Doctor's Mile-High Fling

She pulled the hood of her coat into place since it was still sleeting, grabbed her medical bag, then exited the vehicle. She was vaguely aware that Blake had also gotten out. Hurrying around Mark’s parked car, she found four men standing under the plastic, with a fifth man kneeling next to the victim, who appeared to be unconscious at the moment. The patient’s pale face and the slightly blue cast to his lips signaled shock. Her eyes quickly scanned the body through the blanket.

Crouching next to him, she felt for a pulse—which seemed strong enough—before pulling back the layers of blankets from his bottom half, noting the fabric of his work pants had been slit up the middle, laying bare his leg from ankle to groin. Good thinking.

The fracture was in the left femur, the jagged edge of the exposed bone pointing to the left as if thumbing a lift out of there.

Soon. I promise.

The other half of the break was nowhere to be seen, hidden somewhere deep inside his leg. But if it looked anything like the bone she could see…Her stomach knotted. Move him the wrong way and the sharp edges could indeed slice through an artery and kill him.

“How long’s he been unconscious?”

One of the men behind her answered. “About a half hour, maybe a little longer. I saw the whole thing. He was out as soon as his head hit the ground.”

“How hard did he hit?” She made a mental note to check for signs of a concussion or skull fracture.

“Pretty hard. And once we saw the angle of the leg, we knew it was broken. We just cut his pant leg to see how bad it was.” The man swallowed hard. They hadn’t expected to find what they had.

She slipped on a pair of latex gloves then used her thumb to pull back the wounded man’s right eyelid. Flicking the beam from her penlight across the pupil, she then repeated the action with the other eye.

Equal and reactive. Good. No evidence of brain trauma at the moment.

Working quickly, she again took his pulse, then ran her hands down his unaffected limbs, making sure she wasn’t missing another obvious fracture. Everything felt solid.

Blake knelt beside her. “What can I do?”

“I want to get an IV into him, but we can do that once we get to the plane. Right now, I need to stabilize his leg. Can you find me some heavy sticks or a couple pieces of lumber? Not too long, maybe—”

She held her hands apart, approximating the size she wanted.

“I’m on it.”

He hadn’t balked at the task, neither had he batted an eyelash at the sight of the man’s open wound. Evel Knievel or not, he was evidently good at his job.

While he was gone, she grabbed a small bottle of saline and sponged away the blood so she could see the area better. She then wet several pieces of sterile gauze and laid them over the wound, one on top of the other, to keep the bone moist and avoid further contamination. Those layers were topped with a few dry ones, in case the bleeding continued. Blake was back by the time she was done, holding a couple of clean-looking one-by-fours.

“These okay?”

“Perfect.” She nodded toward her bag. “I’ve got some hand sanitizer and some surgical gloves in there. I’ll need you to help me splint him, if you’re up to it.”

As soon as she said it, she glanced up to make sure he was in agreement, but he’d already handed off the wood to someone else and was squirting the sanitizer onto his hands.

“Does anyone have a truck or a van we can use to transport him to the airport? Something with a large covered area?”

Neither of the local clinics were equipped to do surgery like this, and Anchorage had a great orthopedic surgeon who was willing to come in at a moment’s notice. She’d radio it in once they were in the air.

“I do.” The man who’d been kneeling next to the patient spoke up. “It’s in the parking lot.”

She noticed his hesitation and wondered if he was worried about liability issues. “I’ll take responsibility,” she said.

“It’s not that. He’s going to be okay, isn’t he? He’s…he’s my…”

When the man’s voice cracked, Mark spoke up. “They’re brothers. Jed—your patient—lost his wife to cancer a few months ago. He’s got two young kids at home.”

Oh, boy.

She turned to the man who couldn’t have been older than his early twenties. No need for him to see what she was about to do. “We’re going to take good care of him, I promise. Do you think you could bring your truck as close as you can? Once we splint his leg, we’ll be ready to go.”