Pushing Ice Read Online Free PDF Page A

invasion and destruction of neighbouring brain parenchyma . It was irrational to expect the images to have changed, yet he could not resist examining them one more time, hoping that he had indeed neglected some detail, a hint of shrinkage.
    Axford dimmed the flexy and placed it gently back on his desk. Nothing had changed; nothing could have changed.
    He caught Gayle Simmons, the duty nurse, leaving Chisholm’s curtained-off bedside. She held a blood-filled syringe tipped with a plastic safety cap, a saline bag clutched in her other hand.
    “How’s our guest?” he asked.
    “Comfortable,” she said, her Southern drawl, with its questioning upwards lilt, elongating the word. Simmons was young and keen, transferred into DeepShaft from Northside Hospital, Atlanta. She wore her black hair long and was popular with the other men.
    Axford touched her sleeve and lowered his voice. “Any thoughts about what Bella just told us, Gayle?”
    “Whatever’s best for the patient, I’m cool with that.”
    Axford nodded and peered into her eyes, searching for a clue to her real feelings. She blinked and looked away.
    “That’s what I was thinking too,” he said.
    Chisholm was listening to Charles Mingus playing “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”. Axford lowered the music to a murmur as he entered the screened-off area. Chisholm’s expression was neutral, neither welcoming nor shunning his visitor — he knew that Axford could be the bearer of the worst kind of news, as well as the best.
    “Bella talked to me,” Axford said. “She wanted to make sure you had all the facts.”
    “She didn’t talk to me,” Chisholm said.
    Axford sat down next to the bed. “Bella was concerned that you’d feel persuaded against your own judgement if she spoke to you in person.”
    Jim Chisholm blinked and squinted upwards, as if taking an interest in something on the ceiling. The light in the room was low, green-tinged and calculatedly soothing. Around the bed, machines ticked and hummed and bleeped in an endless, numbing chorus.
    Chisholm reached for a glass of water. “Did Bella ask you anything?”
    “Yes,” Axford said, “she did. She wanted all the facts at her disposal.”
    “What did you tell her?”
    “The truth, or at least my understanding of it.”
    “Which was?”
    Axford chose his words with care. “You have a progressive condition that, untreated, stands a good chance of killing you within three months.”
    “I know this.”
    “I still think it’s worth spelling things out. I can’t cure you, and I can’t stop the disease from advancing. I can relieve the intracranial pressure; I can administer anticonvulsants; I can try to stabilise your neurotransmitter and cytokine levels. But the best I can do is slow things down. Short of —” Axford caught himself before he went on, “Realistically, your only hope of survival is to return to Earth within three months. Sooner would be better, obviously.”
    “I know this,” Chisholm said again.
    “But I need to know that you know it.” Axford leaned closer to him, lowering his voice. “Here’s the deal. When you signed up for this mission, you accepted certain medical risks. We all did. We have to accept that it simply isn’t practical to carry a hospital’s worth of state-of-the-art surgical equipment, let alone the expertise to use it, on board a ship. That’s why we go through such intensive medical screening before they let us aboard. But there is always a statistical risk of something getting past those tests.”
    “Where’s this heading?”
    “If I could have arranged a shuttle to take you home, I would have. Failing that, I have to look at the quickest way to get you back given the options currently on the table.”
    “Go on,” Chisholm said.
    “Bella’s polling the crew. If the answer that comes back is ‘no’, we’ll simply resume normal operations. We’re due another crew-rotation shuttle in five months. I’m pushing them to send that ship out earlier,