“Honey, at least let me say this—”
But Cooper couldn’t. She couldn’t hear this, just as she couldn’t forgive her mother for telling mourners at his funeral service that David had been a “bleeding tree.” Cooper stood up and walked out of Dasha’s office, and it was only when she was in the lobby and saw Billie’s face that she realized she had her hands over her ears.
*
“Gimme a minute,” the station doctor called out to Cooper from behind a dirty white vinyl curtain. “Okay, so—that sound fair?” she said to a patient.
“Yeah, that works,” the man said. “I can’t, like, get lice or anything, can I?”
“Friend, if we had a lice problem on station, I’d be the first to hear about it. Wash the pillowcase if you’re nervous.”
“I don’t want to use up my water ration.”
“Then go, live on hope.”
The curtain slid back to reveal a man clutching a pillow. The doctor emerged from behind the curtain with a half-empty bottle of Robitussin. This, Cooper knew, had to be Doc Carla, a weathered, lean woman in her late fifties, with thick brown hair pulled into pigtails, a wind-chapped face, and lips that glistened with Vaseline.
“Bartering for the return of unused medication is the work of saints,” she said to no one. Then she glanced at Cooper, and cringed. “Well, you look like hell. Come on in, lady.”
When Cooper had awoken in her cell-like room in Summer Camp that morning, she’d discovered her right eye was Super-Glued shut and her eyelashes had become a petrified forest of dried pus. She felt like shit. One of her nostrils was stuffed up; the other was flowing freely. Her bones ached and her skin felt clammy. Her South Pole handbook indicated that she should visit the station doctor at the clinic—a place Cooper now knew went by the name Hard Truth Medical Center.
Doc Carla pointed to a metal exam table that looked like it had come down on the Terra Nova. “Take a seat.” As Cooper shimmied her way onto the table, she surveyed the room: two ward beds, a red standing Snap-on “Intimidator” toolbox, two green oxygen canisters, and an enormous gawking army-issue exam light.
“You probably got the Crud.”
“The Crud?” Cooper asked, squinting like a deranged pirate.
“An illness found at the outposts of civilization,” Doc Carla replied. She opened an industrial-size tackle box and began digging through piles of medication. “It’s like the flu. Most Fingys get it when they arrive.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You’d think they’d tell you guys this stuff. Until the doors close for the winter, those human petri dishes from McMurdo are going to keep me in business.” All sickness, it seemed, came from McMurdo. This was one reason Polies hated McMurdo-ites, but only one.
Doc Carla tossed a box of medicine on a small metal tray on wheels, then came at Cooper with a penlight. “Probably a bacterial infection of the soft tissues,” she said as she peered into Cooper’s right eye. “I’m going to give you a course of antibiotics and some drops for the eye.” She turned around to fish the drops out of the dorm fridge. “Don’t feel nauseated, do you?”
“No.”
“Stiff neck?”
“I don’t think so,” Cooper said, rubbing her neck, which suddenly seemed a little sore. Doc Carla handed Cooper the eyedrops and the box of pills. “Take these so it doesn’t turn into meningitis. And lay low for a few days. No sex until the eye gets better. And if you start puking or you can’t move your neck, get yourself over here tout suite. I might not be able to save you but at least your family can’t sue me.”
After leaving Hard Truth, Cooper started to meander up the tunnel toward the main station when she was almost run over by a forklift. “Open your eyes, dumbass,” someone shouted at her in passing. Cooper watched as the forklift careened up the tunnel, stopped suddenly, and unceremoniously dropped its cargo of crates onto the snow with a crash. Immediately, a crowd of people materialized around the boxes. By the time Cooper arrived, a scuffle had broken out between the forklift driver and the attendant crowd. Several Polies stared sadly into one of the crates.
“You just pulverized an entire case of Cabernet, dickweed,” one of them snapped. Cooper recognized the angry Polie as Kit, the DA from the galley. By this time, the driver’s insouciance had been replaced by unmistakable fear. He stammered an apology, but it went unheard. Cooper had the feeling that punishment would be meted out later. For now, the group had moved on to more important matters, like getting the crates of booze into the station store before it froze.
“You,” Kit shouted at Cooper. Cooper hastily slipped her goggles over her eyes in order to disguise her disfigurement. “Be a pal. Take this Coors Light to the store.”
The South Pole Station store was located on the second floor of the comms pod. At McMurdo, the station store offered souvenirs, scented soaps, and New York Times best-sellers. Here at Pole, nearly the entire inventory was 90-proof. Besides tampons, chocolate bars, and toothpaste, the stock was comprised of J?germeister, Crown Royal, and Jack Daniel’s available for purchase—and below cost—along with Apple Pucker and Stoli vanilla vodka. Cases of Budweiser were stacked atop cases of Red Stripe. Rows of pale Chardonnay and scarlet Merlots lined the walls, while silver kegs haunted the corners.
Cooper maneuvered her way around the frantic cargo handlers, who were desperate to keep the new shipment from freezing, and deposited the Coors Light next to a crate of sambuca. A Polie elbowed past her and fussily set three vials of angostura bitters on the shelf above her. When he noticed Cooper looking at them, he shrugged. “For the fancy drinks,” he said.
*
Cooper was relieved to discover that wearing snow goggles inside the galley was the kind of eccentricity that could go uncommented upon. She pushed her tray through the cafeteria line, regarding the steaming metal tubs of gelatinous Salisbury steak suspiciously. She recalled Pearl’s assertion that many Polies claimed the eats at Amundsen-Scott were second to none.
As she stood at the exit point of the lunch line, a reedy man in glasses and a T-shirt that read “Denialism: Science for Morons” dropped a note onto her tray. “Could you give this to that guy over there, the one in the Confederate-flag bandanna?” Before Cooper could ask him why so many Polies wore bandannas, he’d slipped away and rejoined a group of other bespectacled men wearing the same shirt. She glanced down at the folded note on her tray, then back at the men, two of whom now clasped their hands and shook them in supplication. She sighed. The possibility that anything other than sexual disappointment and second-rate computer labs might become familiar to her seemed remote.