Toward the back of the room, Marcy huddled on a chair, a blanket pulled over her shoulders. “Oh … I can come back later,” Cooper said.
“Stay,” Marcy said. “Learn from my mistake.” Tucker had his head in his hands. The feeling in the room was familiar—Doc Carla’s rugged bedside manner a little too forced, Tucker’s silence, Marcy’s resignation. This was the Trinity of the Unfortunate Event. Cooper had been through its rigors before. It had been present during David’s third 5150 hold—the day Cooper had run out of her shift at Caribou Coffee when he’d been found on the roof of the Weisman Art Museum, flapping his arms and walking in tight circles, unresponsive to the museum’s security officers, and then, later, the police. “That’s what happens to everyone who sees the Damien Hirst exhibit,” Billie had said at Hennepin County Medical Center, where they had traveled to meet the cops. Bill had laughed at this. Cooper still couldn’t forgive him for it. That was the only thing she had left to forgive him for—the laugh. When Cooper had glimpsed David as the orderlies walked him down the hall to the back ward, he looked like a mannequin, his arms bent at weird angles, his legs stiff. Cooper, still wearing her latte-stained barista’s apron, had watched in horror as he’d hobbled down the hall until he and the orderlies stopped before a set of white doors. With a swipe of a key card, the doors opened and swallowed him up.
Cooper was still standing there, frozen, when a nurse shoved something at her. “He was waving this around when the cops got to him. Most of ’em, if they’re raving, they got a Bible. Never seen this one before.” Cooper took the book without looking at it. She knew which one it was. Only when the nurse was halfway down the hall did Cooper dare to look: the ghostly image of three men—Edward Wilson, Birdie, and Cherry—silhouetted in the mouth of an ice cave.
Every night that week, Cooper stood outside in the backyard with Bill, staring at Hale-Bopp through the telescope. It was March, and for three months the comet had been a smeared fingerprint on the sky, but now, as it approached second magnitude, it grew brighter, it grew tails—one yellow, one blue. It had split at the root. Toward the end of the week, Cooper overheard Bill in the kitchen saying care facility and Clozaril and menial jobs and Dasha saying, “In some cultures, schizophrenia is a form of shamanism.” Billie, uncharacteristically, remained mute for days. And the book that the orderlies had had to rip from David’s hands, with its crenellated spine and its portrait of their men, remained Cooper’s secret possession; the Worst Journey in the World was now the most important thing in the world.
Doc Carla gripped Cooper’s upper arm roughly and propelled her to the sink. “I don’t have time for this shit,” she snapped. “You should’ve finished the whole course of antibiotics.” She forced Cooper’s eye open like it was a clam and squeezed eyedrops into the seam.
“I have such a good pee can,” Marcy said thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s the best one on the station. Epoxy-lined steel. Substantial volume. It even has a top. Damn. I take that pee can home with me between seasons. I use it when I’m off the ice.” She looked over at Tucker. “Sometimes I become immobilized on a toilet. I don’t know why.” She shook her head. “No, you know why, Marce. You know. You know it’s because you have no idea how to be outside of this place.” She laughed bitterly. “You know what’s funny is that about a week in, some guy in the machine shop, some asshole loaner from McMurdo, was telling me how he didn’t think women should be on the ice at all. He tells me that in the military there’s this ‘phenomenon’ of female service members getting knocked up so they can be relieved of their duties. Says, ‘It’s an easy out, like a no-fault divorce.’ And you know what? I agreed with him.”
Marcy looked worn and tired, her wild hair pointing in all different directions. “Well, it’s my own damn fault.” She shook her head. “It’s dumb to say it out loud, but, Christ, I thought I was too old to make a baby. I haven’t bled in a year. I thought it was over for me. I guess I got lazy. If anyone else finds out, especially the guys, my long and storied career here will go down in flames.”
“It’s happened before, Marcy,” Doc Carla said. “And it will happen again. Human nature.”
“If it were some other chick, Doc, I’d be standing there with everyone else wishing she was dead. As it is, I’ll be the only one wishing I was dead, but at least I’ll be off the ice when everybody finds out.”
“You’re leaving?” Cooper asked.
“This shit’s an automatic NPQ,” Marcy replied.
“Couldn’t you come back? Afterwards, I mean.”
Marcy looked from Cooper to Tucker and Doc Carla and back again. “Afterwards?”
It took a minute, but Cooper’s question finally penetrated, and Tucker pushed himself off the wall. “After your R-and-R trip. To Cheech.”
“What the hell do I want in Cheech?”
“It’d be tough to find a provider in New Zealand who could help,” Doc Carla said casually, “but let me work on that. Only if you’re interested of course.”
Marcy understood now. She leapt up and looked at Tucker. “You’d take me back? No NPQ?”
Tucker caught Doc Carla’s eye. She nodded, and Tucker put his arm around Marcy’s shoulder. Tears began leaking from Marcy’s eyes, and she wiped them away angrily. “Then put me on the fucking manifest,” she croaked. “Next plane out.”
“You should still do your seasonal meeting, Marce,” Tucker said.
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t, there will be talk after you leave. Act like nothing’s changed. Meet with the girls, and people will know you’re coming back. You’ll just have to come up with a reason why you’re taking your first-ever R-and-R.”
Marcy nodded. “I can come up with something.” She turned to Cooper and thrust out her hand awkwardly. Cooper took it uncertainly and let Marcy pump it a few times. “Hey, man,” she said. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“I was driving so hard, and so fast, I missed the exit ramp. You didn’t. I owe you.”
Cooper shrugged. “I guess there’s a reason I’d rather be a truck driver than a florist.”
*
A few weeks later, a rumor began circulating about a reporter from the Miami Herald on his way to the ice, having been thoroughly vetted and approved by the NSF based on his prior friendly coverage of the Program. NSF thought he was likely to produce a piece that would put a shine on things, and therefore safeguard the Program’s budget from conservative freshman congressmen, all elected in the recent midterm elections, and whom Sal described as “Tracy Flicks with dicks.”