Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Three other ports were incised higher in the stomach wall on the patient’s right-hand side, just beneath the liver. And sleeves were inserted. Two for the resident to handle his forceps and one midbelly, for Allen to use the dissecting forceps, in this case an electric cautery.

Laparoscopy was essentially a spatial-orientation video game played on a living person. Allen held the rotating, pistol-grip forceps controls in his hands and coordinated the working end of the forceps to the image the camera projected on the television towers.

The glistening coral-colored formations of human inner space reminded Allen of spelunking, going into underwater caves with Aqua-Lung and handheld lights-something he hadn’t tried yet. Maybe Milt would go for it?

“Lights,” Allen said. The powerful overhead lights were turned off.

“Music,” Allen said. Again Jeannie chose. Bruce Springsteen belted out “Born to Run” as the resident gripped the gallbladder with a forceps and positioned it against the liver. With exquisitely fine muscle control and timing, Allen clipped the cystic artery and duct with titanium staples, then severed them. He then carved the gallbladder free from the liver bed with the cautery. Before removing it through the umbilical port, as he tidied up some minor bleeders with the cautery, he had an attack of sheer whimsy.

Or perhaps inspiration.

To underscore the new boost in his mood, or perhaps to honor the secret transgression that had launched him out of his rut-Allen acted on impulse in a fleeting moment when no one was watching the video towers. With a deft whirl of the cautery controls he seared two letters into the patient’s abdominal wall:

AF

His own initials up on the screens.

No harm done, it would heal in a few days. It was just a tiny flourish. He would have preferred Vivaldi trumpets instead of Clarence Clemons’s saxophone, but, hey, what the hell. .

Allen stripped off his last sterile gown of the day and tossed it in a hamper. Then he dictated his notes and was on his way to the locker room when he met Merman in the hall.

“So how do you code an ostrich kick?” Merman asked.

“What’s this, another joke?” Allen was mildly intrigued.

“No way. ER just admitted a guy with a transverse fracture of the left humerus. Bam. One kick.”

“Where did it happen? At a zoo?”

“No idea. C’mon, take a look at his arm, the nurse in ER said the kick tore a hole in a heavy leather sleeve and you can see the scale pattern of the bird’s toe knuckle in the mangled skin.”

“That’d be worth seeing,” Allen said, genuinely curious. He kept pace with Merman as they left surgery, went around the pre op admitting desk, and headed down the corridor to Emergency. They turned a corner and, ahead of them, a group of nurses and the ER doc were gathered around a man on a gurney and-

Allen immediately stood absolutely still and let Merman continue on alone.

The patient was Earl Garf.

And Phil Broker was standing at the edge of the medical huddle.

And right next to Broker, holding on to his elbow real friendly-like, was the nurse-anesthetist from Ely, Minnesota: Amy Skoda.

Allen’s surprise escaped his lips in a nervous stammer: “Wha-what. .?” Ashamed, he backed down the hall and around the corner with his hand clamped over his mouth.

What the hell was going on?

After getting Earl admitted to the emergency room at Timberry Trails, Broker used a pay phone in the waiting room to call Jolene.

He told her that Earl was her friend again, like she wanted, and he’d be moving his stuff out of her basement. And maybe she should send him some flowers because he’d just been admitted to the hospital after having his arm broken by an ostrich.

“That’s what I said,” he repeated. “An ostrich.”

He said he’d be at the farm until Sunday afternoon, and then he was returning to Ely. He said he hoped everything turned out all right.

He said good-bye. Then he realized something and turned to Amy. “You have a plane to catch.”

Amy shrugged, grinned. “Let’s blow it off. We have an escaped ostrich to find, remember?”

“Right. How do you find an escaped ostrich?”

They laughed, then, remembering Rodney in the barn, Broker made a fast call to John Eisenhower at the Washington County sheriff’s department. After quick pleasantries, Rose, John’s secretary, said she could squeeze him in for ten minutes if he hurried.

Rushing through the hospital parking lot, Broker explained, “I know that other guy who ran. Rodney. I need to check something with the local sheriff.”

On the road, he said, “John and I go way back. I was working on his task force when I arrested Rodney three years ago. He’s supposed to be in jail.”

Pushing the Leper Colony, he drove eighty mph on back-county roads, leaving Timberry, skirting through Lake Elmo and Oak Park Heights, and turning onto Highway 36 where it made its turn approaching the St. Croix River on the outskirts of Stillwater. A few minutes later he turned into the parking lot for the Washington County Jail and the sheriff’s office.

“This will only take a minute,” he assured Amy. He jogged into the red-brick jail complex and was buzzed through a security door. Rose waved him in. “Make it quick, he has to talk to the Elk’s Club in ten minutes.”

John was standing in front of his desk in gray dress slacks and a T-shirt breaking starch on a fresh white dress shirt. Broker hadn’t seen him since last May when he’d come up to Broker’s Beach for the fishing opener. John was running for reelection next month and he’d been spending time in the gym. He had trimmed his blond mustache and the ten desk pounds that he used to wear around his waist had migrated back to his chest and shoulders as muscle.

They shook hands warmly. Then John’s hand went to his pocket and he handed Broker a campaign button: REELECT THE SHERIFF.

“Kind of Nixonian,” Broker said.

John struck a pose, and framed an invisible subject in the air with parenthetically cupped hands. “I considered going with ‘Reelect Ike,’ but decided that was a little over-the-top.” He finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it in. “I heard about that business in the canoe area. .”

Broker nodded. “Reason I’m in town; I brought the guy’s car back.”

John walked around his desk and took two ties from the back of his chair. He held them up next to the charcoal suit coat hanging from the shelves behind the desk.

“I’d go with the blue one,” Broker said.

John nodded and began to knot his tie. “I, ah, also heard from Tom about you and Nina splitting the blanket.” Tom Jeffords was Broker’s neighbor, the Cook County sheriff.

“Our latest standoff,” Broker said, clipping off the words.

“Not real good for your kid,” John observed.

“I hear you.”

John snugged up his Windsor and reached for his coat. “So what’s up? You didn’t pop in to help me pick ties,” he said.

“About two hours ago I ran into Rodney on the street. You remember Rodney.”

“Oh yeah.”

“I thought he was doing some serious federal time?”

“Don’t quote me on this, but law enforcement is still a pretty snitch-driven business. After you left the picture, everybody-local and federal-was hurting statewide for a contact in the outlaw end-of-the-gun culture.”

Broker grimaced, disbelieving. “Rodney flipped?”

John grinned. “Yeah, he’s kinda, like, the new you. He’s working deep informant to reduce his sentence.”

Broker groaned but he now understood Rodney’s disappearing act. Rodney wouldn’t be telling Earl anything.

A black phone sitting off to the side on John’s desk rang.