The Chilling, page 7
Kit cocked her head towards the door—she could hear the clanging of boots in the stairwell. She patted the man’s shoulder and looked down at his face. Then the blood froze in her veins.
The man was looking back at her with cold black eyes.
6
As the storm descended, they wrapped the injured man in two space blankets, then airlifted him from the deck of the Petrel; they placed two strops around his torso and winched his body into the helicopter. The wind had picked up.
Terrified, Kit waited on deck, her legs trembling. When her goggles frosted over, she pulled them off. The cold assaulted her eyes. She squeezed them shut and tried to reposition her goggles with clumsy gloved hands. Once she could see again, the scene before her was a blur of red and white: the red of the remaining rescuers’ cold weather suits and the white of the swirling snow.
When it was her turn to be winched up, the chopper leaned dangerously, struggling against a gust of wind. On board, she could breathe again, but her legs still trembled. Next to her, the unconscious man started to shiver as his body temperature rose. The chopper vibrated.
As soon as they landed on the helipad of the Star, the Legend blasted the rescue crew. She couldn’t understand a word, but she gathered that the delay had placed their lives in peril, that if the chopper had crashed and burned, it would’ve been their fault, and that he would’ve reminded them of that in hell. As he turned away, Kit noticed that his hands were shaking.
In the sick bay, Dustin used a controlled dose of barbiturates to place the rescued man in an induced coma. He had a head injury, and his condition was critical. When they’d found him, his core body temperature had been thirty-two degrees Celsius, a full five degrees below normal. That meant he had severe hypothermia and was at grave risk of death.
They would care for him till the ship reached Macpherson Station in four or five days. A flight was scheduled to take him from the ski landing area to Wilkins Aerodrome. From there, he was expected to take an intercontinental flight to Hobart for proper medical treatment. The same aircraft would bring in members of the Australian Antarctic Division, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and their Research Coordination Centre to secure the Petrel and search for its crew.
Technically, the Star could have headed straight to Macpherson and been there the next day. But they chose to remain in Prydz Bay in the hope of finding survivors. After the storm, they once again sent out choppers, with no luck. It appeared that the beacon on the Petrel lifeboat had been either destroyed or accidentally switched off. The search conditions had been worse than unkind; a low weather system had lingered for days, leaving an impenetrable fog over the terrain. Despite expert analysis of the wind and the currents, it had been impossible to determine the lifeboat’s probable location. In response, nearby ships from China and the United States were on their way—the hunt for the crew had become a multinational endeavour.
•
One day after the man’s rescue, Dustin visited Kit in her cabin. She was lying on the bed and had just opened her aching eyes to the late morning light. He cracked open the door, his eyebrows crooked and his smile apologetic. ‘Sorry to bother you.’
‘Do they know who he is yet?’ she asked straight away.
‘Haven’t a clue. But we do know something’s wrong with his teeth.’ He looked rueful. ‘Think you’d better come and have a look.’
‘Okay,’ she said, sitting up with a frown.
‘Don’t worry,’ he assured her, ‘the guy’s out cold. You won’t have to talk to him.’ Dustin’s laugh was hollow.
•
In the sick bay, Kit positioned a metal stool and a powerful lamp close to the unconscious man’s face. Dustin had lowered the top of the retractable bed so the man’s head was leaning backwards, his chin pointed to the ceiling. Her instruments had been sterilised, their handles wrapped in plastic.
A small crowd was loitering outside the room, and Dustin went to tell them to go away. The Petrel story had received extensive media coverage back home; everyone on board was eager to find out more to tell their loved ones. The journalist on board had been regularly feeding information to the Herald Sun. Today the paper’s headline read, ‘Naked man found on Antarctic Marie Celeste’, and the story mentioned half-eaten bowls of Weet-Bix. Other news outlets hinted darkly at a major terrorist incident, while some conspiracy sites had already linked the crew’s disappearance to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The world waited to hear more.
While Dustin cleared the hallway, Kit pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves and positioned her face mask. Perched on the stool, she took a sickle probe in one hand and a mouth mirror in the other. She leaned in and, with two fingers, softly applied pressure to the man’s upper lip, revealing his front teeth. His incisors were strong and straight and white. His smile, she thought, must be warm and engaging.
Dustin came back into the room.
‘Okay, I’m ready,’ she said, drawing a deep breath. ‘You can open his mouth.’
Dustin tilted the man’s chin forward with one hand on his jaw and, with the other, placed a wooden depressor on his tongue. Kit recoiled at the foul stench of the man’s breath but didn’t show any other signs of disgust—her frown simply deepened.
An expert first glance revealed that the man’s back teeth had been badly damaged. If she had to guess, she would say he’d been whacked in the side of the head with a cast-iron skillet from the galley. The bruising on his cheek matched the injury to his jaw. The lower right-hand molars were shattered; the second molar was almost missing, with only a few remaining shards and splinters. That tooth had taken the brunt of the attack. The surrounding two teeth had been knocked and chipped but could possibly be salvaged with onlays or crowns. The noxious smell emanating from the man’s mouth was a combination of natural halitosis and old dried blood that had pooled in the open wound of his broken tooth.
Kit made eye contact with Dustin, who looked questioningly back at her and relaxed his grip on the man’s chin. ‘He needs emergency dental treatment,’ she said, ‘to prevent an infection and to dull the pain of damaged nerves and blood vessels. If he were awake, he’d be in agony.’
With a grimace, Dustin let his hands fall loose. He gave a low whistle through his teeth.
‘We’ll have to extract the shards and put him on antibiotics. I’ll need to make an incision, because there look to be some splinters below the gum line. They’ll have to be cut out.’
Dustin broke off eye contact and stared at the floor, while Kit contemplated the difficulties of performing surgery on a moving ship at sea.
Outside the porthole, the wind continued to hiss and howl.
‘Could it wait?’ Dustin asked. ‘Till he got home …?’
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘But he’ll be in a lot of pain when he wakes up, and an infection could take hold—if it hasn’t already.’
Dustin looked reflective before he spoke again. ‘Okay, we should do it. Let’s get on the phone to the telemedicine people. We could do with their help.’
•
They performed the procedure the next day, once the wind had abated and the man’s condition had stabilised.
Afterwards, Kit sat with the unconscious figure alone for more than an hour, studying his face. It was various shades of aubergine and yellow from bruising to his forehead and cheek. Otherwise his skin had returned to its normal colour, his beard had been washed of blood, and he looked peaceful. His dry lips were slightly parted, and when he breathed out, he made a faint wheeze. He smelt like toothpaste.
As Kit sat there, she thought of the streak of blood in the galley. During the operation, she’d regarded the man as nothing more than a disembodied head. She noticed that he’d done a better job of cleaning the molars on his right side, that there were signs of wear and tear to the enamel on his upper teeth, probably as a result of grinding them in bed, and that his jaw clicked when it was moved up and down. She knew from this that he was right-handed and possibly prone to stress.
Now it was impossible to ignore the rest of him—his gigantic sleeping frame. Even lying down, it was apparent that he was unusually tall. His body dwarfed the flimsy single bed. Standing upright, he would have a formidable physical presence. She’d seen his powerful limbs in the raw flesh. If he woke up insane or aggressive or even just frightened, Dustin and the others would have difficulty controlling him. She glanced at the cupboard containing the sedatives and wondered if there were any restraints on board.
Hopefully he wouldn’t regain full strength before they found out exactly what had happened in the galley—and what kind of person he was. Something violent had taken place on the Petrel, and this man had been locked away.
Dustin came into the sick bay, cleaning his hands with sanitiser. ‘How’s our patient?’
‘Fine,’ she said, brushing a wisp of hair from the man’s injured forehead. She frowned at the gash, thinking again of the bloodstain and of the scattered pots and pans. ‘He’s been in a fight.’
‘That’s possible,’ said Dustin. ‘But then again, quite a few people in the final stages of hypothermia are found with bruising on the head and limbs. I think it’s part of the mental confusion that comes with the condition. People stumble around, knock into things, knock themselves out. They can’t use their hands and legs properly—their muscle coordination goes out the window. They can also become confrontational and aggressive. I’ve seen it on mountain expeditions—people throwing their packs off cliffs, and stupid stuff like that. He probably fell and knocked his own teeth out.’
Kit wasn’t satisfied. ‘Sure, but his face is so battered and bruised nobody has recognised him. The injuries don’t seem self-inflicted. And he was locked in that coolroom for a reason. I think someone left him there to die …’
Looking mildly surprised by her remarks, Dustin wiped his hands, collecting his thoughts. ‘It’s not obvious he was left there to die. It might have been a hide-and-die response, him being in that coolroom. It’s most likely he took all his own clothes off, one of the last things that people with severe hypothermia do. The experts aren’t sure why. One theory is that in the final stages, the vital organs send blood back to the extremities, and this causes a hot flush or a burning sensation. In their confusion, the victims remove their clothes, even though this accelerates death by freezing. It’s called “paradoxical undressing” and—’
‘Sure, but why lock himself in a coolroom to do it?’ She’d grown tired of Dustin’s propensity to explain everything in elaborate detail.
‘Well, like I said, the undressing comes in the final stages before death. This can be accompanied by terminal burrowing behaviour, where the victim instinctively hides under a bed or in a cupboard. Was he curled up?’
‘Yes … on his side, right in front of the door.’
Dustin nodded. ‘It’s likely he shut himself away in the coolroom—to die.’
Kit pressed her lips together. Dustin was determined to see the best side of people. In the pre-departure sessions, he’d always been the first to defend someone or to sympathise with someone else’s point of view, even when they were getting up everyone’s noses. In his eagerness to keep the peace, she’d never heard him say a bad thing about anyone. It was exasperating.
‘Dustin, that’s a nice theory. But I was there, and I witnessed how difficult it was to enter that coolroom. The door had been locked from the outside, its handle deliberately damaged. Someone had trapped him in there.’ Someone had hit him with a skillet and imprisoned him—she was sure of it. Meanwhile, it bothered her that there were no clues to his identity. ‘Are we any closer to finding out who he is?’
Apart from a puffer jacket propped under his head, the man had come aboard the Star with no personal possessions. The jacket pocket had contained a scrap of paper with a possible allergy warning in spidery handwriting:
6753 Shouldn’t
6247 eat!
‘No one has recognised him yet,’ said Dustin. ‘Hank spoke to the station leader at Casey, who said three men fit his basic description—tall, dark-haired, bearded men are quite common in Antarctica. The candidates are Kendall Thorn, Michael Renfold and Nicholas Coltheart.’
‘Really?’ Kit glanced at the hulking form beneath the blanket; she couldn’t believe all three men were that tall. ‘Why don’t we do a search of his measurements?’
Before departure, every expeditioner in Antarctica was required to enter their details into a personal profile, in order to get kitted out with special clothing. They had to fill in their height, weight, shoe size and other measurements.
With a plastic tape measure, Dustin took the man’s height and shoe size. To assist, Kit pulled back the blankets and straightened his legs. He was 194 centimetres and had a size thirteen shoe.
The database came back with a result. ‘He’s Nick Coltheart,’ said Dustin. ‘Nicholas James Coltheart, age thirty-five.’
A geophysicist, he’d been stationed at Casey for three months. He was a veteran of other expeditions; it was his third summer in Antarctica. He held both American and Australian passports. And his profile noted that he’d been recently divorced from a woman named Anna Nelson.
Still listed as next of kin, she was the first person officially notified of his rescue. In the absence of any other contacts, the Crisis Management and Recovery Team at headquarters were keeping her updated.
For Kit, it was some relief to know who the man was. But she needed to know more.
7
Two days later, Dustin came to tell Kit that Nick was awake. He’d been brought out of the induced coma.
‘How is he?’ she asked, zipping her polar fleece up to her neck.
They walked down the passageway.
‘Well, he has a sore jaw,’ said Dustin, ‘so I offered to get you to come and look at his teeth straight away. It’s probably just residual pain from the operation, but—’
‘Yes, but how is he?’ asked Kit, feeling impatient. ‘Is he upset? Disoriented? What does he remember?’
‘Oh, it’s hard to say. We’ve only spoken to him a few times. Didn’t want to wear him out. From what I can gather, he seems to have acute post-traumatic retrograde amnesia.’
‘He has what exactly?’
‘He has no backward-looking memories, for the time being. He can’t remember who he is, where he came from, or why he was on the Petrel. He certainly doesn’t remember what happened aboard, or anything about the fire. But there don’t seem to be any signs of permanent brain damage. He should get over it pretty soon.’
‘How can you tell all that without a proper scan?’
‘An educated guess, I suppose. As far as I can tell, there doesn’t appear to be any catastrophic neurological damage, and his cognitive abilities are unimpaired. He’s moving slowly but with good coordination. His language skills are unaffected. He can speak in full sentences. I think his prospects for recovering his memories are good.’
‘Will he remember how he got the bump on the head?’
‘Well, no, probably not,’ conceded Dustin. ‘It’s common for people who have undergone severe trauma to lose all immediate memory of the event itself.’
‘What about his name? Can he at least remember his own name?’
‘No, he can’t.’
Kit was shocked. ‘Is that normal for … what did you call it, severe post-traumatic amnesia?’
Dustin paused in the stairwell, placing a steadying hand against the wall. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. He looked like he could do with a good night’s sleep; his brow was creased, and his eyes were bloodshot. She knew he’d been up till 4 a.m. speaking to a head injuries expert from the Royal Hobart Hospital. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘I’m just learning this as I go along. It’s beyond my everyday expertise. I don’t know what’s normal.’ He searched her frowning face for some understanding.
‘No one’s expecting you to have all the answers,’ said Kit quickly. She didn’t know what to say or do. She didn’t want to offer him a reassuring pat on the shoulder—that felt too condescending. But he looked rather forlorn. ‘I just want to know what happened on the Petrel,’ she said in an apologetic tone. ‘I saw the damage, and it’s been days and the crew are still missing. A lot of loved ones are in an agony of suspense. Nick might have the answers.’
With the help of passing ships, the coordinated search effort had intensified and the authorities remained hopeful, even though there had been no sightings of either the lifeboat or its passengers.
To the public, however, it now seemed doubtful anyone would be found alive. The media were speculating about the crew’s meagre resources and their slim chances of surviving hypothermia, dehydration and starvation in extreme weather. If they hadn’t already drowned, they’d soon run out of fresh water. They’d have to use fuel stoves to melt the snow, and when they ran out of fuel, their thirst would be unbearable. A few pundits predicted the corpses wouldn’t be found till next summer, once the ice had thawed, if they were ever found at all.
Dustin straightened his shoulders. ‘I know things look pretty grim. But Nick might remember something over the next few days.’
They walked together up the stairs.
‘I’m no neurologist,’ he added, ‘but from what I gather, autobiographical amnesia can sometimes be a result of diminished blood flow to the brain.’
‘So the hypothermia might have reduced the blood flow and contributed to his memory loss?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Dustin, apparently warming to the idea. ‘He’s also quite sedated, so he’s rather foggy headed. But I’ve reduced the dose of painkillers, so he should be more like himself soon. He’ll be headachy, but he might recall something.’
They came to the door of the sick bay.
When Kit entered the room, she saw a large man sitting upright on the edge of a bed. At first, she didn’t recognise him. He was clean-shaven, and his brown hair was partly hanging over his face. He wore blue jeans and a black thermal top that accentuated his broad chest and shoulders. His size thirteen feet were bare. Only the ugly gash on his forehead and the bruising on his cheeks gave him away.
