“Sommer?” Allen gasped, dragging another pack.
“Bad shape. Don’t know. He’s up the beach, a kind of cave. Need a fire,” Broker yelled.
“Fuck!” Allen scowled. “My medical kit with some decent pain killers. Lost it on the way in.”
“Your canoe?” Milt grimaced to Broker. His right arm hung at an odd angle.
“Swamped. At the other end of the lake by now. What’s wrong with your arm?” Broker asked, getting them moving.
“Can’t move it,” Milt said, wincing.
Allen started to check the arm.
“Not now.” Shivering uncontrollably, out of fire, Broker was naked before the maw of shock. He felt over the packs. They had lost the tents, one of the food packs, and some personal stuff, but they had the sleeping bags and half the food. They’d be all right if they could warm up.
“Get out of the wind. Move.” Shouldering the food pack, giving Allen the sleeping bags, he herded them over the slick rocks. In minutes they were in the dry granite pocket, a magical zone of calm compared to full exposure.
Allen bent and stripped off Sommer’s parka, yanked up his shirt, and pulled down his trousers. He kneaded the bulge in Sommer’s groin.
Sommer screamed.
Broker looked away, spooked. Milt moved close beside him.
“You all right?” Milt asked.
“My arms seized up out there; he busted his gut on account. .”
Milt cut him off. “You swam him in. Let it go.”
Broker nodded, pawed through his survival pack, cast aside a folding saw, grabbed a small axe, and found what he wanted: the fifteen-minute red highway flare that would save their lives.
Broker and Milt tore into the tangle of driftwood rammed into a rock fissure ten feet away and dragged out pieces. Really shaking now, Broker kicked off branches, grabbed his hatchet, hacked slivers, coring down to dry wood, and tossed it into a small pile. Then he peeled back the flare’s cover, ripped off the friction cap, and struck it along the tip of the fuse like a match. A spout of incandescent flame erupted in a sulphurous cloud. The wood crackled.
“Aw right,” Milt coughed and cheered, seeing the instant blaze. Ignoring his injured arm, he dragged branches, propped them against the rocks, and stomped them into smaller kindling.
The fire was irresistible and Allen joined them. He had the first-aid kit from Broker’s bag in one shaking hand, a plastic vial in the other. “This is all we have. Fucking Tylenol,” he muttered. He pulled himself away, returned to Sommer, and carefully finished removing his wet clothing.
Sommer was snake-bellied, with zero body fat. The baseball-sized bulge in the left side of his groin was unmistakable.
“What is it?” Broker called out.
“Not good,” Allen said as he coaxed Tylenol down Sommer’s throat. “He wouldn’t listen. Won the lottery and just had to go hunting with a hernia.”
Sommer’s grimace was bathed in firelight. “How bad?”
Allen composed himself. “You ruptured yourself, Hank. My index of suspicion is a strangulated intestine.”
Sommer sought out Broker’s eyes with a perverse, painful grimace. “Sit tight,” Broker blurted, “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Not going anywhere,” Sommer said weakly as his head dropped back down. The three shivering men locked eyes and moved closer to the fire.
“The cell phone,” Allen said in a dull voice.
“Don’t go there,” Milt said.
Broker looked from Milt to Allen. They had gotten their wish. They were on their own.
Chapter Five
Numb, Milt gawked into the storm. Allen stared at his trembling, useless surgeon’s hands. Broker kept seeing Sommer paddling. .
Lassitude, the second fuzzy layer of shock, was setting in, so Broker roused and pounded their shoulders-Milt’s good one.
“Okay. C’mon. Keep it simple.” First they had to get dried off. Gently they dressed Sommer in fresh clothing, easing him into a sleeping bag and moving him close to the fire. Allen made an ice pack from a T-shirt and some shore ice and placed it on Sommer’s stomach. Then they built the fire waist-high, stripped, wrung out their clothes, rigged a clothes line, and set out their wet boots.
Milt’s biceps was already swollen purple, hot to the touch, so Allen wrapped it in ice and tied a sling from a sweatshirt.
“Fucking rotator cuff, again,” Milt hissed.
“Take some Tylenol,” Allen said.
Milt waved him off. “Save it for Sommer.”
Broker took inventory. They’d lost the coffeepot and the propane stove and fuel, but he found a coffee can full of tea bags and instant coffee. He filled the can with water, then put it over the fire and doled out hefty candy bars.
They’d overbuilt the fire and now they began to stumble in the drowsy warmth. To keep them alert, Broker brewed strong, hot tea which they drank from canteen cups as they gobbled chocolate bars. Allen gingerly spooned tea to Sommer.
“Well, how bad is he?” Milt asked.
Allen calculated. “He has to get to an operating room in twenty-four hours.”
Their eyes locked in a fast, triage glance.
“And I can’t operate in the woods with a hunting knife and aspirin,” Allen said.
“And I can’t paddle with this arm,” Milt said.
“And I can’t do it alone,” Broker said, careful to control his voice. On a hard paddle out, he’d much prefer Milt.
“So that’s it,” Milt said. “I stay with Hank, you two paddle for help.”
Broker started making his preparations.
“What are our chances?” Allen asked.
Broker glanced over at Sommer in the sleeping bag. “I won’t bullshit you. Getting out’s the easy part. It’s getting back in that’s hairy.” He yanked his thumb at the storm. “The wind’s out of the northwest. That’s classic Alberta Clipper. If something really big’s coming down from Canada, we’ll hit it going out. The Forest Service has a seaplane base in Ely, and the state patrol has a helicopter. That’s his only chance.”
Their eyes met. Allen said, “But bad weather could keep them from flying.”
“There it is,” Broker said.
“I don’t have to tell you how serious this is,” Allen said. “His bowel has popped through a tear in his stomach wall, the muscles have constricted, and I can’t reduce it-push it back in. His intestine is incarcerated, it’s not getting blood, the tissue is dying. If it perforates, depending on the size of the tear, his stomach cavity could literally flood with his own shit.”
“Peritonitis,” Broker said.
“Not the way I’d choose for him to die,” Allen said tartly, staring out into the whirling snow.
Sommer curled in the sleeping bag with his knees drawn up in a fetal knot of pain. “Jo-lene,” he moaned, going in and out of consciousness.
“Is that?” Broker asked.
Milt nodded his head, raised an eyebrow, and drew out the syllables as an afterthought: “Joe-leene.”
Sommer repeated his wife’s name like a painful metronome, marking time, and it was all about time now. Two hours had passed since they’d fumbled ashore. Hypothermia was behind them, they had retrieved the canoe from the point, but Broker wanted to make sure that he and Allen were thawed and in dry gear before they faced the weather again.
They hunkered over a topographical map on which their itinerary had been traced in yellow Magic Marker. Allen reached over abruptly, turned Broker’s wrist, and plucked the cheap canvas strap on his watch. Broker started to react, then saw that the doctor didn’t mean to be rude-he was just curious and his curiosity didn’t respect normal boundaries.
“Still running. Twelve bucks, United Store,” Broker said evenly.
Allen, wearing a Rolex Explorer II, nodded and continued to lace on his boots. Broker cinched up the survival bag. They had food, flashlights, sleeping bags, a change of dry clothes, a sound eighteen-foot canoe, and three paddles. For ballast, Broker wrapped some dry kindling in a poncho liner.