Chapter 8
I woke with a slight headache, overheated inside the tent. I was about to ask Sam the time out of habit when I realized I was alone. I was wide awake instantly. How long had Sam been out there by himself?
I checked the time. Late morning. Seven o’clock — past my usual wake-up time, past my usual walk across to Sam’s building for our breakfast stroll. I changed into a fresh pair of clothes. What happened last night hung like a dark cloud over my thoughts.
It wasn’t exactly my fault. Sam was the one who had initiated it — asleep or not — and at any point he could have stopped me. It hadn’t felt like he didn’t know what was happening. But then he had run away, so I didn’t know what to make of it all.
I put the kettle on to boil water for coffee while I checked the data from the drone. But I wasn’t looking for penguins this morning. I brewed my coffee while I pulled up the camera reel on my rugged field laptop.
I drank my coffee and worked through an energy bar while I flipped through the feed on the laptop.
I found Sam in the footage. I followed it reel by reel.
Sam moving across the island, stopping sometimes, walking on.
I tracked him forward through the timestamps, catching up to the present.
The most recent frame had him sitting on a rocky outcrop at the far edge of the island, looking out at the ocean.
I checked the time. He had been sitting like that for an hour.
No matter whether Sam was mad at me or not, I needed to go talk to him. We had more data to collect. We needed to figure out what to do with the sleeping bag situation — it had ripped and needed dealing with. And Sam needed to eat and drink something.
I loaded my backpack with fresh supplies, the laptop, and everything else needed for a day of work. I closed the tent zip carefully behind me and set off in the direction Sam had been sitting.
The sky was overcast and every single inch of the island was dripping wet.
The temperature had dropped even further overnight.
I wondered what was going through Sam’s mind.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t see where I was stepping.
The entire island was covered in a slushy combination of penguin urine and disgusting things I didn’t want to think about.
I slipped on the slimy surface and went down hard.
My thick parka and the backpack protected my fall, but I had neglected to wear my hat. When I went down my head hit the bare rock. Pain shot through my skull and my teeth knocked together on impact.
When I blinked my eyes open, I was staring up at the sky. Breaking my line of sight was a group of googly-eyed heads covered in soft gray fur, staring down at me.
“Damn.” I groaned. “Don’t eat me.” I joked with the penguin chicks, who were studying me with their usual curiosity — who was this two-legged creature with such bright red plumage, lying on their island?
My vision swam. I tried to get up but the island tilted sharply, the gray sky wheeling overhead, and then there was nothing. When sound came back it arrived in pieces — boots thumping on rock, moving fast and a man yelling frantically.
Then there were hands on me. My shoulders, my face. I tried to answer but my mouth did not open.
I recognized Sam’s voice, close and high-pitched, saying my name. I tried to open my eyes again. They did not cooperate.
His voice faded somewhere far away, then suddenly close, then far again, like I was at the bottom of a cave and the sound kept bouncing. I caught pieces of it.
“Waypoint, this is Beckett. I need Daniel on the line right now.”
There was a momentary delay then Daniel’s calm voice came through: “Sam. What’s happening?”
“Viktor’s down. Head injury.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Yes. Yes, he’s breathing.”
“Any bleeding?”
Sam’s hands moved to the back of my skull. His breath came out hard and fast. “Back of the head. Yes.”
“Don’t move him. Keep him still and keep him warm.”
“I’m on it.” The sound of his jacket rustling reached me, then a weight settled over me.
“How long has he been unresponsive?”
“I don’t know exactly. A few minutes at least. Maybe more.”
“Pulse?”
There was a pause. “It’s there. His pulse is there.”
“Sam. You know how to do this. Fingers on the carotid, count it out. Give me the number.”
“I’m — just… hold on.” Another pause, longer. Sam’s fingers pressed harder against my throat.
“Fifty-eight. Fifty-eight beats.”
“Good. That’s good, Sam. Give me a second.” I heard voices through the radio, Daniel talking with someone, and then I blacked out completely. When I came back to, they were still talking. I felt a new throbbing pain in my head. I groaned.
“Shit. Viktor?”
“Sam, what happened? Walk me through it.”
“I don’t — I wasn’t there, Doc. I didn’t see it happen.”
There was a beat of silence on Daniel’s end. “You weren’t with him?”
“No.” That one word was spoken as if he was in pain, not me. It was a bump to the head, that was all. Why was Sam overreacting? Slowly, I tried to peek through my eyelashes. Just a fraction.
Sam was sitting with his head bowed, radio in hand, cradling me in his lap. A cluster of penguins surrounded us. The daylight felt blinding and I had to shut my eyes immediately.
“Sam.” Daniel’s voice sharpened. “You know the rules. You are supposed to be together at all times on an island stay. I’ve never heard you be irresponsible. What happened?”
Sam said nothing for a moment. When he spoke his voice was low and wretched. “I fucked up.”
I wanted to say no. No, you didn’t. I wanted to reach out and squeeze him tight. To reassure him that it was a stupid bump to the head. He had seen far worse in others. He was one of the most experienced field guides. This was nothing. He never lost his cool. Why was he doing it now?
“Sam…” I willed my mouth to move.
“Viktor!”
I risked another squint. His handsome face swam in my vision. Was he crying? His dark eyes were wet. He looked awful.
I tried to smile up at him. Sam’s expression crumpled. I’d never seen him like this.
“Please, baby. Don’t die.”
Die? Who was dying? What the hell?
A touch of something wet and soft on my lips had me focusing hard on the present moment. I kept drifting away. He was kissing me.
“Promise me, please…” He was saying between feather-light touches. “Don’t leave me. I…I am so fucking sorry. I just needed time to process… I never—”
“Sam?” Daniel’s voice cut him off.
Sam straightened up. “Yeah? Am here, Doc.”
My eyes closed in exhaustion.
“How’s he?”
“He opened his eyes for a moment and seemed to recognize me.”
“Thank god. Is he still unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I think transporting him via Zodiac is out of the question then.”
“Agreed. What do we do, Doc?”
“I’m trying to get medevac.”
What? Medevac? For me? This was ludicrous. Waypoint didn’t have an airstrip, so that meant they would need to get a pilot from McMurdo, our nearest big station, to fly all the way here for my dumpy ass to be airlifted to Daniel.
I needed to sit up right now. I tried to roll away from Sam’s warm embrace but shards of hot glass poked my head immediately. With a groan I gave up.
Sam said something in alarm but I lost my battle with consciousness yet again.
***
I wasn’t sure how Daniel had managed to get a medevac so quickly, because it was next to impossible.
It was one of the things we were always told when taking a job at Waypoint or any of the remote field stations.
It was also the reason Daniel kept such a strict watch on our health — we needed to be healthy to even set foot on Antarctica, and while we were here he had strict protocols in place to make sure nobody keeled over.
There was no hospital nearby, no where to go if somebody needed urgent medical attention.
I was feeling marginally better — enough to realize that we were flying, and that the voice speaking next to me was Sam’s.
“I’m a coward,” he was saying. “When you showed up in Alaska all those years ago, full of enthusiasm and your smiles, nothing had prepared me for the way you would turn my world upside down. I was grumpy, mad at the world, given up on humanity after what my parents did to me.”
My mind reeled as the words slowly settled in.
“And you — you just waltzed right past all my walls. And the selfish bastard that I was, I clung to you. I was supposed to be your older mentor, somebody who taught you the ropes about life in the US. But as the years went by I fell so hard for you, Viktor.”
I was about to open my eyes to let him know I was fine, but I had a feeling he would never bare his soul like this if he knew I was conscious. And just like him, I was a coward too. Selfish too.
I needed to hear this. I needed to know what he felt towards me, especially after what happened last night. I needed to know that we had not broken the most important thing in my life. That we were going to be okay. So I kept my eyes closed and pretended I was still unconscious.
“And I was ashamed of that. I was ashamed that after my parents had kicked me to the curb because I was gay, I couldn’t even deny it anymore — because here I was, falling in love with a man.
So I locked my heart away. I vowed to myself I would never act on my thoughts.
Impure, like my parents and the priest had labeled them. ”
I felt his hands around mine — rough, calloused palms wrapped tight. The weight of his forehead rested against my knuckles.
“Just don’t die on me, Viktor.”