Frozen Solid A Novel

28




DOC WAS WAITING IN HIS OFFICE WITH A STETHOSCOPE HUNG around his neck. There was enough light, barely, for her to see his strange pink eyes.

“No glasses?” Hallie asked.

“Here I can adjust the light,” he said. “My condition is of the oculocutaneous variety. Too much light is not only painful, it makes everything I see look washed out and blurry. Like a badly overexposed photograph.”

As Hallie’s own eyes adjusted to the gloom, Doc took on a ghostly white glow. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Someone who can’t see must be a lousy doctor.”

“Actually, I was thinking how hard you must have worked, given your condition, to become a doctor. And how admirable that is.”

He blinked. “Oh.” Clearly it was not the response he was accustomed to. “So how have you been feeling?”

“Exhausted. Sore throat. Some rumbling in the gut. Other than that, okay.”

“Par for the course.” He checked her pulse, temperature, blood pressure. While he was working, she looked around with something like wonder. Even in the dim light she could see immaculate beige walls, gleaming stainless steel cabinets, a gurney with crisp white sheets. An exam area with a hospital bed and a privacy curtain. Counters with neatly arranged trays of instruments, swabs, wipes. Disposal containers for sharps and biohazards. The cream-colored floor was clean and waxed to a shine. The room smelled good, too, like alcohol and pine-scented disinfectant.

“My compliments,” she said. “This is the cleanest place I’ve seen here.”

“We make sure it gets special attention.” Agnes Merritt had been sitting on a stool near one corner of the shadowy room.

“I didn’t know you were here. Are you sick?” Hallie asked.

“No. I didn’t want to get in the way. SORs require that a female be present when another female is being examined by a male physician. We don’t have any registered nurses, so sometimes I fill in. Don’t I, Doc?”

“Yes, yes. That’s true. Agnes does help out on occasion.” He directed Hallie to an exam table. Merritt followed. He drew the privacy curtain.

“Dr. Leland, I’ll need you to disrobe on top to your underwear, please.”

She stripped down to her sports bra. He asked the usual questions and performed the usual checks, listening to her heart and lungs, percussing her back and chest. After asking her to lie down, he palpated her abdominal area.

“All just fine,” he said. “I’ll draw some blood and do a throat swab. You can leave a urine sample on your way out.”

“I get the blood and urine,” she said. “But why the swab?”

Merritt answered: “People come here from all over. We like to know what they bring in. It can help if there’s a serious outbreak. Right, Doc?”

“Yes, exactly,” Doc said.

He directed Hallie to a blood-drawing chair against the wall, sat in front of her on a wheeled stool. He arranged her arm correctly, straight line from hand to shoulder, applied the rubber tourniquet four inches above the draw site, tapped inside her elbow several times.

“Good veins,” he said.

“I bet you say that to all your patients.” She knew how trite that was, but she hoped to settle Doc down a bit. He had seemed nervous when she’d arrived and had become more so as the exam had progressed. His hand was unsteady as he swabbed the draw site with an alcohol pad. When he brought the syringe toward her arm, he couldn’t make the proper alignment, needle parallel to vein. He sat back, took a deep breath.

“Are you all right?” Hallie asked.

“Sorry. Too much coffee this morning, on an empty stomach. Let’s try that again.”

He got it on the second try. He filled three Vacutainers, slipped the needle out, and covered the venipuncture site with a cotton ball and a piece of medical tape. Merritt, Hallie noted, had watched the whole draw very closely.

“Just one more thing and we’ll be through,” Doc said. He examined her eyes and ears, then put a tongue depressor into her mouth. “Say ahhh.”

She did.

“Say ahhh again and look up this time. Here comes the swab.”

She did that, too, and with his other hand he stuck the swab’s cotton tip down her throat. Way down her throat. She had performed throat swabs herself and knew that the tip was supposed to contact the tonsillar columns on either side of the uvula. Doc’s swab went deeper. She gagged, violently. He pulled the swab out and secured it in a sterile container. “Quite a gag reflex you have there,” he said.

“My gag reflex is actually minimal,” she said.

“How would you know?”

“I’m a technical diver. Stuff gets down there. I know. You went pretty deep with that.”

“We go deeper here at Pole because some pathogens thrive only beyond the tonsillar/uvular region. Can’t have them slipping through the net, can we?”

She stood up. “Are we finished here, Doctor?”

Merritt walked over. “Glad to have that out of the way.” She patted Hallie’s shoulder.

“I can give the urine sample now,” she said.

Doc and Merritt exchanged glances. Merritt waved a hand. “You know what? Enough for one day. Go grab a coffee. Or rest.”

Halfway to the galley, she stopped. Something was bothering her about the exam, and she couldn’t decide what. The procedures Doc had performed had been just like those done by countless doctors throughout her life. His hand had been shaky for the blood draw, but that wasn’t it. What, then? She started off again, still wondering.

A male Polie came shuffling toward her in his own little pod of light. He was tall, with a long, rust-colored beard, and he was bent over a smartphone, texting.

She got it. Doc had not recorded any of the data produced by his exam. Not on paper, not in a computer. Merritt hadn’t written or recorded anything either. Then why in hell would they do an examination?

There was only one answer.

They didn’t care about the results.

Then what was the reason, if not obtaining data from her?

Only one answer: doing something to her.