I hold out my arms and move forward, forcing the red jackets back a couple of steps. The woman who’d hurried down the hill is trying to see past me. She looks younger than the usual middle-aged passengers who cruise down to Antarctica. “Are you with him?” I ask her. “Where’s your guide?”
“No—I don’t know,” she stammers. Blond hair trails from under her hat into her eyes, wide with an anxiety I can’t place. “He’s up there, maybe.” She motions toward the gentoo colony. I glance up. The hill has nearly faded away in the fog.
“Someone needs to find him,” I say. “And we need the doctor from the boat. Who’s he traveling with?”
“His wife, I think,” someone answers.
“Get her.”
I kneel next to Thom, who’s examining the man’s head. If we were anywhere but Antarctica, the injury might not seem as critical. But we are at the bottom of the world, days away from the nearest city, even farther from the nearest trauma center. There’s a doctor along on the cruise, and basic medical facilities at Palmer Station, a forty-person U.S. base an hour away by boat—but it’s not yet clear whether that will be enough.
The man hasn’t moved since he fell. A deep gash on the back of his head has bled through the thick wad of gauze Thom applied. Voices approach—the guide, the wife, the doctor. The man’s chest suddenly begins to heave, and Thom quickly reaches out and turns his head so he can vomit into the snow.
The man shudders and tries to sit up, then loses consciousness again. Thom presses fresh gauze to his head and looks up.
“What happened?” the wife cries.
“He slipped,” I tell her.
Susan Beecham, the ship’s doctor, is now right behind us, and Thom and I move aside.
“How could this happen?” the wife wails.
I place a hand on her shoulder as crew members arrive with a gurney. “We need to get him to Palmer,” Susan says, her voice low.
Thom helps them load him onto the gurney, and they take him to a Zodiac. I get a plastic bag from our camp, then return to the scene and begin scooping up the blood-and vomit-covered snow. Because this is one of the last pristine environments in the world, we go to great lengths to protect the animals from anything foreign. Visitors sterilize their boots before setting foot on the island, and again when they depart. No one leaves without everything they came with.
Yet sometimes, like now, it seems pointless. Injuries like this are unusual, but I’ve seen tourists drop used tissues and gum wrappers on the ground. I want to chase after them, to show them our data, to tell them how much the fate of the penguins has changed as more and more tourists pass through these islands. But I must be patient with this red-jacketed species. I’m grateful for the Cormorant’s transportation to this remote island, and the tour company’s financial support of the APP, yet I often feel we earn it more each season, that our work takes a backseat to keeping the tourists happy.
Thom returns and stands over me. “They need me to go to Palmer with them.”
I look up. “Why?”
“The crew is crazed,” he says, “and they need someone to stay with the victim and his wife.”
He doesn’t have to explain; I can picture what’s happening—Susan on the radio with the dispatcher at Palmer, deckhands preparing to pull anchor, naturalists answering worried passengers’ questions, and Glenn trying to coordinate with the galley about the next meal and with the captain about the next destination.
“I guess we’re at their mercy.” I inspect the ground to make sure there’s nothing left in the snow. Thom doesn’t have a choice—we’re often asked to fill in for the crew when we’re on the island—but I know what he is really asking me. We’ve worked together for three years, and I’ve never spent a night here alone.
I stand up. Because Thom is short and I’m tall, we look each other directly in the eye. “Go ahead. I’ll be all right.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll keep the radio on, just in case. But yeah, I’ll be fine. After all this, I’ll enjoy the peace.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says.
We go back to camp, a trio of tents a few yards off the bay. From there we can watch the ships approach and, more important, depart.
Another Zodiac is waiting to take Thom to Palmer. He grabs a few things from his tent and gives my shoulder a squeeze before he leaves. “I’ll buzz you later,” he says. He smiles, and I feel a sudden, sharp loneliness, like an intake of cold air.
I watch the Zodiac retreat around the outer cliffs of the bay, then turn back to our empty camp.