Absolute Zero

by Chuck Logan

  “Another hour,” he shouted as the flakes plummeted here and there like crumbs from a huge white weight suspended above them. Lift the paddle, dig the water, lift the paddle. A tent peg of pain pounded between his shoulder blades each time he raised his arms and the rowing chant in the back of his mind mocked him.

  You just never know never know never know . . .

  . . . When the joke will be on you.

  Numb with the pain of the paddle, he didn’t notice at first. Then, faintly, he smelled the harsh flavor of wood smoke and raised his head and sniffed.

  Definitely wood smoke.

  He took the fumes like a dry-rope bit between his teeth and his paddle foamed the water and they rounded a point and saw a gay yellow tent pitched next to a green canoe on a storybook island. A man and woman relaxed in front of a fire.

  “Phone?” Broker screamed as he flailed his paddle toward the campsite.

  “PHONE!”

  The man rose in a defensive crouch, alarmed by the manic energy of the two hollow-eyed men paddling toward him and his companion.

  Broker’s voice sobered him. “We left a critical injury back on Fraser. Do you have a cell phone?” The bow of the canoe clunked onto the rock beach.

  Galvanized, hearing Broker clearly, the man yelled, “Gotcha.” He dashed for his tent, emerged, ran to the shore, and handed over the button-studded black plastic wand.

  The St. Louis County 911 operator switched the call through to the county deputy on duty in Ely and deputy sheriff Dave Iker picked up the phone. Broker recognized Iker’s voice. They exchanged quick greetings and then Broker described the situation. Iker dispatched his last cruiser not tied up in weather-related traffic accidents to meet Broker and Allen at Uncle Billie’s Lodge. Then he called the U.S. Forest Service seaplane base across town on Lake Shagawa.

  Iker continued down his checklist. He alerted the northern team of the St. Louis County Rescue Squad, notified the state patrol, and requested the status of their helicopter. Then he called Ely Miner Hospital to put an ambulance on standby. The hospital dispatcher told him that all the medics were on the truck pileup out west on Highway 169. But the dispatcher would call Life Flight in Duluth and request a helicopter to fly to the hospital helipad. Ely Miner was a Band-Aid station that was not equipped to handle major emergency surgery on a critical patient.

  When Iker left his office in the Ely courthouse only one Ely town cop remained in the building to cover the radios and Ely itself.

  Outside, he saw low clouds skimming over the storefronts and spitting flurries, so he radioed for a weather update from the cops at the accident site to the west.

  “We got us another October Surprise. It’s snowing like hell here, and Hibbing’s socked in,” came the reply. Hibbing was sixty miles south and west. “Two feet of snow predicted. Winds already gusting to forty mph. The state patrol is thinking about closing Highways Two and Seventy-one.”

  “Sam, break out one medic and head back for Ely. We’re way understaffed here. There’s a critical stranded on Lake Fraser. I’m going in with the seaplane.”

  “In this?”

  “Affirmative. Call the hangar for details.” He keyed off the net and put his Ford Crown Vic in gear. Four minutes later he walked into the hangar at the seaplane base. Outside, a stubby red and white Dehaviland Beaver floatplane tossed on its pontoons at the dock. Inside, two pilots stood at the radio and the one with the mike in his hand said to Iker, “Where we’re at, Dave, is dispatch recommends no fly. I just talked to the state patrol. They’re not turning a prop in this. The Rescue Squad’s socked in and so is Life Flight out of St. Mary’s in Duluth. The National Weather Service just officially named it a blizzard and it’s going to clobber us in half an hour.”

  “This isn’t a sprained ankle. We got a guy who’s going to die,” Iker said.

  “That’s what I told them and it’s my call.” He depressed the send key on the mike. “I’m going up,” the pilot said to his dispatcher, clicked the mike twice, and turned to Iker. “Looks like just you and me. The paramedics are on that truck pileup.”

  Iker nodded and said, “I got a cop and a medic on the way back in but we can’t wait.” They leaned over a map and Iker said, “One of the guys paddling out is a surgeon; we’ll zip him to the hospital just in case. I know the guide. He says the patient will be hard to find from the air with the snow. No tent. It’s not a normal campsite. They’re hunkered back in a rock hidey-hole on a low bluff. He says he can steer us in.”

  “Where are they now?” the pilot asked. His eyes darted out the windows where the ground crew was readying the Beaver.

  “Paddling in on Lake One. They should be at Billie Broker’s Lodge in about ten minutes.”

  “Okay,” the pilot said. He was clear-eyed, clean-shaven, and neat in his Smokey Bear–green jacket, sweater, and trousers. He’d flown Black Hawk helicopters into Iraq and danced with blizzards working the Alaskan bush. He’d bailed out of flying commercial passenger flights because they were too boring.

  “We got one shot,” he said. “We drop in on Lake One, pick your guy up, then fly to Fraser and find the stranded party.” He pulled on a jacket and moved through the hangar toward the pier. Outside, he shouted over the rising wind. “The tricky part is meeting this big bastard storm on the way back.”

  The hangar chief signaled thumbs up, the preflight checks were complete. They threw a Stokes stretcher and a first-aid bag in the cramped cargo hold behind the cockpit and climbed in. The Beaver was built exceptionally tough to handle the rugged terrain of Northern Canada. With its fuselage slung and strutted under its long, square-tipped wing, it had all the charm of a back-country, three-quarter-ton mud hole truck.

  The 450-horse Pratt and Whitney engine coughed a cloud of exhaust and the aluminum pontoons smacked forward over the chop. An orange windsock on a spit of land across from the dock blasted out at a three-o’clock right angle to its mast and pointed the way straight east.

  Broker was paddling flat out, heading for the boat dock in front of Uncle Billie’s Lodge and the county patrol cruiser idling next to it. Then he heard the motor.

  The engine growl came in low and fast, then strings of rivets caught the pewter light as the Beaver cleared the pines. Bottom heavy with big pontoon floats, it lunged down, practically set one wing tip in the lake, turned tightly, and splash-landed a hundred yards away.

  Deputy Iker’s brown and tan uniform appeared in the open hatch. He commenced to yell and wave but Broker couldn’t hear over the roaring prop, so he sculled up to the pontoon.

  “You the doctor?” Iker yelled. Allen nodded and Iker pointed to the shore and yelled again. “That cop will take you to the hospital.”

  “I thought there’d be a helicopter?” Allen shouted.

  “Take my word for it, you want this Beaver more than a helicopter.” Then Iker rolled his eyes at Broker. They’d had dinner five days ago and they went back a ways, working a county task force together when Broker was undercover with BCA.

  “You,” Iker yelled at Broker, “are coming with me.”

  He pulled Broker up on the pontoon, leaned out, waved to the cop in the dock, and pointed to Allen. The cop nodded. Allen pushed off and, facing about in the bow seat, began paddling for shore.

  Broker and Iker tumbled into the cargo bay. Iker whirled his forefinger, the pilot leaned into the stick, the plane wheeled, the prop bit the wind, and they vibrated over the speed-bump waves.

  “That was fast,” Broker yelled.

  “Not fast enough. There’s a blizzard moving in.” Iker smiled thinly.

  “But we’ll beat it back to Ely?” Broker asked.

  Again the thin grin from the deputy as he banged Broker on the shoulder. “Hey, we eat this shit up, right?”

  Broker blinked and shook his head. “We used to eat this shit up.”

  “Yeah, well,” Iker tossed a thumb at the pilot, “he’s young. He definitely still eats this shit up.”

  Chapter Seven
r />   Allen rode a police cruiser into town from the east as the blizzard moved in from the west. The harried deputy dropped him off promptly and drove away. Chilled and cramped from the canoe, he stiffly dragged Broker’s waterproof duffel up the sidewalk as a thirty mph wind knocked him sideways. He made it through the shin-deep drifts and opened a door with a small orange neon emergency room sign. He dropped the bag in front of the dispatch desk where a woman stood up to confirm his identity. Deputy Iker, she explained, had radioed ahead and now she was monitoring the rescue party which was in flight to “pick up the patient.” She motioned down a corridor and a lean, dark-haired woman came forward in a blue cotton smock.

  “Nancy, take Dr. Falken to Boris,” the dispatcher said.

  The nurse regarded Allen with the tired slit eyes of someone who’d been up all night. Then she led him down the hall to a nurse’s station where a wiry man dressed in a white medical smock was talking to a woman wearing a sweater and jeans with fresh snow trapped in the cuffs. She held a clipboard in one hand and a telephone in the other.

  “This is the doctor who paddled out of the canoe area,” said the dark-haired nurse.

  Allen removed his gloves and extended a hand shriveled pinkish-white from cold water. “Allen Falken,” he offered.

  “Hello, Boris Brecht, I’m glad to meet you. They said on the radio that you’re a belly guy.”

  “That’s right,” Allen said. He blinked and almost lost his balance as the ward swam around him with bright lights and tile, like a large, very clean, very warm bathroom.

  “Is your physician’s license current?”

  “Yes, I . . .”

  “May I see it and a picture ID, and I need a contact number where you currently practice?”

  Allen cocked his head. “Come again?”

  “Dr. Falken—Allen—I’m a family-practice physician. I take out tonsils, maybe. I can’t operate on this man they’re bringing in.”

  Allen was furious. “What are you talking about? He’s in bad shape, he could perforate. He needs a level-one trauma center . . .” His shaky smile didn’t match his voice; his words and parts of his body were evidently thawing at different rates. “There’s supposed to be a helicopter to take him to Duluth.”

  Brecht pointed his finger at the ceiling. “Hear that moan? That’s a blizzard. The roads are closed. There is no helicopter. We’re it. We have an anesthetist on call and we’re trying to reach her, but she could be stuck out there with the whole day shift.”

  “Jesus.” Allen rallied, as he plucked the clipboard from the woman in the snow-cuffed jeans, took her pen, and wrote a number on the top of the work schedule attached to the board. Then he dug in a zippered pocket, removed his wallet from a Ziploc bag, and handed Brecht his physician’s license card and his Minnesota driver’s license.

  “Call Ron Rosenbaum, he’s the senior surgeon at Timberry Trails Medical Group where I’m on staff. Now, how are you set up?”

  “We have an operating-room suite on the lower level for scheduled elective surgery when a surgeon is available, usually from Virgina, sometimes Duluth or even the Cities.”

  “Can you do general anesthesia?” Allen asked.

  “We’ve got a Narcomed II.”

  “What about the anesthetist?”

  “What about her? We’re paging her.”

  Allen forked his index finger and thumb, pressing his eyes and reminding himself not to be patronizing. Get focused. “Let’s assume the worst and she doesn’t show, who does that leave?”

  Brecht grimaced, “If nobody makes it in before the patient arrives—it’s you, me, and,” he pointed to the woman in jeans, “Judy, which leaves Nancy on her own to cover the emergency room and two other wards. But we can’t handle the anesthesia machine.”

  “Your anesthetist should have an adult intubation tray,” Allen said.

  “We are a hospital. We have a pharmacy,” Judy said.

  “Ketamine?”

  “It’s there.” She narrowed her eyes. “Will that hold him if you open his abdomen?”

  Allen shrugged; he’d operated with it on worse trauma cases in Bosnia in very hairy conditions. “It’ll have to work if there’s no alternative.” Then he cleared his throat and gestured with his arms, indicating his bedraggled clothing and wet boots. “Look, I need a cup of black coffee, some scrubs, and some comfortable shoes, if that’s possible.” He took a deep breath, exhaled. “If there’s a room where I could be alone a few minutes and use a telephone. Then I need to see the OR.”

  “Sure,” Brecht said. “I have to call the state licensing board and your hospital—just, you know, going through the motions to satisfy our administrator. He’s, ah, gone sort of apeshit on the subject of emergency surgical privileges. Judy will fix you up.”

  Which Judy proceeded to do. Allen took off his wet clothing and cat-washed in the men’s lavatory, then changed into a clean smock and trousers and a pair of somebody’s worn Nikes. When he came out of the john she was waiting with a cup of hot black coffee and then she showed him to an examining room. He thanked her, smiling stiffly, as she pulled the door behind her; then he turned his back to the door and planted his shoulders against it.

  Allen carefully sat the coffee down on the small nurses’ table, wrapped both arms across his chest, clasped his shoulders, and hugged himself. The notion of him operating to save Hank’s life brought a slight tremor of irony—he recalled Hank’s tough-guy pontificating yesterday morning. Well, Hank, it looks like the situation is now slightly reversed.

  His eyes fixed on the telephone sitting on the desk, next to the blood pressure monitor and the coffee cup. He took a moment to clearly remember a time when he was totally satisfied with himself . . .

  He remembered Jolene Sommer at that party a year ago at Milt’s river place. She had playfully mussed his hair and had told him it was too perfect.

  Allen, you’ve got to learn to unwind a little.

  Her touch had left him permanently tousled. Like a warm breeze it had carried hints of foreign vacations and easy laughter. After meeting her he’d returned home to his life and discovered it was a colorless shell furnished with brand-name clichés.

  There is more, she’d seemed to intimate.

  There is me.

  But she hadn’t said anything remotely like that. It was a wish on his part. It wasn’t that he thought Jolene could change. He thought he could change and she might be a catalyst.

  Change into someone less wooden, more with it . . .

  He rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and reminded himself: You’re too disciplined, too trained, too tidy a man to contemplate such messy human knots.

  As always, there was refuge in his work. So he sat down at the small desk and sipped the strong, familiar, bad hospital coffee from the familiar generic Styrofoam cup. The room’s furnishings were also familiar—the whites, grays, and tans of the examining table and the cabinets, the strident biohazard logo on the Sharpes disposal box.

  Allen took a deep breath to steady down. He used diaphragmatic breathing as part of his pre-op checklist to enhance visualization. But this deep breath was to prepare him for the phone call to Jolene.

  As he exhaled, he visualized the sprawling house tucked on the shadowy pine bluff overlooking the St. Croix River, south of the Hudson Bridge. His watch said 9:18 A.M. He had an idea of how she spent her days. He did not think of her at night when she was with Hank. The idea of her touching his gnarled old body that smelled of cigarettes . . .

  At 9:18, depending on the weather, she’d be settling into the Mission oak rocker in the sunny corner of the kitchen with a cup of coffee. She’d be listening to the morning show on public radio. She followed the current events program every day to build her vocabulary and deepen her range of subjects. She’d have a pen and a notebook in her lap. She’d be taking notes.

  Hank was proud of the fact that Jolene had never graduated from high school.

  She’d be wearing the white chenille robe that complement
ed her green eyes and brought out the ruby highlights in her dark hair. Her smooth skin had an olive cast and she joked that she’d deliberately ordered it a size too small, like a pair of jeans, so that it would fit snug. That damn gray cat he despised would be curled on her lap.

  When Allen shut his eyes he was startled by the abyss of fatigue that met him in the dark behind his eyelids. The sound of the window shuddering in the wind brought him up sharply on task and he oriented himself on the serious fact that five lives were suspended inside a tiny airplane somewhere in that sky. All to bring Hank Sommer back here.

  What if the plane crashed? Suddenly he saw himself comforting Jolene, winning her over. He’d take her to Florence.

  Allen killed the fantasy with a stab of concentration. He was gifted with the highest utilitarian virtues; he was meticulous, he was thorough, he’d memorized a Latinized medical library with almost total recall. His steady hands were capable of tying almost invisible knots in synthetic, absorbable Vicryl sutures.

  He could not afford an overactive imagination.

  So it bothered him when he couldn’t control the adolescent excitement that speeded up his heart as he dialed the area code and the number and counted one ring, two, three . . .

  “Hello,” the voice came on smooth and tight and to the point.

  “Jo?”

  “Allen, well, that was quick; who got the big Bambi?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the kitchen looking at the Weather Channel, you guys must be really catching it.”

  “I want you to sit down and listen carefully; something happened.” He spoke in the available, but guarded, professional tone he used with the families of critical patients. He was not a hand-holder but he didn’t stand in doorways with his own hands in his pockets, either.

  “Oh Christ, Hank didn’t fall off the wagon, did he? The way he was yelling on the phone . . .” She paused. When she resumed talking, first fear stiffened her voice. “Allen? Is everything all right?”