Absolute Zero (6 page)

* * *

The pilot leaned back,
grabbed Iker’s arm, and rapped a knuckle on the map. Broker climbed forward and put his finger on the point in Fraser Lake.

“The rocks are real bad. You’re gonna have to land in this bay where the point joins the shore, and we’ll carry him out to you,” Broker said.

The pilot shook his head. “No time. Lots of bad bush in there. We’ll take our chances with the rocks. The guy with the bad arm—can he walk?” he asked.

“Sure,” Broker said. “He can make it on his own.”

The pilot nodded. “Okay. Listen up. You two are going to strap him on the Stokes and haul him through the rocks and load him. We do it the first time or we’ll have to ride out this storm on the lake. Which will not be good for the patient.”

“Eh, Pat?” called a deadpan voice on the radio. “Be advised. I’m looking out the hangar window and I can’t see the wind sock on the point.”

“Outstanding,” the pilot replied.

At one thousand feet the clouds were clotting fast, and down below the snow rippled like cheesecloth over the pine crowns and water. What had taken Broker and Allen a day of paddling and portaging to travel now buffeted past in minutes and they came up on Fraser. The pilot knew the lake, fixed the point, and flew straight for the spot that Broker had indicated on the map.

Gray smoke smudged the snow and Broker figured Milt had dumped pine boughs on the fire. Then they saw Milt’s red parka jerking among the white turtles of rock, waving his good arm.

Iker grabbed the stretcher as the Beaver hugged a tight turn and bumped down into the waves. Iker and Broker edged through the open hatch and balanced on the pontoon as the plane maneuvered toward shore.

“Go. Go,” the pilot yelled, pumping his arm.

They tried to step onto a rock but it wasn’t going to happen, so they jumped at the most solid-looking footing they could see, and both of them splashed up to their waists in the ice-cold water.

“Jesus H. Christ,” gasped Iker, scrambling for shore.

They sloshed through the waves and stumbled up the cobble beach. Milt, unshaven, gray with pain, walked stiffly out to them.

“No water or food since midnight. He’s unconscious,” Milt yelled in the wind. “Thing is, the swelling went down an hour ago and the pain went away and he was feeling great—then he started screaming. Now he’s delirious, burning up.”

“Aw God, it perforated,” Iker said.

“C’mon,” Broker shouted. “He’s dying on us.”

They stamped into the rocky cul-de-sac, swatting at the smoke and, grabbing Sommer, roughly shoved the stiff stretcher under the sleeping bag and buckled him down. Sommer woke up screaming.

Ignoring the screams, they staggered back toward the plane with their clumsy load. Milt lurched ahead, tripping and falling in the surf until he made it to the aircraft and, using his strong good arm, pulled himself aboard.

Knee-deep in the rocky wash, Broker’s legs buckled and Iker, on the back end, tripped. The sleeping bag took a wave, and now their load was heavier, soaked with water.

They dropped him and barely managed to keep his head from going under but the screaming stopped. Sommer had passed out again. Broker and Iker locked eyes and were amazed that the brief exertion had sapped their energy, that they didn’t have the strength to lift the stretcher.

But they had to.

Desperate, they wrenched the weight through the rocks and waves and banged it on the pontoon. With Milt pulling one-handed, they managed to get the front of the stretcher into the tiny cargo bay.

“Fucker’s too big,” Iker yelled, frantic. Sommer’s feet, swaddled in the soaked sleeping bag, dangled over the stretcher and bumped against the cockpit seats.

“Wedge him any way you can, shut that hatch, we’re
going
,” the pilot ordered.

Milt, Broker, and Iker worked in a frenzy with the stretcher, as the pilot banked into the wind and grabbed some sky with an impromptu aerodynamic magic trick. For a few minutes they bounced through turbulence, catching their breath, and then the calm voice on the radio said, “Pat, be advised, they’re getting heavy snow and ice—I say again—heavy snow and ice and sixty-plus wind gusts east of Lake Vermilion.”

“Roger,” the pilot said. Then he yelled, “Map.” Iker held it at the ready.

As the Beaver lurched at two thousand feet, Broker looked forward, between the tangled arms and legs, over the jittering dials and gauges on the console, out the window.

God had been busy.

God had built a solid, grayish-white churning wall all across the sky, and that wall was coming straight at them. Broker could see lakes and woods being vacuumed into its base.

One eye on the forest disappearing in front of the oncoming blizzard and one eye on the map, the pilot shouted in the radio, “Closest place to land with road access is . . . ah, Snowbank. So. Okay. I’m going to drop into Snowbank ahead of this thing. Get a vehicle to the boat ramp. You got that?”

“You’re diverting to Snowbank boat ramp. Lay on ground transport,” the radio voice said.

“Right.” The pilot dropped the mike and yelled, “Hang on.”

Everybody groaned as the Beaver pitched over into a steep dive and the pilot bent forward, very intent on the churning white wall.

Broker was thrown nose to nose with Sommer’s corpselike face and Sommer’s eyes popped open as Iker, in the front, climbed his seat while Milt slowly moved his lips: “Holy Mary, Mother of God . . .”

Their eyes were clamped shut and they were braced in the forty-five-degree dive, so they didn’t see the seething white wall break over the trees and chew inexorably into the western end of Snowbank Lake, as the Beaver leveled out and swooped down five, four, three feet off the waves, then skimmed the white caps, then bounced, rivets rattling, as it careened toward the boat ramp which was fast disappearing into the tempest, and they never saw the pilot smile as he cut the prop and coasted herky-jerky into the white churn.

It sure beat flying those commercial cattle cars.

“Next stop’s the dock,”
the pilot yelled. “I put her down upwind to try and drift into the sucker, so be ready to jump out and tie us off.”

But Broker couldn’t see anything because the windscreen was plastered with snow as they bucked, blind, on the waves, and he was definitely swearing off small planes forever.

And Iker was yelling into his police radio, “Sam, where the hell are you?”

The radio shouted back, “Dave, I got you visual. We’re on the dock but it’s like looking through oatmeal.”

“This guy’s looking real bad here.”

“Hey, we’re lucky to get wheels turning. The Suburban broke down and I had to commandeer a vehicle. We got out fast as we could.”

Milt lay curled in a ball with his face pasty as chalk, and was gripping his injured arm. Sommer hung from the stretcher straps. The pilot pointed to Milt. “There’s blankets in that aft compartment. Looks like we got some delayed shock there. And get the ropes.”

Broker lifted the stretcher to open the compartment door and Sommer screamed and they all gritted their teeth because there was too much scream and not enough cabin. But Broker kept moving and got the blankets, covered Milt, and went back for the coils of rope. Then he turned to Sommer.

“Hurts Jesus hurts,” Sommer said, rocking in his straps as the sweat popped and streaked his scalded face.

“You’re going to be all right,” Broker said, and suddenly Sommer’s hand groped up and clutched Broker’s arm.

“Tell Cliff . . .” Sommer muttered through clenched teeth and his eyes were wide-open yellow jets. Not seeing.

“We gotta do something quick. He’s out of his head,” Broker yelled as he pried off Sommer’s fingers. Then, getting his voice under control, he tried to calm Sommer. “Okay, tell Cliff.”

“Tell Cliff to move the money. Don’t let them . . .” Sommer reared on a needle of pain, licked his cracked lips, and blinked away sweat. “Gotta tell Cliff . . .”

“What? Cliff who?”

“Cliff Stovall.” Sommer collapsed back on his restraints.

Broker rested his wrist on Sommer’s forehead and came away jolted by the clammy hot flesh. “C’mon. C’mon,” he shouted to Iker.

“Working on it,” Iker yelled back. Then—“Oh shit!”

They collided with something hard and as the rivets holding the plane together groaned, Broker flashed on the claustrophobic but also indignant vision of scuttling and
drowning
in a blizzard. Another violent crash shook Sommer awake, screaming. What? Had they lost a pontoon?

“Bingo,” the pilot yelled triumphantly. “Quick, help me with the rope.” He clambered over the seat, tunneled through the crowded bodies, and grabbed the coils of rope. “Think fast. Move. Open the hatch.”

They struggled with the door, pushed it open, and squinted into the blowing snow and saw that one of the pontoons had snagged on the deck and pilings of a boat dock.

The pilot yelled, “C’mon, we gotta tie her down before we float away.”

Two bundled figures waiting on the dock turned out to be a county deputy and a paramedic, a woman. They helped Broker, Iker, and the pilot struggle up onto the slippery planks, and they all commenced to fasten ropes to secure the plane.

Broker concentrated and tied a bowline. He squinted at lights that hurt his eyes and realized he was staring into powerful low beams that showcased the churning snow. A huge maroon Chevy Tahoe with tire chains idled at the end of the dock.

When the plane was anchored, they hauled Sommer and Milt up to the dock. The robust brunette paramedic took one look at Sommer and yelled, “C’mon, let’s get him in the truck.”

The pilot accepted a thermos of coffee and, armed with a Louis L’Amour paperback, stayed with his plane. Everybody else piled in the Tahoe. As they plowed back toward Ely, Sommer screamed and writhed and drew his knees up to his chest at every bump and shift. After three tries, the medic gave up running the saline IV. Sommer just thrashed them out.

Broker huddled in the back, wrapped in a blanket next to Milt, who made a cramped pile on the cargo floor beside Sommer. He sipped a sloshing cup of hot coffee gratefully, but he couldn’t shake off the bone-deep chill from his last dip in the glacier water. He shivered and figured it was a sign of getting old.

Iker and a deputy sheriff the size of a pro wrestler hunched in the front seat. The way the windshield was catching snow it looked like
Star Trek
when the Enterprise accelerated to warp speed.

“Get ready for a hot belly,” the paramedic shouted into her radio. “His pressure is one eighty over a hundred. Pulse is one twenty and he’s running a temp of a hundred and four.” She listened, rolled her eyes, and poked Iker in the shoulder. “ETA?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Iker said.

“Make that one five minutes,” the paramedic said. Then she punched off the set and shook her head.

“What?” Broker asked.

“Procedure,” she said in a weary voice. “Obviously, the helicopter’s out from Duluth, so the administrator wants to throw him in an ambulance and put the ambulance behind a snowplow and ship him down the road to the nearest hospital where there’s a surgeon.”

“In this weather? What about Falken, the surgeon who paddled out with me?” Broker asked.

“They’re arguing about that right now. His license is current and they made some calls.”

“So what’s the problem?” Broker asked.

“Mike. The administrator. He wants to poll the hospital board before he signs off on surgical privileges. One of them’s in Florida.”

Iker turned from the front seat and glowered. “Yeah, bullshit! After all we been through, this fucking guy isn’t going to croak because of red tape.”

“Hey. What the hell,” said the huge deputy behind the wheel. His name was Sam and he rolled his eyes. “It’s like these Yuppie jerks come up here and tell us how to live. They run up the real estate and open Starbucks and bean sprouts. They tell us where and how we can fish. They want to take our snowmobiles and rifles away. They love the wolves from Minneapolis or Chicago or wherever the fuck they live, never mind the fuckin’ wolves eat our dogs on our porches. Then, when
they
get
their
asses in a sling they expect us to hang our balls over the edge and pull them out. And who foots the bill for all the overtime? Them in their gated fuckin’ suburbs? No, we pay it out of our dwindling fuckin’ tax base.”

Sam’s rant broke the tension in the Tahoe and they burst into deranged frontline mirth. The truck accelerated, slipped, and sideswiped a mass of overhanging spruce branches. The swerve brought them out of their laughing jag.

“Where’d you get this beast, anyway?” Iker asked, suddenly realizing they weren’t in a county vehicle.

Sam grinned. “Tell ’em, Shari.”

The paramedic smiled. “The ambulance couldn’t handle the drifts. The Suburban was down and we saw this thing parked in front of Vertin’s Cafe, had the chains on and everything. So we went in and liberated it off this swampy from the Cities.”

They were still wiping tears from their eyes when they saw the fluorescent glow of a deserted Amoco Station, and it looked like somebody left the door open to an empty freezer the way the lights burned white on white. Soon they glimpsed chimney smoke flapping over the rooftops of Ely like tattered sheets and abandoned cars loomed up, mired in knee-high drifts. Nothing moved except the Tahoe and the banshee wind and the reeling shadows of the trees.

Finally they approached Miner Hospital, an obstinate red-brick relic of mining-company medicine that vanished and reappeared in whirlpools of snow. They came closer and saw a bright orange wind sock whipped out rigid as metal sculpture from a corner of the flat roof. And a double garage door opened and the Tahoe lurched inside and the doors closed.

The engine quit and for the first time in three days Broker was in an enclosed, dry, quiet place that smelled securely of radial tires and clean concrete, only more so because it was a hospital with a red cross.

The rear door jerked opened and a woman, a man, and a haggard Allen Falken reached in. The woman wore jeans under her plum-colored smock. Allen and the man wore hospital blue. Broker and Shari helped them lift Sommer’s stretcher and transfer it onto a wheeled gurney cart.

In the flurry of movement, Allen looked at Sommer, then called to Milt who did not respond. He turned to Broker.

“Milt said the lump went down an hour ago. Sommer felt better, then he got delirious,” Broker said.

Allen shot a look at the other man. “We’re up shit’s creek for time if he perforated; where the hell’s that anesthetist?”

“She’s coming.”

Then Allen, who seemed taller now, commanded Broker. “You’ve got to get another gurney and load Milt yourself, the storm caught them at shift change and they’re way understaffed. C’mon people, let’s hustle,” he urged everyone as Brecht, the nurse, and the paramedic rushed Sommer up a ramp, through heavy swinging doors, and into a corridor.

Iker followed them, returned with a gurney, and helped Broker load Milt. Sam the driver stayed behind the wheel, talking into a snarl of static on his police radio.

They wheeled Milt into a small equipment-packed alcove with two treatment tables on the right. Shari came down the hall and supervised while they heaved Milt on the table. Then she waved them away and cut off Milt’s wet clothes.

Broker followed Iker down the hall and focused on a wall poster that diagramed potential fishhook accidents and the proper first-aid procedures. Dizzy at the heat in the building, he steadied his arm on a wall, and saw that his cheap wristwatch was still running. The time was 9:45
A.M.
They had dumped in the storm a little before eight yesterday morning. They’d left the camp on the point at ten. Getting Sommer out had taken fifteen minutes shy of twenty-four hours. Broker’s knees started to wobble. He’d been traveling on rough water, bouncing in rougher air. Now he was having trouble finding his land legs.

Up ahead, they had Sommer in the hall in front of an elevator surrounded by bristling carts stacked with monitors and a tangle of IV lines and electrical cords.

“Where’s Amy, goddammit?” Brecht yelled. “It won’t be pretty if we have to cut this guy without her.”

“We paged her. She’s coming.”

Sommer screamed as Allen, Brecht, and the nurse freed him from the rigid stretcher in a coordinated surge and discarded it along with the soaked sleeping bag. His eyes rolled, gumdrops of sweat mobbed his face. “HURTS GODDAMN HURTS!” he screamed.

“You’re okay, Hank,” Allen said. “You’re in a hospital. We’ll take good care of you.” Metal shears flashed in his hand as he cut away Sommer’s clothes. The material disappeared in a blue cyclone of activity as electrical leads attached to rounds of tape were thwacked into place on his bare chest. Bumpy trace lines jumped on a cardiac monitor.

“FUCK YOU HURTS!”

“He’s delirious. He can’t hear you,” Brecht said to Allen. Then he called out to Judy, “Get STAT CBC with diff and lytes. I’ll get a blood pressure. Start two large-bore IV’s antecubital and run them wide open,” Brecht slapped on a blood-pressure cuff and pumped it up while the nurse strung liters of saline IV and popped catheters in the hollows of Sommer’s elbows.

Broker watched Allen take a stance astride the crisis. Hair askew, still unshaven from the trail, he was a rougher version of his usual self.
He has to be beat
, thought Broker.
I sure am
.

“This guy NPO?” somebody yelled.

Broker turned at the bright female voice and matched it to a young woman with straight-ahead posture who jogged down the hall in jeans sticky with snow stuck to her knees. She shook more snow from her hair, cast off her jacket, and caught a blue smock the nurse tossed to her. She had large gray eyes under tawny, pale blond hair, no makeup, and freckles dotted her cheeks.

Brecht nodded at Allen. “Amy, Dr. Allen Falken.”

“When’s the last time he ate?” she asked.

“Not since midnight, right?” Allen craned his neck around the huddle of medics and queried Broker.

Broker nodded. “That’s what Milt said.”

“Is he allergic to any medicine?” She asked.

“Is it . . . ?” An out-of-place guy peered over their shoulders. He wore a white shirt, loose collar, tie unknotted, and his face sagged, blotched with concern.

“It’s bad, Mike,” Brecht said as he probed Sommer’s lower abdomen gently with his palm. Sommer thrashed and screamed.

“Jesus,” Mike said.

“It’s the real deal. Like a burst appendix.”

“You’ve done an appendix,” Mike said.

“I stabilize and ship south. My thing is your kid’s ear infection. This is way over my head. We have to open his abdomen and do a small bowel resection.”

“Don’t lecture me, I know what it means,” Mike hissed in a trapped voice, a hospital administrator treading in his worst nightmare. Lawsuits circled his furrowed brow like a halo of hungry sharks.

“He’s gotta do it,” Brecht said, jerking his head toward Allen.

“Let me think,” Mike said.

“No time to think,” said Amy, the new arrival.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mike countered.

“Means you’re going to have a
lot
of paperwork to do if this guy tips over because you shipped him,” she continued. “There’s EMTALA, there’s a blizzard. We have a licensed surgeon on board and a guy who’s septic with a perforated bowel. Not cool, Mike.”

“Amy’s right, we try to ship him, he will fucking die.” Brecht bit off each consonant for emphasis.

Mike turned to Iker, who shook his head. “I won’t put him back out in that weather. No way.”

Lastly, he looked at Allen who waited a beat and called it: “We open that belly or he’s dead. Make a decision.
Fast
.”

“Okay.” Mike hitched up his belt, squared his shoulders, and nodded to Allen. “Take him downstairs to the OR and scrub in. But Amy—I want all your stuff in recovery in case we have to reintubate. I mean, syringes full, everything. No one’s going to say we weren’t on top of this.”

Then Mike saw Broker and Iker standing there leaking puddles of lake water and ice melt. He cleared his throat and motioned to the paramedic. “Shari, get these guys something dry to wear.”