Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

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.”

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.