Nursing The Doctor Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ben. Please answer me, Greg. Talk to me. Listen up, listen hard. I know you can hear me, you’re a tough son of a bitch, just don’t let go, okay? Promise me you’ll bloody well hold on until I can get us out of this. I’m gonna get us out of this.”
    Greg struggled to open his eyes, to reassure Ben that he was awake, that he believed him, but it seemed to require enormous effort.
    Ben’s voice threaded through his consciousness like a mantra. “Greg, hold on, okay, pal? I’m doing what I can. You’re gonna be fine. The ’copter’s on its way. You’ve got a compound fracture on this leg, I’m using my belt as a tourniquet. Thank God for elastic belts, huh? Try to stop the bleeding, Greg. Try to stop the bleeding. Damn, damn, trust you to get marooned with a plastics man. What the hell does a plastics man know about emergency splints, for God’s sake?”
    Ben’s voice was almost unrecognizable, high and fast and urgent.
    Afraid.
    He’d never known Ben to be afraid before.
    He must be pretty bad if Ben was freaking out.
    The unnatural monologue continued. “And I can use that ski pole as a splint on your arm. Bloody good splint it is, too, if you ask me. I’ll wrap these suckers with my sweater, like this, immobilize the limbs... Done. Yup. That’ll hold ’em. Now, gonna just tuck my ski jacket around here.”
    He’d also probably fractured his vertebrae, Greg deduced with cool objectivity. That was why there wasn’t any pain. He was paralyzed.
    “ You’re gonna be fine, you’re in good hands here,” Ben was saying.
    Greg tried to draw breath to ask Ben to detail the damage he’d suffered, but when he breathed in, a sudden agony exploded in his chest and then spread to leg and arm and gut, agony so intense that some distant, observing part of him was astounded and interested.
    So this is what seriously injured people feel in my ER. This is what makes them scream.
    The shock of the pain made the world shift, but a sense of profound relief was there as well, just for an instant.
    I can feel. Maybe my spinal cord is intact after all. He tried to raise his thumb to tell Ben he could feel, but the message didn’t get through to his extremities.
    The effort had an effect, however. In his right arm, Greg felt the sharp edge of bone grate against bone with a sickening sensation that was worse than ordinary pain, and now a scream gurgled in his throat.
    Blackness again. Endless. Timeless.
    Then, between one heartbeat and the next, he was again fully conscious. The agony in every part of his body was intense, but the need to orient himself was even stronger than the pain.
    He was nauseous, rocking gently from side to side, suspended in midair by what looked like thin ropes.
    Strapped to a stretcher, an analytical, interested voice, his own but not his own, told him. He realized with total clarity that a rescue team must be lifting him out of the ravine.
    Light dazzled him and everything whirled. He gagged and felt bile rise in his throat. There was intense blueness as the sky came closer. Hands steadied the stretcher and a number of figures bent over him.
    “Respiration’s thirty-six, shallow. BP eighty over forty. Pulse 130, color ashen. Let’s get oxygen started, twelve liters a minute...”
    The rapid-fire assessment reassured Greg. Someone knew what they were doing. But as the non-re-breather oxygen mask settled on his face, he could hear someone making a noise he recognized from the ER, the wild animal sound of a person in extreme distress.
    Over the noise a strange voice was speaking to him, and Greg wondered where Ben was.
    “My name’s Ron, I’m with air rescue. We’re taking good care of you, we’ll have you at St. Joe’s in no time. I know you’re in pain, Greg, I’m just establishing an IV site so we can get some fluids into you. You’ve had a shot of morphine, so if you start feeling disoriented and fuzzy, that’s what’s doing it, but it’ll help you manage the pain. We’re going to