezer suit. The warmth of her hand on his arm permeated the suit, and he took it in his own. ‘You’re going to be fine, Maddie. I promise.’
He saw her fear and pulled from his pocket his most precious and private possession: the photo of him holding his newborn son. Luke felt awkward but handed it to her.
‘Is that your boy?’
Luke nodded.
‘He’s gorgeous. Got your eyes – that same enquiring look in them.’ She glanced up. ‘You seem so happy.’
‘Jase is the best thing that ever happened to me. And he’s the reason I bang on about Antarctica’s melting ice. I’m terrified about the kind of world he’s going to grow up in.’
She handed back the photo. ‘Thank you for showing me.’
‘You got any kids?’ asked Luke. He realised he knew next to nothing about her.
Maddie chewed her lower lip. ‘Once.’ She looked away and released her grip on his arm. Luke let her hand go, realising he had gone too far. When Maddie spoke, it was so quiet that he almost missed it. ‘Becky. Becky was her name. She died.’
‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have asked …’
‘That’s okay. It’s a bit like you with Jason – I never talk about her.’ Maddie wouldn’t look at him. ‘So I guess you were right. I am running away.’
Luke took her hand again. ‘No need to say any more. I have a knack for saying the wrong thing.’
‘No, Luke. I need to say this.’
He waited.
She swallowed. ‘I couldn’t bear the pity. And the constant reminders – her clothes, her toys, the photos. It made the pain worse. I had to get away.’ Maddie fell silent.
Luke rubbed his chin, unsure what to say. ‘When did she die?’ he asked.
‘Six years ago. Cot death. She was seven weeks old. I was only away from her for a few minutes but when I went to her room I knew. She was too still …’ Her voice trailed away.
‘I can’t begin to imagine how terrible that would be,’ said Luke. He felt woefully inadequate.
‘Adam changed after that. My husband. Maybe it was the grief, I don’t know. But he avoided me, never seemed to want to come home. And then one day he didn’t. He said he couldn’t cope. Needed to forget. The strange thing was that I understood.’ Her eyes were watery and again she bit her lower lip. ‘We were living in Hong Kong at the time because of his job. I moved back to Australia and then got a job here.’ She smiled wearily. ‘Antarctica is about as far away as I could get.’
Luke instinctively pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He held her in silence for a while. ‘You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?’
‘I wasn’t there to save her, Luke.’ She sobbed quietly, her face buried into his clothing.
‘Is that what you meant about people you care for dying?’
She nodded.
‘Maddie. You couldn’t have saved Becky, just as you couldn’t have saved Tubs.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Now I understand why you asked about Jason, but it’s complicated,’ he said.
She pulled away. ‘Life is.’
T MINUS 3 DAYS, 1 HOUR, 30 MINUTES
7 March, 10:30 am (UTC-07)
Maddie’s revelation had stunned Luke, but now, unburdened of her secret, she appeared calmer. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.
Luke carried a pot of hot water to the table.
‘Have you got thicker dressings, in case I start haemorrhaging?’
‘You won’t, but I’ll look for a towel. Just a minute.’ He returned with a threadbare tea towel. He pulled on the surgical gloves, his large hands barely squeezing inside.
Maddie stared at the implements laid out on the table. ‘Oh God, I can’t go through with this.’ She covered her face as if trying to block out reality.
‘Yes, you can. I’ll give you morphine.’
Her hands fell to her side. ‘Okay, but not too much. I want to know what you’re doing.’
‘First I’ll cut your freezer suit back and clean around the wound.’
She winced at his touch. With that done, Luke picked up the vial of morphine, showing it to her. ‘I need your shoulder, Maddie.’
She unzipped her freezer suit, and Luke helped her pull it down to waist level. He then removed her fleece. She pulled her thermal top down from the neck so the tip of her shoulder was showing. Luke wiped the fleshy bit of her shoulder with a swab. He then sucked the morphine into a syringe and expressed a small amount, checking for air bubbles.
‘I’m impressed,’ she commented, and smiled weakly. ‘You doing something by the book – I never thought I’d see the day.’
‘Yeah, well, some things are worth paying attention to. Ready?’
She hesitated for a second. ‘I … well.’
‘Trust me,’ Luke said, holding the syringe up. He would wait for as long as it took her to say yes.
‘You?’ she laughed nervously.
‘Yes, me. I know what I’m doing.’
‘Go ahead.’
He pushed the needle through her skin, into what he hoped was her muscle, and then released the fluid. Maddie pulled her thermal top back over her shoulder.
‘How long before it starts working?’ she asked.
‘Not sure,’ he replied.
‘Trust me, he says!’
They had to wait until the drug kicked in before doing anything more.
‘So, why have you never gone for station leader?’ Maddie asked. She wanted to talk. Keep her mind off the operation. ‘This is your seventh posting, right?’
‘Not everyone wants to be boss,’ he replied. ‘I’m happy doing what I do best – research. I don’t want to have to deal with everybody’s problems. I can’t even sort out my own.’
Maddie appeared to contemplate his response. ‘You really don’t like people much, do you?’
‘Sure, I like people, but in small doses. But you’re good at all that relationship-management stuff. I’ve seen you.’
‘Not really. I find it hard to let go. Some might say I can be a bit bossy.’ She turned her head slightly, as if she had asked a question, but she was grinning like the Cheshire cat.
Luke laughed. ‘Yes, I think bossy is about the right word for it, but I guess I gave you cause, huh?’
Her eyelids began to close.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Sleepy. Good.’
He gently touc
hed the skin near the wound with the scissors.
‘I can feel that, but it’s okay,’ she said. Without the morphine she would have flinched. It was time.
‘Maddie. You can tell me to stop at any time.’
‘I’ll tell you.’
He took the pliers from his pocket and clamped them over the protruding part of the metal.
‘Holy shit! Pliers?’ she asked, her words slurred.
Before she could protest further, Luke jerked the metal from her leg and dropped it on the floor. Maddie screamed. The last time he’d heard a woman scream like that was at Jason’s birth. Maybe he hadn’t given her enough morphine.
The wound began to bleed more than he had expected. Muscle shouldn’t bleed that much, he thought. He threw the surgical dressing over it and then pressed the towel down on top, pushing firmly.
Maddie craned her neck up, horrified at the blood seeping through the towel.
‘Maddie, stay still,’ he barked. She stopped struggling.
Luke kept up the pressure. ‘How’s the pain?’
‘It’s more like a dull ache now.’
He was relieved to see that the stain in the towel had stopped spreading. He kept up the pressure until he was satisfied it was safe to take a look.
‘Has it stopped?’ she asked.
‘Mostly. It’s not an artery, anyway.’ He glanced at her and smiled.
Luke picked up the needle holders with his right hand, and then used them to pick up the suture, careful to hold the U-shaped, bevelled needle in the middle of the U. He recalled how tough the skin had been when he sewed up the pig’s leg. Then he noticed a tiny string of yellow fabric inside the wound.
‘There’s some of your freezer suit in there,’ he said. ‘I can’t leave it – it’ll cause an infection.’
He didn’t have any tweezers or forceps, and realised he’d have to use the needle holders. He released the suture from the needle holders’ grip. ‘This may hurt a little,’ he warned.
Luckily, Luke managed to clutch the end of the tiny piece of fabric and remove it quickly.
‘That felt weird,’ said Maddie, very drowsy now.
‘I’m starting the stitches,’ he said.
He picked up the suture again, pointed the needle tip straight down and pushed it into the skin on one side of the wound. He expected her to yell out but she said nothing. The morphine was finally working well. Luke remembered to curve his wrist so the U-shaped needle appeared on the other side of that piece of skin. He repeated the action, pushing the needle through the opposite piece of skin, then drew the thread through to close that section of the wound, then tied several knots, finally cutting the ends. That was the first stitch done. For a few seconds he admired his handiwork, and continued. He made five more stitches, careful to ensure they weren’t too tight. Finally, he bandaged the leg and stepped back.
‘All done,’ he said.
Maddie was asleep. Her head had fallen slightly to one side and her hair tumbled over the edge of the table. The copper strands reminded him of the forests outside Lyons in the autumn, when the leaves turned to gold.
Luke gave her a shot of antibiotics and let her rest. He’d keep watch for the killers.
T MINUS 3 DAYS, 1 HOUR, 15 MINUTES
8 March, 4:45 am (AEDT)
After a much needed catnap, Wendy’s metaphorical toast popped up. She had been trying to work out where she had seen the figures 74 52 100 30 before. The sequencing seemed familiar. Now she knew. They were coordinates. But were they north, south, east or west? Bleary-eyed, she found some instant coffee and made herself a strong cup. It was bitter but helped her focus. Then she tapped 74° 52' N, 100° 30' E into Google Maps.
That threw up Lake Taymyr in the Russian Arctic. Hmm. Wendy knew Chinese money sometimes funded Russian mining projects, but she doubted the Russian government would allow Dragon Resources to set up its own businesses there.
Wendy tried west. This took her to the sea off Bathurst Island in the Canadian Arctic. It was possible, but wouldn’t the Inuit people notice an oil rig? She went to Dragon Resources’ website and checked the locations of their oil and gas rigs around the world. Not one of their drilling sites, pipelines or terminals was located at either of these coordinates.
Then she remembered Antarctica in her father’s browser history: an isolated and inaccessible continent, making it much easier to keep a project under wraps there. She tried 74° 52' S, 100° 30' E, but that was about as close to the middle of nowhere it was possible to get, while 74° 52' S, 100° 30' W was on the opposite coast, near the Pine Island Glacier.
Maybe the third word was the key. She tried googling ‘Antarctica and shepherd’ but all the hits were about whaling and the ship Sea Shepherd. Was she chasing phantoms? She’d never heard of any company mining or drilling in the Antarctic. How the hell would you drill through all that ice? Anyway, wasn’t China part of the Antarctic Treaty? She was stumped.
Wendy double-checked the coordinates. She had been correct. They were either pointing to a location near what was known as Antarctica’s ‘Dome C’ – one of the most hostile, inaccessible places on the planet – or at the Pine Island Glacier, which, being on the coast, was a little more accessible but still remote, even by Antarctic standards.
She googled the Antarctic stations. There was none anywhere near Dome C. In contrast, when she tried 100° 30' W, there was an Australian station virtually on top of the coordinates her father had written down. A Chinese station called Li Bai was a few hundred kilometres away. It was the only thing that looked like a connection.
The Australian station – called Hope – was researching the accelerating flow and rapid disintegration of the glacier, which, according to one glaciologist – a Luke Searle – was near collapse. She discovered that the Pine Island Glacier drained roughly ten per cent of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. That didn’t sound much, until she learned it was equivalent to half the land area of Germany.
‘Okay, that’s a lot of water,’ she said quietly to herself.
Wendy gawped when she learned that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone was more than two-thirds the size of Australia. Gradually, her fascination turned to apprehension. Her exhausted mind was putting two and two together, and she didn’t like the answer.
‘Oh, my God, Dad! What did you …?’ She stopped mid-sentence and stared wildly around the tiny office. She hadn’t experienced this kind of panic since they had fled China. She was reminded of her mother’s hushed tones when she’d discussed Falun Gong with fellow practitioners. But one of the practitioners was an informer and carried a bugging device. Wendy fell silent, wondering if her dad’s office could be bugged too.
She threw open his hard-backed appointments diary and searched for Xu’s name. The diary showed that May, the chief seamstress, had already called all the clients due to pick up suits that week, including Xu, to tell them the bad news. But the note in the diary was interesting: ‘Gone to China. Invoice sent.’
Wendy stood and checked the rack of unclaimed suits to make sure she wasn’t going mad. Yes, Xu’s suit was still there. It was five-thirty in the morning but Wendy couldn’t wait. May had worked for her father for many years and Wendy had her home number. She dialled it. It rang and rang.
‘Come on, answer the phone.’
A hesitant voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘May, it’s Wendy. I’m so sorry to call you this early but I have to ask you something urgent.’
‘Oh, Wendy. I am so sorry. Mr Woo was a wonderful man.’
‘Yes, thank you, he was. But tell me about one of his customers, Xu Biao, the Consul General. Has he gone back to China?’
‘Oh, yes.’ A pause. ‘I called the consulate yesterday afternoon. They said he’d left Sydney and no longer needed the suit and to send them the invoice. I offered to courier it to China and they said no. No forwarding address. What a waste of a beautiful suit!’
Wendy’s hands shook. ‘Do you know when Xu left Sydney and why?’
; ‘Only that he left the day poor Mr Woo was found.’
Wendy thanked May and ended the call. Her mouth was dry and her palms clammy. She suddenly felt very scared and raced to check both the front and back doors were locked.
The timing of Xu’s hasty departure was unnerving. Had he told her father that Dragon Resources was in Antarctica? Is that why he’d been rushed back to China so fast and with no forwarding address?
T MINUS 3 DAYS, 38 MINUTES
7 March, 11:22 am (UTC-07)
Luke’s view of the Hudson Mountains through the antique binoculars was a little streaky. Every time he checked for their pursuers and failed to see them, he relaxed a little more. Apart from the odd clang from the warm stove and the occasional creak of the roof, all was quiet.
Luke gazed around the wooden hut. He imagined Sir Douglas Mawson’s men in their hut, woken each morning by the night watchman bellowing, ‘Rise and shine! Porridge on the table getting cold!’ Mawson had written in his journal of the jovial banter of his fellow expeditioners. Luke and Maddie might not be quite as comfortable with each other – yet. But at Bettingtons they could survive the winter and, most important of all, they had companionship. Luke now saw Maddie in a whole new light. He understood why, having lost a child and then her husband, she was distrustful of people in general, and of him in particular.
He looked at her peaceful face. Her mouth was slightly open, her regular breathing only just audible. Brave and feisty as she was, he saw a childlike vulnerability and felt surprisingly protective of her. She stirred and opened her eyes.
‘Hungry?’ Luke asked.
‘I could eat a horse,’ Maddie yawned.
‘That’s more like it.’ Luke searched the bag. ‘How about a treat?’ he said, triumphantly holding up two frozen steaks.
‘Now you’re talking.’
‘I might as well do some vegies too. Keep us regular.’
Despite feeling groggy, Maddie gazed at Luke in bewilderment. ‘You’re a funny one,’ she said. ‘Here we are, in the middle of nowhere, with killers after us, and you’re thinking about keeping regular.’
‘Someone’s got to keep us healthy.’