Absolute Zero by Chuck Logan

faraway invites a wife to take a sudden plunge to where she keeps her personal ideas about mortality.
    Iker, who lived thirty miles of impassable highway to the west in Tower, then called his wife, made sure that she and the kids were all right, and explained the day’s events and how he was stranded with Phil Broker.
    “So now you and your ex-copper buddy have two choices, huh?” another wife’s voice rattled in the telephone.
    “Yeah, I guess.” Iker winced and held up the receiver at arm’s length. Broker heard the wife say: “You can shovel snow or get drunk.”
    Iker hung up, shrugged. “What are you going to do?”
    “Get a room at the Holiday Inn.”
    “I got to finish filing this report. Maybe I’ll see you at The Saloon later.” Iker tossed Broker his truck keys.
    Broker left the courthouse, climbed in Iker’s truck, and drove toward the Holiday Inn that overlooked Lake Shagawa at the edge of town. No way he was going to try the unplowed road to Uncle Billie’s Lodge in these conditions. Iker’s Ford Ranger barely grabbed traction in Ely.
    Moving at a crawl in four-wheel low, he went over some of the medical terminology he’d heard thrown around this afternoon: Sommer had suffered a significant “anoxic insult” and was currently comatose—in a coma due to oxygen starvation to his brain precipitated by respiratory complications following surgery. The informal opinion at Miner Hospital was that Amy Skoda had underestimated the amount of sedation in his system and took him off anesthesia too early in the operating room. Perhaps, someone speculated, she’d anticipated that the surgery would take longer, not allowing for Allen’s speed and skill. Sommer’s being hypothermic may have been a factor. Whatever the precipitating events, he developed trouble breathing in the recovery room.
    Nobody was there when he crashed, and the alarm on the monitor had not been set.
    As he left, Broker overheard someone console Amy. It could happen to anyone . But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to Hank Sommer, the guy Broker had promised to get out of the woods. The guy he helped deliver to a warm, safe hospital where they preserved his heart and lungs and lost his brain.
    Wham.
    Broker hooked a frustrated fist at the steering wheel in a tantrum of flash anger, swerved, and almost lost control of the truck. Reflexively, he steered into the skid and came out of the spin. Take deep breaths through your nose. Check yourself .
    Usually he had a much longer fuse.
    The Holiday Inn was a deserted post-and-beam jungle gym with a cathedral ceiling and a bored, snow-hypnotized receptionist who smiled discreetly at Broker’s attire. He carried in the duffel he’d retrieved from the dispatch desk, took a room, and went down a stairwell, opened a door, and stepped into a limbo of clean walls, curtains, and hotel furniture that could be anywhere-USA.
    And he just wanted to disappear.
    But he stripped down out of habit, went to the shower, and applied soap, shampoo, shaving lather, and a razor to peel off the cold outer layer of the last twenty-four hours. He rubbed a porthole in the steamed bathroom mirror and gauged his fatigue by the redness of his eyes. He took out dry jeans, a fleece pullover, and his spare boots.
    After he’d dressed, his hand moved toward the phone, thinking to call the hospital and check with Allen, who’d stayed behind to watch over Sommer and Milt. He withdrew his hand.
    You don’t really know Hank Sommer .
    And it was like—all his life he’d worked the sharp end and he’d always been annoyed at the compulsion of people who couldn’t resist adding their personal embroidery to the messy edge of tragedy. Now he discovered he was not immune to this character defect.
    He was dwelling on it. If you hadn’t hassled Sommer so much during the storm he might not have pushed so hard, might not have ruptured himself.
    Try again, Broker.
    You fell apart out there and an injured man had to take up