actually involve him.
He stripped off his gloves. ‘Ring Maternity, they’re quiet, and get a nurse down from there to help us.’
‘But we’re still short—’
‘We’ve got two medical students. Let’s see if they’ve got what it takes.’ He strode into the resus room as the screaming wail of an ambulance siren broke the languid peace of a Warragurra winter’s Saturday afternoon, the volume quickly increasing, bringing their patient ever closer.
Linton flicked on the monitors and took a brief moment to savour the quiet of the room. In about thirty seconds organised chaos would explode when their patient arrived.
Anticipatory acid fizzed in his stomach. Emergency medicine meant total patient unpredictability and he usually thrived on every stimulating moment. But today he didn’t have his reliable team and the random grouping of today’s staff worried him.
Andrew, the senior paramedic, walked quickly into the room, ahead of the stretcher, his mouth a flat, grim line. ‘Hey, Linton. If Jeremy Fallon is at the game, you’d better page him now.’
Linton nodded on hearing the orthopaedic surgeon’s name. ‘We’ve done that already.’ He inclined his head. ‘Anyone we know?’
Andrew nodded as a voice sounded behind him.
‘Can we triage and talk at the same time? His pressure is lousy.’
A flash of colour accompanied the words and suddenly a petite woman with bright pink hair appeared behind the stretcher, her friendly smile for her colleagues struggling with concern for her patient. ‘We need Haemaccel, his BP’s seventy on not much.’
‘Emily?’ Delighted surprise thundered through Linton, unexpectedly warming a usually cold place under his ribs.
She grinned. ‘I know, I belong in a Flying Doctors’ plane rather than an ambulance, although today I don’t belong in either.’
‘Ben’s lucky Emily was driving into town on her day off.’ Andrew’s voice wavered before he cleared his throat and spoke in his usual professional tones. ‘Ben McCreedy, age twenty-one, right arm crushed by a truck. Analgesia administered in the field, patient conscious but drowsy.’
Linton sucked in his breath as he swung his stethoscope from around his neck and into his ears, checking his patient’s heartbeat. Ben McCreedy was Warragurra’s rugby union hero. He’d just been accepted into the national league and today was to have been his last local game.
The young man lay pallid and still on the stretcher, his legs and torso covered in a blanket. His right arm lay at a weird angle with a large tourniquet strapped high and close to his right shoulder.
‘He’s tachycardic. What’s his estimated blood loss?’ Linton snapped out the words, trying for professional detachment, something he found increasingly difficult the longer he worked in Warragurra.
‘Too much.’ Emily’s almost whispered words held an unjust truth as she assisted Andrew with moving Ben from the stretcher onto the hospital trolley.
Two medical students sidled into the room. ‘Um, Dr Gregory, is this where we should be?’
Linton rolled his eyes. Give me strength. ‘Attach the patient to the cardiac monitor and start a fluid balance chart. Where’s Sister Haigh?’
Jason, the student who’d almost fainted, looked nervously around him. ‘She said to tell you that Maternity now has, um, three labouring women.’
‘And?’ Linton’s hands tensed as he tried to keep his voice calm against a rising tide of apprehension.
‘And…’ He stared at his feet for a moment before raising his eyes. ‘And she said I wasn’t to stuff up because she had a croupy baby to deal with before she could get here.’
Linton suppressed the urge to throttle him. How was he supposed to run an emergency with two wet-behind-the-ears students?
He swung his head around to meet a questioning pair of grey eyes with strands of silver shimmering in their depths. Eyes that remained fixed on him while the rest of her body moved, including her hands which deftly readjusted the female student’s misapplied cardiac-monitor dots.
He recognised that look. That ‘no nonsense, you’ve got to be kidding me’ look. Twice a year he spent a fortnight with the Flying Doctors, strengthening ties between that organisation and the Warragurra Base Hospital. Both times Emily had been his assigned flight nurse.
‘Emily.’ The young man on the stretcher lifted his head, his voice wobbly and anxious. ‘Can you stay?’
Ben’s words rocked through Linton. What a brilliant idea. Emily was just who he needed in this emergency. He turned on the full wattage of his trade-mark smile—the smile that melted the resolve of even the most hard-nosed women of the world. ‘Emily, can you stay? It would help Ben and it would really help me.’
The faintest tinge of pink started to spread across her cheeks and she quickly ducked her head until she was level with her patient. ‘I’m right here, Ben. I’m not going anywhere.’
Then she stood up, squared her shoulders and was instantly all business. ‘Catheter to measure urine output and then set up for a central line?’
He grinned at her, nodding his agreement as relief rolled through him. For the first time today he had someone who knew what she was doing. He swung into action and organised the medical students. ‘Patti, you take a set of base-line obs, Jason you’ll be the runner.’
Andrew’s pager sounded. ‘I have to go.’ He gave Ben’s leg a squeeze, an unusual display of emotion from the experienced paramedic. ‘You’re in good hands, mate. Catch you later.’
The drowsy man didn’t respond.
Linton rolled the blanket off Ben. ‘Emily, any other injuries besides the arm?’
‘Amazingly enough, I don’t think so. I did a quick in-the-field check and his pelvis and chest seem to be fine.’
‘We’ll get him X-rayed just to confirm that. Now, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.’ He removed the gauze from Ben’s arm. Despite all his experience in trauma medicine, he involuntarily flinched and his gut recoiled. The young man’s arm hung by a thread at mid upper arm. His shoulder was completely intact as was his hand but everything in between was a crushed and mangled mess.
‘Exactly what happened here?’ Linton forced his voice to sound matter-of-fact.
Ben shuddered. ‘I was driving to the game down Ferguson Street.’ His voice trailed off.
Emily finished his sentence. ‘Ben had the window down and his elbow resting on the car door. A truck tried to squeeze between his car and a parked car.’ Her luminous eyes shone with compassion.
‘You have to save my arm, Linton.’ The words flowed out as a desperate plea. ‘I need two arms to play rugby.’
I can’t save your arm. Linton caught Emily’s concerned gaze as her pearly white teeth tugged anxiously at her bottom lip. Concern for Ben—she knew it looked impossible.
Concern
