Free Absolute Zero by Chuck Logan Page A

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