them’s in Florida.”
Iker turned from the front seat and glowered. “Yeah, bullshit! After all we been through, this fucking guy isn’t going to croak because of red tape.”
“Hey. What the hell,” said the huge deputy behind the wheel. His name was Sam and he rolled his eyes. “It’s like these Yuppie jerks come up here and tell us how to live. They run up the real estate and open Starbucks and bean sprouts. They tell us where and how we can fish. They want to take our snowmobiles and rifles away. They love the wolves from Minneapolis or Chicago or wherever the fuck they live, never mind the fuckin’ wolves eat our dogs on our porches. Then, when
Sam’s rant broke the tension in the Tahoe and they burst into deranged frontline mirth. The truck accelerated, slipped, and sideswiped a mass of overhanging spruce branches. The swerve brought them out of their laughing jag.
“Where’d you get this beast, anyway?” Iker asked, suddenly realizing they weren’t in a county vehicle.
Sam grinned. “Tell ’em, Shari.”
The paramedic smiled. “The ambulance couldn’t handle the drifts. The Suburban was down and we saw this thing parked in front of Vertin’s Cafe, had the chains on and everything. So we went in and liberated it off this swampy from the Cities.”
They were still wiping tears from their eyes when they saw the fluorescent glow of a deserted Amoco Station, and it looked like somebody left the door open to an empty freezer the way the lights burned white on white. Soon they glimpsed chimney smoke flapping over the rooftops of Ely like tattered sheets and abandoned cars loomed up, mired in knee-high drifts. Nothing moved except the Tahoe and the banshee wind and the reeling shadows of the trees.
Finally they approached Miner Hospital, an obstinate red-brick relic of mining-company medicine that vanished and reappeared in whirlpools of snow. They came closer and saw a bright orange wind sock whipped out rigid as metal sculpture from a corner of the flat roof. And a double garage door opened and the Tahoe lurched inside and the doors closed.
The engine quit and for the first time in three days Broker was in an enclosed, dry, quiet place that smelled securely of radial tires and clean concrete, only more so because it was a hospital with a red cross.
The rear door jerked opened and a woman, a man, and a haggard Allen Falken reached in. The woman wore jeans under her plum-colored smock. Allen and the man wore hospital blue. Broker and Shari helped them lift Sommer’s stretcher and transfer it onto a wheeled gurney cart.
In the flurry of movement, Allen looked at Sommer, then called to Milt who did not respond. He turned to Broker.
“Milt said the lump went down an hour ago. Sommer felt better, then he got delirious,” Broker said.
Allen shot a look at the other man. “We’re up shit’s creek for time if he perforated; where the hell’s that anesthetist?”
“She’s coming.”
Then Allen, who seemed taller now, commanded Broker. “You’ve got to get another gurney and load Milt yourself, the storm caught them at shift change and they’re way understaffed. C’mon people, let’s hustle,” he urged everyone as Brecht, the nurse, and the paramedic rushed Sommer up a ramp, through heavy swinging doors, and into a corridor.
Iker followed them, returned with a gurney, and helped Broker load Milt. Sam the driver stayed behind the wheel, talking into a snarl of static on his police radio.
They wheeled Milt into a small equipment-packed alcove with two treatment tables on the right. Shari came down the hall and supervised while they heaved Milt on the table. Then she waved them away and cut off Milt’s wet clothes.
Broker followed Iker down the hall and focused on a wall poster that diagramed potential fishhook accidents and the proper first-aid procedures. Dizzy at the heat in the building, he steadied his arm on a wall, and saw that his cheap wristwatch was still running. The time was 9:45 A.M. They had dumped in 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.
“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
