Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

A lean woman in a blue smock and trousers came up silently in tennis shoes. She wound her dark ponytail into a hair net and pulled on latex gloves.

“Some day, eh, Nancy?” Shari said.

The nurse raised her brows, which emphasized the circles of fatigue under her eyes. “I worked all night watching two wards, now I still got them plus recovery when they bring that guy up.”

They chatted quickly, then the nurse syringed a dose of pain reliever into Milt’s IV, pointed to the puddle of water on the floor, and politely waved them off.

Broker and Iker followed Shari back into the empty garage. Sam and the Tahoe were gone. It was a busy afternoon.

Shari opened a locker, threw them towels, and turned her back. While they stripped and dried off, she rummaged around, clucking, obviously enjoying the fact that the two sweatshirts she heaved back to them were decorated with really hideous logos. Mismatched sweatpants followed.

While Shari made appropriately disparaging remarks, they put on the dry clothes and blue slippers. They went back into the hospital and padded down a corridor walled with floor-to-ceiling plate glass that churned, aquarium-like, with silent snow.

“Worse than the Halloween storm in ninety-one,” Iker said. Broker, too tired to comment, plodded on to the staff lounge and flopped on a couch. In less than a minute he was chin on chest in a deep nod. He came up from the nod and heard Iker ask Shari what was going on downstairs in the operating room.

Shari pointed to her stomach and drew her finger down to her crotch. “They cut him open and lift out his intestines. Then they snip out the perforated section and sew it back together. After that they wash out his stomach cavity real good. They have to repair the hernia, but because of the presence of infection, they won’t use a patch, so they stitch him up the old-fashion way.”

“Ouch,” Iker said.

Broker didn’t hear the rest of the conversation because he was fast asleep.

“Hey, Broker, wake up, man.”

“Wha. .?” Broker lurched forward and checked his watch. It was just past noon. He blinked and saw Iker’s square, smiling face.

“They’re done. They’re bringing him up to the recovery room.”

They turned through the halls, entered the ER corridor, and Broker could almost feel the sunbeams peeking around the corner. The only person not smiling was Hank Sommer, who was sprawled out on a gurney, trussed in his own ugly floral gown. The agony that had gripped his face for twenty-four hours had melted away. With his mouth open in a long yawn he looked-if not peaceful-certainly burned-out stoned.

Directly over Sommer, Amy, the gray-eyed nurse-anesthetist, pulled off her bonnet in a triumphal gesture, shook out shoulder-length hair, and pushed the gurney. Nancy, the busy nurse, with her hair coiled in a net, hauled the other end. They steered the bed into a small room and detoured around a tall cart on casters that looked like a Craftsman tool chest with red drawers, and parked him next to the wall.

“What’s the crash cart doing here?” Amy asked.

“Mike wanted it prepositioned.”

Amy rolled her eyes and nodded at a trayful of tiny drug bottles and syringes positioned on the bed between Sommer’s feet. “I hear you, he wants all my stuff ready, too.” Then they switched Sommer from a mobile monitor to the bigger monitor bolted to the wall. The wired beep beep beep of his pulse, blood pressure, and oxygenation graphed steadily across the video screen.

Allen shuffled down the hall flanked by Brecht and Judy, the nurse who’d helped unload the Tahoe. They all wore blue tunics, trousers, blue booties over their shoes, and blue bonnets. Like rakish ascots, blue masks hung loose at their throats.

To Broker they seemed to move with the quiet swagger as would a blue-uniformed bomber crew who had just pulled off a dicey mission. And there was no doubt who the pilot was. Allen’s throat and a wedge of chest showed through the V-neck of his scrub blouse, and a spatter of Sommer’s blood dotted the hem. His strong hands swung at his sides as he took his victory lap along the surgeon track, that fine line between the kill floor and The Resurrection.

Broker added his grin to the wave of admiration.

Allen pulled off his bonnet and ran a hand through his matted hair. The corners of his lips dimpled up and, in a grateful gesture, he held up his right palm to shoulder level and high-fived Broker.

“So he’s all right?” Broker asked.

Allen nodded and showed even teeth in a tired grin. “Hey. He lucked out. He had a good surgeon.” More seriously, he said, “We caught it in time. He should be fine. Fine,” he repeated, and scuffed his feet and tripped off balance, and Broker noticed that as he moved farther away from the OR, he seemed to diminish in stature. To physically shrink.

Broker reached out to steady him and Allen blinked, then squinted as his eyelids trembled. “I’m all in,” he said. “Pooped.”

“I hear you,” Broker said, craning his neck to see into the small recovery room.

“Let the anesthetist make sure Sommer’s all the way awake and stabilized. A few minutes,” Allen said.

A congratulatory huddle formed in the corridor-Iker, Shari, Broker, Brecht, and Mike, the very comforted-looking administrator. After a moment, Broker stepped away and poked his head into the recovery room and listened to the medical chat.

“He’s breathing well, sats good, rhythm stable,” Nancy said.

“Okay,” Amy said as she scanned the monitors. “Let’s rouse him, get him to raise his head, squeeze a finger, swallow.” Amy leaned over Sommer. “And wait for the eyelids, the littlest muscles are always the last to come back. Who’s got the Narc keys?”

“Got them right here. I’ve got everything today.”

“Get twenty-five milligrams of Demerol and give it IV.”

Nancy went to a closet next to the oxygen outlet, opened the locked door, and went in. Amy moved the tray from the foot of Sommer’s bed, looked around, and then placed it on a corner of the crash cart. Nancy returned with a slender syringe.

“Wait a sec. Let me get him talking,” Amy said, propping her elbow next to Sommer’s head. She leaned down and dangled her index finger in the loose fingers of his right hand. “Can you blink? Can you squeeze my finger?” she asked.

Sommer’s eyes swam around, fluttered. He pressed her finger and tried to move.

“Take it easy,” Amy said, patting his arm. “You’ve got a few stitches in your abdomen.”

Sommer pursed dry lips. “ ’peration.”

“That’s right. You’ve had an emergency operation that went just fine and now you’re in the recovery room.”

He blinked, focused, blinked again. “High,” he said slowly.

“Hello, yourself.”

“No. Stone. .” He took a breath, wheezed. “Grog. .”

“Yep. We gave you something. We’re about to give you some more of the good stuff.”

“Hi,” Sommer said.

“Right, you’re stoned, huh,” she said.

Sommer raised his head and attempted to look around. “No,” he said more distinctly. “Hello.” He studied her. “You’re pretty,” he said in a halting voice. Then he squinted at the badge on the front of her blue tunic that read: amy skoda, crna. “You’re pretty, Amy,” he said, a little surer.

Amy executed a modified curtsey and said, “Thank you, and you’re lucky to be alive.”

Sommer blinked, the electric beep speeded up, and his voice sank. “Where?” he struggled to raise his up on elbows. Fell back.

“It’s all right,” Amy reassured him. “You’re in a hospital.”

His eyes turned to dark tunnels, remembering. “Storm.”

Amy nodded. “Mister, you’ve had quite an adventure.”