Love Without Measure

‘Could I get in to him?’

She shook her head. ‘Not a chance. If we’d had lunch I don’t think I’d get in either.’

His face was grim. ‘You’ll have to do it all yourself, then.’

‘Mmm. Can I have all the stuff? The first thing I want to do is take some blood for cross-matching. I can get to his left arm, so I should be able to get a line in and then we can start transfusing him. I want to keep a close eye on his BP, as well. He’s got the steering-wheel in his abdomen and that’s going to mess up his venous return, I expect. I think the wheel’s intact. If it’s broken, and penetrated through the wall, he’s in much more serious trouble.’

Patrick nodded, assembling the things she’d requested while she stuck her head back in the hole and talked to Nigel for a moment.

‘How is he?’ Patrick asked.

‘Still talking. I don’t want to mess about, though. I wonder what’s the best way to get that stuff in there?’

‘I’ll crawl in behind you as far as I can and pass things through to you, OK?’ Patrick suggested. ‘You can hand me back the syringe and I’ll deal with the bottles. A police car can take the blood to haematology for cross-matching. Then I can be on hand to tell you what to do.’

‘Just what I need, a bossy-boots up my tail,’ she quipped, but she was reassured to know he was going to be there, just in case.

She took a steadying breath and crawled back into the hole, then, with Patrick behind her, she squirmed back into the cab.

‘Hello, Nigel, I’m back,’ she told him. ‘How are things?’

‘Better now you’re here again,’ he said quietly. She could feel the fear again, and squeezed his hand.

‘There’s a doctor behind me. He can’t get in, but he can pass me things and we can talk to him. OK?’

‘OK.’

His voice was getting weaker, she thought, and, turning with difficulty, she asked for the IV set.

Patrick reached up to her, the packaged set already in his hand.

There was an elastic strap in her pocket—when was she ever without one?—and she pulled it tight around Nigel’s upper arm and turned his arm over carefully. The vein on the back of his forearm just above his wrist looked good, considering the amount of blood he had probably lost, and she prepared the site with an alcohol swab, wiping away the brick-dust and sweat that had clogged on the skin.

‘OK, I’m going to put this into your arm now, Nigel. You’ll just feel a little scratch coming up now…’

It was incredibly awkward doing it with her left hand, but she couldn’t turn either of them round enough to do it with her right. Still, the needle slipped home on the first try and she heaved a quiet sigh of relief as she taped the tubes in place on his arm and plugged the syringe into the end.

Having filled it, she passed it back to Patrick and then held out her hand for the Haemacel.

He put it in her hand, his fingers warm and hard against hers, and she took comfort from the small contact.

The only place to hang the bag was from the rearview mirror, but there it dangled right in her way so she had to dodge even further to see him.

She did so now, and managed a grim-lipped smile.

‘OK?’ she checked.

‘I’ll do.’

She slipped the blood pressure cuff on to his arm and checked his pressure. Low, as she had known it would be. Hopefully he wouldn’t understand the significance of the numbers when she told Patrick. She opened up the drip so it ran in steadily.

‘I’m just going to report to the doctor so he doesn’t feel totally redundant,’ she said with a smile, and then, squirming round, she bent over and stuck her head out of the gap.

‘BP 90 over 40,’ she told him quietly.

He swore under his breath. ‘Internal?’

She shrugged. ‘We need to get him out, Patrick, but there’s this big beam over the cab, and if you tried to pull it out it would crush him. God knows what’s holding it up as it is.’

His jaw muscle jerked, his mouth a harsh line. ‘Are you sure I couldn’t fit?’

She snorted softly. ‘Don’t be crazy. There’s hardly room for me in here. You’ll just have to tell me what to do.’

‘Get out. I want to come in there.’

‘No. You’re being absurd. You’ll just have to trust me.’

‘It isn’t a case of trust,’ he muttered. ‘You shouldn’t be in there. It’s no place for a woman ——’

‘Cut the heroism, Patrick,’ she told him brusquely. ‘Nigel doesn’t have time for all that stuff.’

His mouth tightened, but he had no choice. ‘Find out as much as you can about his condition,’ he grunted. ‘I’ll get the Entonox.’

He backed out and went to confer with the firemen while she turned round and ducked back down to see her patient. She would have to deal with his head-wound, but she could see it had stopped bleeding now. She wiped it with cotton wool squeezed out in saline, and dabbed it dry, talking to him all the while. She had to find out as much as possible, and like this she could watch his eyes. ‘Tell me more about your injuries,’ she coaxed. ‘Can you be specific about where you hurt?’

He thought for a moment. ‘My right knee,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s bloody sore. And my chest—right at the bottom. My stomach really.’

She turned her head and looked down at where the steering-wheel disappeared under the jut of his ribs. ‘I’d like to feel it, see what I can find out about where that steering-wheel’s pressing on you. Tell me if I hurt you,’ she added, and then, slipping her fingers under the edge of his shirt, she ran her hand carefully over his ribs. Several were sticking out at a strange angle, but the skin seemed intact.

She worked her way down, her fingers tracing his hipbone on the far side. So far so good. Her hand explored the rim of the steering-wheel, and she could feel something warm and wet on his abdomen. It didn’t feel sticky, so it was probably urine. Certainly she could smell it. The question was, had his bladder been punctured or had he simply wet himself?

She asked, and he didn’t seem to know. Still, there was no evidence of blood on her hand, which was a good sign. She continued her search, her fingers gentle but thorough, and found the full sweep of the steering-wheel, distorted but intact. So far, so good. She moved on.

His right femur seemed all right, lying awkwardly but unbroken, as far as she could tell. His knee, though, was a different matter. She approached it with caution, but the really painful part was embedded in the remains of the dashboard. The area below his knee was out of reach, but she could see in the light from the torch Patrick had passed her that it was trapped in the distorted footwell.

His left leg seemed to have fared better, and he said he could wriggle the toes of that one although she couldn’t see them because of the bent and twisted metal in the way.

His voice was growing weaker, and she checked his blood pressure again. It was falling still, but whether because he was losing blood internally or because the steering-wheel was digging into his abdomen so hard it interferred with his venous flow she couldn’t tell.

She squeezed the bag of Haemacel for a minute, to boost his circulation, and then turned her attention back to Patrick, who was calling her from the tunnel.

‘They want to know about this beam. They’re going to send in the smallest man they’ve got to check it out and put in supports and airbags, if necessary, to protect him while they remove the rubble from around the cab. OK? So you have to come out.’

Just then she sensed rather than heard a change in Nigel. ‘Hang on,’ she muttered, and, turning, she wriggled back towards him. ‘Nigel?’

‘It’s getting bloody hard to breathe,’ he muttered.

She flashed the torch at his face, noting the blue line round his lips and the bulging veins in the side of his neck.