hardly gave her time to speak before he was pushing himself up onto his elbows and beginning to inch himself backwards, out from under her car.
‘It’s not serious enough to warrant tying up an ambulance,’he declared decisively. ‘Drive your car forward again, then you’ll have room to strap my legs together for support…if Rose will fetch some bandages?’ He threw a quick smile in the receptionist’s direction but if he’d looked gaunt before, now he looked ghastly. His skin was pasty and had a waxen sheen and the muscles in his jaw were bulging as he gritted his teeth to brace himself for the next few inches of progress across the tiny car park.
‘You will give me a lift to the hospital, won’t you?’ he asked, almost as an afterthought.
Of course she would give him a lift to the hospital if he was so stubborn as to refuse the offer of an ambulance. After all, it was her fault that he’d been injured. If she hadn’t been distracted with her thoughts about the way he’d almost shanghaied her into giving him the job, she would have been more vigilant.
‘Yes. Of course I’ll give you a lift,’ she said crossly. ‘Just stay still until I’ve moved the car. You could be doing yourself more damage like that.’ She turned to get into the car and saw her two sons staring down at the injured man with very different expressions on their faces.
Sam’s was easy to read—a mixture of terror that he was going to watch another man dying, the way his father had, and guilt that it could have been his thoughtlessness that had caused the injury. Josh’s was more complicated, most of it hidden behind the mask of impassive resignation he’d worn since his father had died, but she was almost certain she could see a measure of respect for the man’s stoicism.
‘Sam, you had better get in the car,’ she ordered briskly. ‘Get in the front and put the belt on. Josh, can you wait beside Ben? I’m going to need your help to get him in the car and then you can look after him on the way to hospital. Can you do that for me?’
For the first time in nearly a year there was a crack in his impassivity, the sudden glimpse of fear swiftly replaced by pride that she’d asked him to do this and determination that he wouldn’t fail her. ‘No problemo,’ he said with a shrug full of the nonchalance of youth. ‘And if you need some pieces of wood for splinting, Sam could get some of the off-cuts left over from when the fence was mended last week.’
‘Good idea,’ she said with a smile for both of them, while a secret doubt struck her.
Had she been going about things the wrong way this last year? she wondered as she quickly pulled the car close to the building again. Had she been wrapping her sons in cotton wool and giving them too much time to brood on all the ways their lives had changed for ever, rather than keeping their minds occupied?
Children’s emotions were such a minefield. There certainly wasn’t any way to practise helping them to cope with the loss of a parent. All she could do was take it day by day.
Kat climbed back out of the car and got her first look at the extent of the damage she’d caused.
She felt sick.
There wasn’t any blood that she could see—Ben’s neatly pressed suit trousers were virtually unscathed. But the shape of the injured leg was a different matter, the damage to the bones just below his knee obvious even from a distance. A classic example of a motorcyclist’s fracture.
‘Here you are, Kat,’ Rose said, as she bustled out with a small stack of towels and several wide bandages tucked under one arm, the other fully occupied with the oxygen cylinder she’d grabbed from the corner of Kat’s surgery. ‘I’ve attached the mask so all you have to do is turn the knob to regulate the flow.’
‘Entonox?’ Ben’s expression lightened slightly at the thought, even though his eyes were clouded with pain as they met hers.
‘Unfortunately not,’ she said with a grimace. ‘You’d need the ambulance for that…But it should be less painful once I’ve got your leg immobilised. Do you want me to get you some analgesic?’
‘No, thanks,’ he said with a definite shudder. ‘I hate the feeling of being out of control.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that, but from now on I’m in charge so you’ll just have to lie still,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, Josh, can you put my jacket under his head to make him more comfortable, then keep him still, OK? And, Josh, you have my permission to sit on him if you have to.’
Just before she looked down to focus on the task of completing her examination and stabilising the fractured leg against Ben’s sound one, she registered a flash of mischievous glee in her son’s face that had been missing for far too long. What a shame that it had taken something this dreadful to bring it back.
‘Here,’ Ben said, offering her a wickedly sharp blade already extended from the penknife attached to his keyring. ‘You’ll need that to slit my trousers.’
Kat threw him a regretful look. ‘I hate the thought of ruining such beautiful tailoring,’ she said, even as she began ripping them upwards from the hem.
‘It’ll be a lot less painful than trying to take them off,’ he said with a groan as he dropped his head back on the jumper Josh had folded for him and left her to her task.
Once the trouser leg was stripped back to his knee, the injury was obvious—a textbook presentation. It was the work of seconds to check his capillary refill and that his reflexes were still working.
‘Can you point your toes for me?’ she asked, although there had been none of the ‘six P’s’ signs of compartment syndrome evident, but if his attempt produced pain localised in his calf muscle then, whether he liked it or not, she was going to phone for an ambulance.
‘No pain in the calf,’ he confirmed with a significant glance in her direction that told her he had been concerned about the same complication. ‘Initially, the leg was bent at a horrible angle. I think that by dragging myself out from under the car, I may have straightened it out and prevented circulatory complications.’
‘But it’s not a method I’d recommend,’ she said sternly, as she padded the lengths of board Sam had found and placed wedges of towels between his ankles before Rose helped her to bind everything into position with several swift turns of bandage. The support he needed closer to the fracture was much more difficult, especially as she was all too aware that it would be the most painful.
Finally, she’d done as much as she was able and it was time to get him into the car.
‘Sam, can you open the back door for us?’ she directed, wondering how on earth she was going to get Ben up onto his feet, never mind getting him onto the back seat. He was definitely taller than her own five and a half feet—probably several inches over six—and while he looked as if he could do with carrying a bit more weight on his lean frame, it would still be more than enough as dead weight on her much slighter build.
She drew in a deep breath and approached his upper half, sitting him up being the first essential stage.
‘If you can help me while I sit you up, well and good,’ she said briskly to hide her trepidation. ‘If it hurts too much, let me do all the work.’
His half-stifled groan told her that the manoeuvre was painful, but that didn’t stop him doing more than his share of the work.
‘Right. Catch your breath,’
