operating under less than ideal conditions.
“Just be prepared,” he told her in his best level tone.
The velvet wore thin in her voice as she showed some bare knuckle. “Just what’s that supposed to mean? I’m not some fucking Boy Scout-you’d better give me more than that. You’d better tell me he’s going to be all right.”
“I’m just saying it’s bad up here, there’s a blizzard. Christ, he’s in this little airplane with some cowboy pilot.”
“Promise me, Allen. You’ve got to pull him through.”
“Don’t worry, Jo.” He pressed the cool plastic of the receiver against his forehead and blamed the fatigue, because he found himself looking at all the possible outcomes on this bad morning, and in one of them the plane simply disappeared into the storm and was never seen again. An Act of God.
She broke his glide. “Give me the phone number for the hospital, there must be an airstrip up there. I’ll watch the weather. I’ll get Earl to find a quick charter. .”
“I don’t think Earl is a good idea under the circumstances,” Allen said tightly.
“He’s handy, he knows how to get things done. Like hire a plane on a short notice. I’m just being practical.”
“Hank hates him,” Allen said.
“Let me worry about that. You tuck your head into your surgeon’s cap and take care of business. I’m counting on you.”
“Yes,” Allen said simply, suddenly helpless before the inadequacy of language; so he gave her the hospital phone number, hung up the phone, and tried to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the sweat on his palms. Enough of this bullshit. It was time to get serious.
And finally the traction of his willpower engaged and he jettisoned the distractions-his personal life, the exhausting canoe trip out of the park, even Jolene. They became irrelevant as he narrowed in focus until his triangular face seemed to winnow to a point.
Then he raised his raw, blistered hands and inspected them. As always, he felt contempt for people who never touched anything except keyboards and telephones and money, who talked their way through life.
He took pride in making his living with his hands. During his surgical residency at the Mayo Clinic he had worn a red-and-white- striped regimental tie under his staff coat. The pattern and the colors invoked the bloody bandages of the barber pole that had served as the original shingle surgeons hung out to advertise their profession. The surgeons had followed European armies out of the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and into the modern era. They’d cut hair and they’d amputated arms and legs.
Allen smiled. Then, with the help of Mother Church, they’d rooted out the village midwives and the herbalist “witches” and consolidated their hold on medicine.
He was not without history. He was not without wit.
A surgeon of his generation couldn’t wear a tattoo on his arm like the new kids coming up-or like Hank Sommer could, and Allen envied Hank the cryptic messages dyed into his skin. And if Allen could have a secret tattoo it would be a Bard/Parker number-ten scalpel blade and it would say: HEAL WITH STEEL.
Now he mentally stripped himself until he saw himself as nude as a Michelangelo anatomy study. Then he dressed himself in successive layers of knowledge, confidence, and control. Only when he was fully mentally garbed did he visualize the entire operation, starting from the first incision.
He absolutely believed that anything he could visualize he could make happen in the controlled environment of an operating room.
When Allen stood up, his brow and his palms were dry. The guide, Broker, did not look like he was intimidated by Acts of God; he would persist. He would bring Hank back and lay him on an operating table and, true to the oath he had taken, Allen would insert a blade of the sharpest stainless steel just above Hank Sommer’s pubic bone and slice him open, lift out his guts with his two hands, repair them, and save his life.
* * *
The pilot leaned back, grabbed Iker’s arm, and rapped a knuckle on the map. Broker climbed forward and put his finger on the point in Fraser Lake.
“The rocks are real bad. You’re gonna have to land in this bay where the point joins the shore, and we’ll carry him out to you,” Broker said.
The pilot shook his head. “No time. Lots of bad bush in there. We’ll take our chances with the rocks. The guy with the bad arm-can he walk?” he asked.
“Sure,” Broker said. “He can make it on his own.”
The pilot nodded. “Okay. Listen up. You two are going to strap him on the Stokes and haul him through the rocks and load him. We do it the first time or we’ll have to ride out this storm on the lake. Which will not be good for the patient.”
“Eh, Pat?” called a deadpan voice on the radio. “Be advised. I’m looking out the hangar window and I can’t see the wind sock on the point.”
“Outstanding,” the pilot replied.
At one thousand feet the clouds were clotting fast, and down below the snow rippled like cheesecloth over the pine crowns and water. What had taken Broker and Allen a day of paddling and portaging to travel now buffeted past in minutes and they came up on Fraser. The pilot knew the lake, fixed the point, and flew straight for the spot that Broker had indicated on the map.
Gray smoke smudged the snow and Broker figured Milt had dumped pine boughs on the fire. Then they saw Milt’s red parka jerking among the white turtles of rock, waving his good arm.
Iker grabbed the stretcher as the Beaver hugged a tight turn and bumped down into the waves. Iker and Broker edged through the open hatch and balanced on the pontoon as the plane maneuvered toward shore.
“Go. Go,” the pilot yelled, pumping his arm.
They tried to step onto a rock but it wasn’t going to happen, so they jumped at the most solid-looking footing they could see, and both of them splashed up to their waists in the ice-cold water.
“Jesus H. Christ,” gasped Iker, scrambling for shore.
They sloshed through the waves and stumbled up the cobble beach. Milt, unshaven, gray with pain, walked stiffly out to them.
“No water or food since midnight. He’s unconscious,” Milt yelled in the wind. “Thing is, the swelling went down an hour ago and the pain went away and he was feeling great-then he started screaming. Now he’s delirious, burning up.”
“Aw God, it perforated,” Iker said.
“C’mon,” Broker shouted. “He’s dying on us.”
They stamped into the rocky cul-de-sac, swatting at the smoke and, grabbing Sommer, roughly shoved the stiff stretcher under the sleeping bag and buckled him down. Sommer woke up screaming.
Ignoring the screams, they staggered back toward the plane with their clumsy load. Milt lurched ahead, tripping and falling in the surf until he made it to the aircraft and, using his strong good arm, pulled himself aboard.
Knee-deep in the rocky wash, Broker’s legs buckled and Iker, on the back end, tripped. The sleeping bag took a wave, and now their load was heavier, soaked with water.
They dropped him and barely managed to keep his head from going under but the screaming stopped. Sommer had passed out again. Broker and Iker locked eyes and were amazed that the brief exertion had sapped their energy, that they didn’t have the strength to lift the stretcher.
But they had to.
Desperate, they wrenched the weight through the rocks and waves and banged it on the pontoon. With Milt pulling one-handed, they managed to get the front of the stretcher into the tiny cargo bay.
“Fucker’s too big,” Iker yelled, frantic. Sommer’s feet, swaddled in the soaked sleeping bag, dangled over the stretcher and bumped against the cockpit seats.
“Wedge him any way you can, shut that hatch, we’re
Milt, Broker, and Iker worked in a frenzy with the stretcher, as the pilot banked into the wind and grabbed
