Page 20 of Researching the Pole

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I woke to a sound that didn’t belong in the quiet darkness of the cabin. A soft, persistent pinging from the living room.

Grant’s heavy arm rested around me, his breathing deep and even. Quietly and carefully, I extracted myself and padded out into the living room, to the table where my laptop sat, the screen glowing in the perpetual twilight that filtered through the windows.

The monitoring software screen showed two red alerts. Hydrophones three and seven had moved from their positions. Even as I watched on the screen, I saw them drifting away and away.

My stomach dropped.

Sometimes there were unanticipated currents or maybe a sea creature, but I thought we had done a good job anchoring them. For the next several minutes, I watched as my hydrophones moved further and further away until they completely went out of the monitoring zone and the beeping stopped. Now a silent, red flash alert kept blinking.

I fell into the chair in despair. Loss of one hydrophone could still somehow be accommodated, but two was 20% of my array, and that compromised data coverage for the entire study. In disbelief, I kept staring at the red blinking on my screen, somehow willing it to stop. Somehow wishing that it was a technical error and those hydrophones were working just fine.

I had worked five years toward this expedition. Antarctic research funding is brutal—grants, lobbying, years of proving yourself. This study was supposed to open doors. Without full array coverage, those doors were closing.

“Adrien?”

I lifted my head. Grant stood at the bedroom doorway, his hair stuck up in every direction and his eyes still heavy with sleep, but he took one look at my expression and then crossed the distance in quick strides.

“What’s wrong?”

He dropped down on his knees in front of my chair, putting both of his hands on my knees and looking up at me in alarm. I blinked back the tears that were threatening to spill. I was 25, for Christ’s sake. A grown man didn’t cry over his experiment. Unable to form any words, I just pointed at the screen.

He took a glance at the screen, but he was not a scientist and even if he was, this was my setup. I watched as he tried to figure out what had happened. He looked back to me, that red light flashing off on his face. I reached out and stopped the blinking and the dim twilight fell in again.

“Hey,” he grazed my cheek with his knuckles. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

I don’t know if it was the tenderness in his voice or the use of the endearment, but I couldn’t hold back. Tears spilled down as I looked down at him and silently wept.

“I lost two hydrophones. Must have been a current. They got swept away.”

“Oh.” I saw the realization dawn on his face as he looked back at the screen. “How bad is that? What does it mean? You still have the others. Aren’t those enough?”

I shook my head. “The point of my study is to record the extended vocalizations. Leopard seals are elusive already and their vocalizations have been recorded, but never in their entirety. My research tracks the pattern from the beginning of their vocalization all the way through the 13 to 14 hours. My theory is that these breeding patterns reveal their mating behavior.”

I took a deep breath. “And since every leopard seal has his own distinctive vocalization pattern, I need this guy because we have already started collecting his particular vocalizations.”

Grant remained on his knees in front of my chair, but now he looked as serious as I felt. The extent of the disaster was clear to him. I expected him to soothe me, to try to cheer me up, but he did none of that. I saw his expression turn grim. He felt the loss as if it was his study too.

Seeing the devastation on his face quietly dismantled my own panic. I found myself stretching an arm out to rest on his shoulder, and unbelievably, the words that came out of my mouth were, “It’s okay. It’s just a study. I’ll find something. Come on. Let’s go back to bed.”

“Are you sure?” He hesitated.

“Yeah, I just need some time to process.”

I followed him into the bedroom. Something about sharing my grief instantly lightened the load. They say that human beings are social. As a scientist I’m not one who is surrounded by people often. It’s a solitary profession. We do our own things and the rest of the world doesn’t even understand why we do it. But in that moment, I realized just how much it mattered that one other human being understood.

And that human being was not just any random stranger. This was the guy who seemed to have tracked me over the course of my adulthood, someone I had misunderstood, someone who was deeply protective and caring, and most of all treated me like an equal, like a partner.

“Grant?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Will you hug me?”

“Oh, Adrien.” He pulled me tight against his chest and I let myself be held, even though the tight feeling in my throat wouldn’t ease.

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