A finger’s up my bum. The finger’s male. It’s brisk in a sheath of powdered white latex that seems as thin as skin. I’m naked from the waist down, on my side on a government surgical bed. The mattress is meanly thin. My body’s curled foetally, bunched like a fist to the wall.

Doctor Pat Pisano says he’s feeling for bowel cancer. I didn’t think I was in the risk category. A loud blush is gatecrashing my face and Doctor Pat Pisano can see it. I went to primary school with him. It’s one of those excruciating coincidences. I haven’t seen him for fifteen years. He asks me if I’m married yet and I tell him I’m not. All he had to do was look at my left hand. I look at his. He tells me I’m the only person going on the voyage who doesn’t have to be examined by the government psychiatrist and he says little do they know, with a high giggle. I never liked him at school.

His fingers and the fingers of eleven other medical practitioners are thorough as they roam my body, searching for abnormalities that will prevent me from going to Antarctica. Specimens have to be fit and I’m not sure I’m going to pass. The fingers are thorough and gentle and firm as they attach electrodes to my arms and legs and chest to measure my heart rate, guide my torso in front of the x-ray machine, probe my wide-open mouth, take my urine in warm plastic cups, pinch skin.

I pass the medical. There’s one query in the doctor’s report faxed to my work. SLIGHT BUILD, QUESTION MARK.

‘Does this mean you’re going to freeze quicker?’ says Lyn, the chief of staff, as she hands over the report.

4.03 a.m. A new day at work. The desk’s bare, the streets are lean. The newsroom’s stilled, waiting for the onslaught.

The police scanner coughs, scratches. I lean forward to listen. Domestic. Tic tic. Stabbing. Tic tic. MVA. Torana into pole. One to Westmead, serious. One minor, treated at scene. Yeah yeah I’ll pick up a Maccers on the way, two filet-os and a pinkshake yeah yeah. Some dude singing ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ and ‘Not in the Mood’. Ah cops. Tic tic. Nothing doing. Tic tic.

The city’s smug, asleep.

10 a.m. The airwaves are crowded. Domestic MVA stabbing assault domestic domestic. L-plater, failed to stop, old lady run over. Driver distress. A zip-up bag at a Blacktown bus stand dripping blood. Unconfirmed, can’t be found. A woman threatening suicide on a city-bound bus. A brawl at a mall.

‘Lyn,’ I say, ‘it’s dead. Any stories?’

She slaps a press release on my desk. Global warming. An international conference.