Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

In moments of lucid pain between morphine doses, Broker recalled Jolene calling him out into the night and her shocked yell, “What’s he doing here?” just before Garf hit him on the head.

Had she been clinging to his arm in fear or trapping his arm so he couldn’t fight back?

Broker lay on his back with his arms and legs extended and elevated on cushions. A bald patch of his scalp was held in place by fifteen stitches. It felt like someone had launched a rocket off his charred left cheek.

The stab wounds in his shoulder and upper arm had been cleaned and lightly bandaged. Sterile gauze separated his fingers and toes, which were flushed a vivid pink and were bulbous with blisters.

The local cops had a pool going, betting on how many fingers and toes Broker would lose. Shari Swatosh, the paramedic, had signed up for the long-shot wager, opting for all twenty fingers and toes, plus his winky.

Dr. Boris Brecht had spent four years as an army doctor, most of them in Alaska with ski troops of the mountain division. He thought the pool was very funny. He wore a stethoscope around his neck, and a blue denim shirt with a Mickey Mouse decal embroidered on the chest pocket. He wagged his finger to reassure Broker. “Blisters that go all the way down to the tips of fingers and toes are good. Pink is good.”

As he inspected Broker’s bubblegum toes, he was mainly concerned about infection. Yesterday, when they’d brought Broker, Amy, and Jolene into Emergency, Brecht had immediately suspended Broker’s hands and feet in a huge sitz bathtub. He’d kept the water temperature between 100 and 108 degrees. He’d cleaned and stitched Broker’s wounds as he sat in the tub.

Through thick goggles of shock, Broker had watched his pallid fingers and toes slowly change from ivory to blush and start to sting as the blood crept back.

“Reaction to extreme cold varies from person to person,” Brecht had explained. “Certain groups are more susceptible than others. Blacks are three to six times more susceptible than whites. People born down South are four times more vulnerable than people born up north. Genetically, people with type O blood are more predisposed to cold trauma than type A or B.

“Basically, you weren’t out that long. And you’d ingested a lot of alcohol, and alcohol tends to dilate blood vessels. That’s not a recommendation to drink in the woods.

“You might loose some fingernails and toenails but, as long as infection doesn’t set in, you should recover full function. There’ll be some minor nerve damage and your extremities will be more vulnerable in the future. Probably you should work on your coping skills when it comes to cold weather.”

“Like Florida,” Sam counseled.

Broker went out with the morphine tide.

He woke in the darkened room and heard a studied hush of machine-made beeps and sighs circulate in the corridor. Blue ghosts in white shoes drifted silently up and down the hall, passing his open door. One of them paused, looked in, and treaded soundlessly toward him.

Just a shadow at first, backlit by the hall lights. Then, as she emerged from shadow, he saw it was a lean woman, hatchet-faced, with her dark hair in a bun. And she held something in her upraised hand. Broker’s heart began to beat faster when he saw it was a syringe and nurse Nancy Ward was coming right at him.

Sequestered, Amy’s word again. It felt like his fears and his facts were suspended in morphine free fall. But then Nancy smiled warmly and push the shot into his IV and he felt the latest gentle wave lift and cradle him.

“You know what I think,” Nancy said, as she checked his dressings, his blisters, took his temperature, and checked his pulse. “He just thought he was so damn smart and we were a bunch of hicks up here. Doctor Mister Allen Falken. Well, you and Amy showed him, didn’t you? Turns out he was just another dip-shit swampy.”

Broker smiled, a nodding idiot smile he’d mainly seen on people he had busted.

Nancy adjusted and fluffed his pillows. “The word is the reporters are going to start showing up tomorrow, but it’s pretty much over; Mr. Sommer, I mean. He did his blinking for the prosecutor and now he’s slipped into a coma for real.”

In the Temple of Morphine, there is no bad news. Broker continued to smile.

“You just lie back and take it easy, because you have a visitor,” Nancy said.

Then Nancy disappeared and another slender blue figure took her place. Amy’s hair looked out of place and her face was pale, like the Roto-Rooter had been through her entire circulation system. She had a plastic bracelet on her wrist and an IV in her arm, just like he did, except her IV bag was on a stand that rolled on casters beside her.

“We have to stop meeting in this place,” Amy said.

Broker grinned.

“God, look at you. I’ll bet you haven’t smiled this much ever. Listen, I talked to Boris and he says your hands and feet-don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.”

She paused, picked up a sippy cup with a flexible straw from the bedside table, and held it to his lips. Broker, cotton-mouthed, gratefully sucked the ginger ale. “Have to keep your fluids up,” Amy said, then she put down the cup.

“One of the paramedics told Dave Iker you were babbling about ostriches, so Dave came to me and I explained about the farm. So Dave called down to Washington County and your friend, the sheriff, had a deputy go around to J.T.’s neighbors and find a guy who knew how to watch the place. The birds are all right.”

Broker continued to grin.

Amy cocked her head. “Jolene told me it was the baby monitors.”

As Amy talked, Broker tried to fit his mind around the story according to Hank. The whole thing about Allen giving the wrong meds. Garf and Stovall.

Broker tried to listen from behind his soft morphine window. Maybe this was what it was like for Hank. People talking at him.

“The St. Louis County prosecutor asked the questions with an alphabet board. Hank blinked back the answers.” Amy clicked her teeth. “They were pretty short answers. How Jolene got Allen and Earl fighting each other. But there were these gaps. .”

Broker couldn’t stop grinning.

“Like, how did they control Jolene? Or was she playing along for time? I guess we’ll never know because her lawyer cut an immunity deal for her to testify before the grand jury.”

Amy held up her hand and rotated her palm. It didn’t mean anything to Broker. Amy shook her head. “I forgot, you’re drunk. My fingernails. She came by to check on me earlier this evening. She brought polish remover and new polish. She painted my fingernails red. .”-her non-IV hand floated up-“and she put up my hair.”

Broker grinning, long-glide. Hair?

“Jolene and I don’t have a lot in common; she didn’t exactly graduate from Women’s Studies, did she? All I know is, she saved my life.”

At some point, she went away and left him alone to ponder simple things; Jolene saved Amy and he saved Jolene. And nobody saved him, this time, except himself, and that’s the way it should be.

In the morning the morphine tide went out and Broker was beached on dry pain. Pain brought the virtue of clarity. And the scent of lilies.

When he opened his eyes she was standing looking down at him. She seemed to have grown an inch and maybe it was her posture, like she’d laid down something heavy. Maybe it was him being flat on his back.

Milt Dane stood in the doorway; floated was more like it. He wore recent events strapped to his back like a jet pack, and he tended to zoom around a few inches off the floor. A layered legal situation was taking shape in which he represented Amy, Nancy Ward, and Jolene against Allen Falken’s insurance underwriters.