by Julie Rowe
Emilie went back to work, but found it impossible to concentrate. The agonized expression on Tom’s face kept popping into her mind. Something about babies frightened him. Tom, a strong, confident man. She hadn’t expected him to embrace parenthood from the outset, but his reaction wasn’t one she would’ve predicted. He acted like she needed protecting from some live menace. Him, he said.
He’d asked for time to think.
What he needed was a kick in the butt, and she was in just the mood to give him one.
She was scared too. Scared of being pregnant in a hostile environment, scared of something going wrong, scared of doing it all by herself.
Getting pregnant had also put a kink in David’s project. She could finish the testing here in Antarctica, but NASA would never send her up on a rocket now. Not that close to delivery.
Someone else would have to go. She had wanted to finish it herself, but the needs of her child came first.
She wanted this baby, had wanted a child for years. She was intensely, down to the molecular level, happy to be pregnant. But.
Why was there always a but?
The baby put a halt to everyone’s plans. Her plan. David’s plan. Tom’s plan.
Then again, following the plan hadn’t worked for her. Maybe letting go would.
A claxon clanged in the hall, interrupting her thoughts. It reverberated so loud it hurt, but its slow peal didn’t sound like a fire alarm. Emilie put her hands over her ears and went to see what was going on.
People were running toward the beer can, tugging on parkas as they sprinted. One of them ran toward her. Stan.
“What’s happened?” she shouted at him.
He stopped in front of her. “That’s the alarm for an accident outside. I don’t have any information except that there are injuries and at least one fatality.”
“Is Tom on the scene yet? What does he need?”
Stan put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “I think Tom’s one of the casualties.”
All her blood drained to her feet, and for a moment the world narrowed into a point of white noise. She pulled herself back with effort. “What?”
“He’s not answering his radio and I can’t make sense of what they’re saying out there.”
Emilie tore herself away and ran into the clinic. She pulled out a gurney and threw a couple of boxes of emergency response equipment on top.
“He might be fine,” Stan said, following her inside.
“Or injured or—” She couldn’t finish the sentence, wouldn’t let herself even think it. “I have to get to him.” She threw on her parka and shoved her stethoscope and a flashlight in a pocket. “And, no, you’re not going outside.”
“I figured.” He held the doors open as she pushed the gurney out. “Do a good job, Em.”
“I will.” The father of her child was out there, possibly hurt. Energy flooded her system, making her feel like she could fly. She couldn’t lose him, not now. There was too much to decide, too much to do, too much to learn. Their baby needed both parents. She hurried down the hall and into the beer can elevator.
“I’ll man the communications room,” Stan yelled after her. “Good luck.”
When the elevator opened on ice level she found the hall stuffed with people yelling at each other.
“I need some help here,” she shouted. “Medical supplies coming through. Make a hole.”
Three people, dressed for outdoors, surfaced from the chaos and yanked the gurney out of the elevator. She had to run to keep up as they rushed it outside.
Darkness shrouded the landscape. The harsh wind whipped around loose snow, obscuring the pitifully dim station lights and turning the conditions nightmarish. Her helpers collapsed the gurney and carried it, diving into the heavy night with Emilie close behind.
Flashlight beams provided some additional light, but not enough to even see where to walk.
The gurney stopped moving and she caught up to it, her foot catching on something in the snow. She looked down, shining her flashlight at her feet, thinking she tripped over a piece of ice, only to find a ragged-edged piece of metal embedded in the snow. She shone the light in an arc on the ice in front of her and found many more.
A few steps away, a figure lay curled in a fetal position on his side next to a wrecked snowmobile. Another lay flat on his back, a second destroyed snowmobile littering the ice around him.
Emilie hurried to the second man. His eyes were open, still and staring. She lifted the balaclava from his face. Bob. She pulled off her mitt and thrust her fingers inside his hood to search out his carotid. Nothing. Then she saw a piece of metal protruding from his chest, heart level.
No hope.
She moved quickly to kneel next to the other man. She felt for his pulse and found a steady beat at his throat. Relief seized her diaphragm and pushed a moan through her lips. “Tom?” she yelled, putting her lips next to his ear. “Tom!”
Someone grabbed her shoulder from behind. “What?”
Emilie jerked her head around to stare wide-eyed at the tall, completely intact man bending over her. Nothing covered his face, his deep eyes sucking her in. “Tom?” She glanced at the unconscious man. “Then who…?”
He reached past her and pulled the man’s balaclava up. Tyler. “Trauma to the chest and head. He’s unconscious and has been since I arrived a few minutes ago.”
“We need to get him inside.” She performed a quick visual check, but it was impossible to tell the true extent of his injuries through so many bulky layers. Loosening his clothes in this bone-freezing cold would only make things worse. She took her mitts off and examined his neck. She could feel no damage. Putting her mitts back on, she stood.
“Are you okay?” Tom asked, taking her shoulders and turning her to face him. He examined her from head to toe as if looking for evidence she’d been involved in the accident. “Why didn’t you send someone else to handle this? You shouldn’t be out here in this weather.”
“Because I didn’t know the extent of the injuries or even who was injured. Besides, where else should I be? Inside, knitting booties?” She pulled away from him, her relief turning to frustration. How dare he question her right to respond to an accident just because she was pregnant? “This is my job.”
Emilie opened one of her boxes, pulled out a neck collar and carefully put it on Tyler. Then she waved at the half-dozen people hanging around the fringes of the accident scene to join them and help lift him onto the gurney. “Take him inside quickly, but carefully,” she ordered. “Don’t jostle him.”
She turned to Tom, shoving her anger aside for the moment. “Can you assist me inside?”
“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. I have to clean this up first.” He pointed at Bob and the debris littering the area.
Bob. They’d lost someone, a member of their crew, a friend. “Oh God, Bob,” she whispered.
One of Tom’s hands patted her shoulder. “Send me a couple more people to help.”
Grief would have to wait.
“Of course.” She wanted to stay and help him herself. To find out what happened. To mourn. But there wasn’t time. She hurried after the gurney, catching up to it before its handlers carried it through the station doors.
As soon as she was inside, Emilie pulled her parka hood back and shouted orders. “Take that man up to the clinic,” she said to the people pushing the gurney. Then she addressed the rest of the crew milling around trying to find out what happened. “Tom is still out there and needs at least two people to help him at the accident scene by the backup battery shed.”
Sharon pushed her way through the crowd, while several guys suited up and went outside. “What happened? Is it true someone’s dead?”
“It looks like a collision between two snowmobiles,” Emilie answered, pushing her way past people to get to the stairs. “And yes, one of the victims is dead.”
“Who is it?”
“Tyler isn’t answering his radio,” someone shouted.
“Bob’s missing,” someone else said.
She wanted to tell them, but that was Tom’s responsibility, not hers. “I don’t know the entire situation. If you have a job to do, go do it. If not, please wait in the cafeteria for an update from Tom.”
Emilie didn’t wait to see their reaction. She ran up the stairs two at a time, ripping her coat and cold weather gear off, leaving a trail of clothing behind her. She all but shot through the doors to the clinic. Five people stood hesitantly around the gurney. None of them had touched the patient.
“Thank you, everyone,” she said. “Can one of you stay behind to give me a hand until Tom gets here?”
One of them pulled his balaclava off. “I’ll stay,” J.J. said.
She grabbed two pairs of scissors and handed one to J.J. as the others left. “We’re going to cut off his clothes. You take his left side, and put on some gloves.”
He pulled on latex gloves with awkward movements then started cutting through Tyler’s coat sleeve. Emilie worked on the other side, cutting through the coat then cutting up the middle of the balaclava. She opened it and took a good look at Tyler’s blood-covered face.
J.J. sucked in a deep breath.
“Head wounds often look worse than they really are,” she told him.
J.J. stared at Tyler’s battered, bloody and swollen face and swallowed hard before continuing to cut through the injured man’s clothes.
She carefully searched Tyler’s head for injury. “There’s a good-sized bump above his right eye and temple.”
“Is that why he’s unconscious?”
“Most likely.” She moved careful fingers around the rest of his head and neck. “I don’t feel any neck involvement, but I want an X-ray to know for sure.” She slid her hand inside the loose coat. “He doesn’t feel hypothermic, thank God.” She went back to cutting the coat off and soon she and J.J. were able to peel it from Tyler’s body. Emilie began removing the rest of Tyler’s clothing off, one layer at a time. J.J. followed her lead. So intent on her task, she was surprised when another pair of hands covered the exposed parts of Tyler’s body with a warm blanket.
“Tom.” She blinked. “Finished outside?”
“No.”
He didn’t elaborate, just helped remove the last of Tyler’s clothes.
“Do you need me anymore?” J.J. asked, his voice strained.
She glanced at him. His face was pale, his eyes wide, and sweat glistened on his forehead. “Tom and I can handle it. Thanks, J.J.”
“Okay, great,” he said, backing up fast. He tugged his gloves off, threw them in the trash and left.
Emilie took a good look at Tyler’s torso and touched a large bruise with her fingertips. “He’s got cracked ribs.”
“Internal bleeding?”
She carefully pressed against his abdomen, feeling for anything abnormal. “I don’t think so.”
Tom grabbed a BP cuff and wrapped it around Tyler’s left arm. “Ninety over sixty.” He checked Tyler’s pupils. “The left eye response is sluggish.” Tom glanced at her. “Is the X-ray machine on?”
“No.”
He pulled it out of the storage closet and turned it on. “For the record, I don’t want you going outside again, for any reason.”
She stared at him. “That’s an irrational statement, and if you stop and think about it for a moment you’ll agree with me.”
“I will not allow you to put yourself at risk,” he said, glaring at her.
This he-man act was getting old fast. She rolled her eyes. “I’m pregnant, not stupid.”
“I’m just trying to protect you and the baby.”
“So you said, but from what?”
He growled. “This isn’t the time for a debate.”
“Fine. We’ll discuss it later.”
“Emilie—”
“Do you know what happened?” she interrupted.
“No, both machines are completely wrecked.” Tom looked down at Tyler. Fear surfaced on Tom’s face before he buried it beneath a mask of worry and frustration. “I hope to God he wakes up.”
They brought the portable X-ray machine to Tyler, put on lead aprons and began taking pictures starting from his head on down.
He woke up just after they took a chest X-ray, his belly heaving. Tom pulled the machine out of the way and raised the top portion of gurney while Emilie grabbed a kidney basin and held it under Tyler’s mouth.
He groaned, one hand holding his head, and vomited several times.
“Dim the lights, please, Tom.”
He turned down the lighting until only two of the ceiling lights near the doors were left on.
Tyler’s eyes rolled around in his head and he moaned.
“Tyler, it’s Emilie. Do you know where you are?”
It took him a few seconds, but he finally focused on her face. “Club Med?”
“In Mexico?”
“I wish. South Pole.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I’ve got a killer headache.” He reached up with his hands to cradle his head and discovered he was wearing a neck collar. “What the…why am I wearing this?” He looked at Emilie. “Was I in an accident?”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “Outside. You were driving a snowmobile, doing the regular checks.”
Tyler frowned. “I think I remember that. It’s kind of hazy.”
“I’ll give you something for the pain,” she said, reaching for some ibuprofen and added a dose to his IV line.
“Do you remember seeing anyone else on a snowmobile?” Tom asked, the muscles in his face drawn tight across his cheekbones and jaw. “Doing the checks with you?”
Tyler’s frown intensified. “I think so.” He stared at a point about twelve inches in front of his nose. “Bob. He offered to do the back half.” Tyler’s expression changed, confusion morphing into horror. “The throttle stuck. I couldn’t slow the machine down. I hit it with my fist, but it didn’t help.” His eyes widened, as if seeing something terrible no one else could. “Holy crap. Bob!”
Tyler tried to sit up farther and roll off the gurney, but Tom held him down by his shoulders. Emilie grabbed his legs and leaned on them with all her weight.
“Bob, is he all right?” Tyler asked, fighting to remove Tom’s hands from his shoulders. His left hand kept slipping away, as if Tyler couldn’t get a grip.
“Hold still,” she ordered.
“Hey.” Tom put his head in Tyler’s line of vision. “Hey!”
“Where’s Bob?” Tyler yelled.
“Calm down before you hurt yourself.”
“I hit him,” Tyler screamed. He sucked in great wheezing breaths and continued to struggle. “I couldn’t stop and suddenly he was right in front of me. I plowed into him.” Tears flooded his eyes and ran down his face. “Where is he?”
Tom pinned Tyler down and stared at the younger man, sympathy loosening the muscles in his jaw. “I’m sorry, kid. There wasn’t anything we could do.”
“No.” Tyler searched Tom’s face for a moment, then the fight went out of him and he squeezed his eyes shut. He began to cry, great sobs shaking his body.
Tom breathed out and Emilie saw him fully relax, the carefully controlled emotions leeching out of him with every tear Tyler shed, until all that remained on Tom’s face was understanding and pity. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said to Tyler in a soft voice.
“He’s dead,” Tyler sobbed. “He’s dead and I killed him.”
Tom stroked the young man’s head. “No, the machine malfunctioned and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You got hurt too. You could have died.”
“Tyler, we have to finish x-raying you,” Emilie said, grabbing some tissues and wiping his eyes and nose as if he were a small boy.
“Why bother,” Tyler said, crying. “I deserve to rot.”
“If Bob heard you say that, he’d kick your butt,” Tom said.
That surprised Tyler into a hiccupping sob-laugh and he calmed a little bit.<
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“How’s the headache?” she asked.
“Worse, and now I’m stuffed up.”
“A good cry can do that to you.” She repositioned the X-ray machine over Tyler’s chest. “Easily fixed.”
“I’m a guy, I’m not supposed to cry.”
“Who told you that bull?” Tom asked. “Real men cry when the situation calls for it. Anyone who says otherwise is an ass.”
Tyler stared at Tom with wide eyes.
Emilie perched a small, sad smile on her lips. “Tom’s right, emotional release is a good thing.” She turned her head to look at Tom. “Don’t be afraid of what you’re feeling. Letting it out is the healthiest thing you could do right now.”
Tom raised an eyebrow in reply, but didn’t contradict her.
She refocused her gaze on Tyler. “Try not to move while I take some more X-rays, okay?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Twenty minutes later they looked at a whole row of Tyler’s X-rays.
“Three cracked ribs, one broken wrist and a broken nose,” Tom said squinting at them.
“No spinal or skull fractures,” Emilie added. “He’s lucky.”
Tom snorted. “He doesn’t think so.”
She glanced at her patient. He’d started crying again. “No, he doesn’t.”
A knock sounded at the doors and Sharon poked her head inside. “Can we come in?”
“We?” Emilie asked, hurrying over.
“Yeah, um, pretty much everybody is waiting out here,” Sharon said, looking around. “Is Tyler okay? And…” She looked over her shoulder at something. “What do we do with Bob?”
Emilie turned to Tom, who waved at her.
“I’ll come out,” she said, pushing through the doors. The hallway was full of people, but despite their numbers, silence and long faces greeted her.
“How’s Tyler?” Carol asked.
“He has a concussion, several broken ribs, a broken wrist and a broken nose. He’s conscious now, but we’re still working on him,” Emilie told them all.
“What happened out there?”
Emilie rose on tiptoe to see who asked the question, but couldn’t tell. “Tyler says his snowmobile’s throttle got stuck. He couldn’t stop his machine and Bob drove right in front of him. Tyler is very upset and I would appreciate everyone’s sensitivity with respect to this situation.”