The Winter Over(19)

“If that’s what you want to talk about.”

“I didn’t ask to talk,” she said, confused. “You did.”

“Certainly, but I’d think you’d want to talk out the circumstances.”

“I would?”

He shrugged. “It’s not a small thing, a dramatic death at the base, right before a winter-over. Reduced staff, increased tensions. We haven’t even shut the doors, officially, and we’re already off to a rocky start.”

“Rocky?” She stared at him. “Is that what you call Sheryl freezing to death?”

He waved a hand, like he was clearing smoke. “I apologize. A poor choice of words. Her accident has shaken the base to its core, is all I meant. Carrying on as if things were normal has been difficult for some people.”

“I thought Hanratty said it was to be kept under wraps?”

“Cass.” He gave her a look of profound disappointment. “Everyone on base knew about Sheryl before you were done taking your gloves off.”

“Oh.”

“Hanratty knew such a thing would be impossible to contain, so he told you to keep quiet in order to check a box, so to speak. Had he not done so, he could be accused of not maintaining decorum or enforcing protocol. But by making a show of telling you not to talk, he puts the onus on you and whoever knew about Sheryl when she was brought back.”

“I see.”

Keene nodded, apropos of nothing. “So, was it what you were expecting?”

“Was what what I was expecting?”

“How you felt? How the people you’ve spoken to about the accident felt?”

“I didn’t speak to anyone.”

The look of disappointment was back. “It’s statistically and intuitively impossible that you didn’t tell someone about Sheryl’s accident. Biddi, perhaps?”

Cass’s face flushed. She knew from experience that her color was especially noticeable around her hairline. Milk-white skin was nice except when it highlighted the slightest blush. “Well, if statistics say so, I guess I did.”

The wave again. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred people will unburden themselves to a friend or colleague after a traumatic event, especially in a confined stressor environment. It’s normal and, frankly, expected. You’re in the clear.”

Had she been in that much trouble? “Great.”

Keene tipped forward in his chair, putting his elbows on the desk. “Let’s forget that for a moment. Tell me what’s in your head.”

Cass hesitated, confused. “I’m not happy, naturally. Sheryl and I didn’t work together, but I liked her. And you don’t have to like someone to be horrified. To die out on the ice . . . alone, in a storm? It’s terrifying. It’s exactly what everyone fears the most down here.”

“Yes, of course,” Keene said. There was an impatient note in his voice. “But what were you thinking ?”

“I . . .” Cass struggled to understand what he wanted from her. His words technically made sense, but they didn’t fit the conversation. It was as if he were speaking to a third person in the room. “I was thinking how terrible it was to die like that, how much I didn’t want it to be me, how glad I was that it wasn’t me. If someone with her experience could die out there, then I could, too. Then I felt ashamed, I guess, because my second thought was that I wondered if we’d all be sent home even before we started and what a waste that would be . . .”

Cass trailed off. A change had come over Keene’s face as she spoke. It was subtle, a soft unwrinkling around his eyes and relaxation of his mouth. Now that he’d leaned closer, she could see a fine spray of perspiration along his forehead, glistening over his eyebrows. She had the strange sensation that the third person in the room had suddenly disappeared.

Keene cleared his throat, then reached for a stack of folders resting on a corner of his desk. “Of course. Those are all perfectly natural emotional reactions. Anger, fear. Frustration at the waste of life, of time and effort. Yours and everyone else’s. If you haven’t already, you may find yourself blaming her, as well. You’ll wonder why Sheryl wasn’t more careful. What was she doing out there, risking herself and others? And, lastly, there will be some survivor’s guilt, as well. You’ve had some experience with that, I believe?”

There it was, the cannonball to the gut, the simple reminder that nothing would ever be normal for her. Cass fought to keep her voice steady. “Why am I here, Dr. Keene?”

But he’d already opened a manila folder stuffed with printouts and forms. It wasn’t difficult to read JENNINGS, CASSANDRA typed across the tab. Keene leafed through the dossier like a deck of cards. In the hands of the station’s psychologist, she could only assume he was looking at her psych evaluations, all of the comments and judgments and pronouncements that experts had made about her mental state. Maybe even from before she’d submitted her application for Antarctica.

He raised his head and held the folder up, giving her a smile that she supposed was meant to put her at ease. “Strange, isn’t it, seeing your mental and emotional makeup boiled down to a few sheets of paper? I’ve always despised my colleagues’ crude renderings of something so complicated as the human psyche, but what can you do?”

She stared at him.