The Surgeon's Rescue Mission

by Dianne Drake

  Then suddenly a moving image caught her attention, just off to the side of her headlights, and before she could snap her attention back fully, she heard a thud off her left fender. Immediately, she felt a sick knot in the pit of her stomach, and by the time she got the car stopped, she wondered if she might have run into a deer, or a kouprey, which was, essentially, a wild cow.

  She wrestled with the idea of getting out of her car to take a look. Alone, after dark, nowhere…not a good idea. If it was an animal, as much as the thought of even that made her sick to her stomach, there was no need to get out. And who, in their right mind, would be wandering around out here anyway? Nobody. There were no little villages, and the resorts were long behind her. No tribal areas—most of the tribespeople stuck to the interior. So it had to be an animal, right?

  Solaina looked into her rear-view mirror and all she could see was black. “An animal,” she said, as she opened her window. “Anybody back there?” she yelled. “Are you hurt?”

  She listened, but there was no response.

  “Anybody there? Did I hurt you?”

  Again, no response. So Solaina rolled up the window and set the auto in forward and started to go, only to come to a rolling stop a few inches further on, throw open her car door, and get out. “OK. I’m coming back, and you’d better not try anything funny because…” She had nothing to finish off that threat, so she headed back to the point of impact, fully expecting to find some poor creature sprawled there. “Hell, I hope it’s not suffering,” she said, as she crept along. She was an animal lover, a tree lover, a bug lover. She was the one who, as a child, would run outside after a rainstorm and gather all the earthworms that had wiggled out of the ground then put them back so nobody would step on them. Or, worse, before the sun came out and dried them out. “Hello,” she called out into the night. “Is somebody out there?”

  She paused, listening. Something close by was stirring. She could hear it. Was that a moan?

  “Hello,” she whispered, not quite brave enough now to call out.

  “Hello,” someone whispered back,

  Solaina jumped, stifling a scream, and her heart doubled its rhythm, slamming into her chest wall. “Are you hurt?” she ventured, creeping slowly forward, wondering now if this was the wisest thing to be doing on an isolated road in the middle of the night. In the middle of nowhere.

  Maybe she should have gone on to the cottage and called someone. But who? She didn’t know anybody around here. She hardly even knew anybody in Dharavaj, aside from her co-workers, and she’d been here two years. Howard and Victoria? No, they were off on an elephant adventure in the north country somewhere. No ambulance service out here, no policemen. Nobody to call. And this was her doing after all. She’d been the one who’d run him down, so she’d have to be the one off to his rescue.

  Solaina dragged in a deep breath, and continued creeping forward in the direction from which the man’s weak hello had come, hoping this was just her mind playing tricks on her. A strange voice in the night, on a deserted roadside, was a typical gothic scene in a horror movie. It’s what her mind expected from this. That’s all.

  “I’m hurt,” he sputtered. “Dying, I think.”

  Judging from his accent, he was American, or Canadian perhaps. “Where are you?” she ventured, still creeping on.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Hello? Can you talk to me?”

  No answer again, and now she was getting worried. He’d either succumbed, or maybe he was a mugger trying to lure her in. So she hesitated. “I need you hear your voice so I can find you. You’ve got to talk to me if you want me to help you.” Creeping around in the dark like she was, with only the stationary light of her car beams to help, she could be standing right next to him and not even see him.

  “Where you come from, do you have deciduous trees?” he finally asked, his voice so weak she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly.

  “What?” she asked, approaching the patch of bushes from where she thought she’d heard his voice.

  “Deciduous trees. Do you have them?”

  Yes, she’d heard him right the first time. A strange question, but nevertheless a valuable one because it led Solaina right to the spot when he was sprawled flat on the ground. “We have both deciduous and evergreen,” she said, bending over him and suddenly wishing she had better nursing skills—practical skills, the kind that saved lives. Because even in the little bit of light she had, this man looked to her like he truly was about to die. Soon!

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU’VE got a good pulse,” she said, her fingers still in place along the side of his neck. Good pulse, and much stronger than she’d expected from her first look at him. “Which means you must be a pretty strong man.” Strong, with a will to live. Thank God.

  As she pulled her fingers away from the pulse point in his neck, Solaina felt the stickiness on her fingers, and instinctively raised them to her nose. That familiar coppery smell. Even though she rarely ever got near a bleeding patient these days, she knew this. Blood! He was bleeding, but she didn’t think it was profusely. Not from what she could see in the dim headlamps of the car, anyway.

  “Broken ribs,” he gasped. “Left side. Fourth and fifth, and probably sixth. Maybe seventh. That one could be a tear to the intercostal cartilage.”

  So he’s medical, she thought. Maybe a doctor? Physician, I hope you can heal yourself because this nurse cannot. “I think you’re bleeding, too.” What a pathetic response to a man who was already outclassing her as a medic, even after she’d run him down and nearly killed him.

  “Shoulder,” he moaned.

  She’d broken his ribs and his shoulder? “I’m so sorry about this,” Solaina gasped, pulling back his shirt to reveal his shoulder wound. “I didn’t see you. I promise, I didn’t see you anywhere.” Of course, she’d been drowsy, and she was already cursing herself for being so stupid as to drive in that condition.

  “But I saw you…” He coughed, then swore softly under his breath.

  “Don’t try to talk,” she said. “You need to conserve your strength for getting out of here.” However that was going to be accomplished. “Why couldn’t you have run into the road in the middle of Chandella where there’s real help?”

  “Saw your headlights,” he said.

  Of course he had. He’d seen her headlights coming straight at him and there had been no time to jump away. Poor man. Solaina was already beginning to feel the sting of self-recrimination. She shouldn’t have come here tonight. Not so late. Not when she’d been so tired. “Look, you really need to stay still for now.” Until I can figure out what to do. “Until I can get you some help. So just concentrate on breathing, and staying awake.” Good advice if he had a head trauma, which he probably did. Concussion, most likely. That happened when getting knocked about by a moving vehicle. Her moving vehicle. Just thinking that made her go nauseous.

  “You’re my help,” he murmured.

  Solaina laughed bitterly. “If only you knew how wrong you were about that.” Even now, after ten years, there were so many nights when she tried to sleep and still saw Jacob Renner’s face when she closed her eyes. He’d thought she’d been his help, too. “But I suppose that for now it is me, isn’t it?” Another thought to add to her rising nausea.

  Never let them hear the doubt—something she stressed to her nurses. No matter what the situation, the patient was never to hear doubt, and right now she was praying that he couldn’t hear the dubious tone in her words. “So the first thing, after I make sure that you can travel, is to decide where we’re going.”

  She took a deep breath. Checklist, Laina. He’s breathing. He’s conscious. He’s somewhat lucid. All good signs. But he’s bleeding. He has broken ribs, meaning he could puncture a lung. She wouldn’t have a clue how to save him from that! Book smarts, yes. She knew the theory. But in practice…

  Pray God that he can get up and walk to my car. “OK. I’m going to do a quick look to see what else is wrong,
other than the obvious. Any particular aches?”

  “Plenty,” he grunted, then sucked in a sharp breath as she probed his shoulder. “Does pride count?”

  In spite of the situation, she had to laugh. “When you’re healed, yes. It can count all you want it to. Right now, though, I want the real aches.”

  “My pride is a real ache.”

  Good sense of humor. Stubborn. Strong-willed. Not a bad combination, really. “Well, I can’t probe your pride, so instead, I”m going to slide my fingers in under your neck to make sure there isn’t any apparent neck damage. So, don’t move your head.”

  She wriggled her fingers carefully between his neck and the dirt. An initial probe found nothing to the touch. No open wounds, no dried blood. “Good,” she murmured.

  “Oh,” he moaned. “A little lower…”

  “Pain?” she asked. “Can you tell me exactly where it is?”

  “Massage…”

  She pulled her hand away from his neck. “Not a massage.” She chuckled. The tension knot in her neck could certainly stand a massage, though.

  “Later, pretty lady. I promise.”

  “Let’s hope that later you’re in a proper hospital bed, well on your way to recovery.” She eased her fingers to his shoulder wound. Old blood there. Congealed. Clumped. Crusted. “How long ago did this shoulder wound happen?” she asked, sure now that it was an old wound, and not one of her causing.

  “Don’t know. Two days…three…” His voice trailed off.

  “Don’t fade out on me,” she said, feeling for any signs of fresh bleeding. There didn’t seem to be any. “I need to know what kind of wound this is.” It was small, compact. To her fingers, it seemed a puncture of some sort, or a gunshot wound. Judging from the feel of it, the wound might already be healing over, but the surrounding tissue was ablaze. Meaning infection.

  “Take me home,” he wheezed.

  Delirious again. From the infection, most likely. Solaina laid the back of her hand across his brow. “You’re burning up,” she said, almost stunned. His temperature was well over normal. Maybe by as much as five or six degrees, she estimated. “And dehydrated, I’m guessing.” To make sure, she brushed her fingers over his face and felt his dried, cracked lips.

  “I always knew it would feel good when you did that.”

  “This isn’t a date.” She laughed, checking his neck again for a pulse. Still strong. He was still strong, and apparently a bit randy. That, she knew, could come with a head injury.

  “I meant to ask you.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “But you didn’t see me.”

  No, she hadn’t seen him on the road. But she’d heard the sickening thump when she’d hit him. Just thinking about that caused the nausea roiling around in her belly to give her another whack. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, trying to fight off the memory of that sound. He had been wandering around out there in the night, along the road, already injured, and she’d run him down.

  “Gunshot,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “Got shot.”

  The shoulder wound! That made sense, judging from the feel of his shoulder. Of course, she’d never treated a GSW, except as a student. And then she’d only observed from the back of the cluster of other student nurses, and had eventually been the one who had been singled out to put on the dressing. A lousy dressing! That was her total experience in this.

  “Well, you’re in luck because I do have some rather unique experience in the treatment of gunshot wounds,” she said. Above all else, keep the patient confident in you. Another thing she told her nurses.

  “No exit,” he whispered.

  His voice was weaker now. Weaker and wobbly. “Shh,” she said, slipping her hand under his shoulder to assess the area. “You just stay quiet, and let me take care of you. Did I tell you that I’m a nurse?” By professional standards, anyway. Although not by her own. So claiming nurse, under these circumstances, was like saying, Did I tell you I’m a hairstylist? or Did I tell you that I’m a gardener? The hairstylist and the gardener stood as good a chance of aiding him as she did. Maybe better, since they didn’t have a near-pathological fear.

  “Did I tell you that I love nurses?”

  “All right, Casanova. I’ve got to have a look at the back of your shoulder. So don’t move.” The area at the back of his shoulder was intact. No torn flesh, no bleeding. So, he was correct. There was no exit wound. The bullet was still in there. And if he’d been stumbling about in the dirt, all sweaty…She shuddered, thinking about the grime and filthy bits he might have festering inside his wound. After a few days, it couldn’t be good at all. He was one lucky man to be alive in any condition, having blood loss and all his other injuries on top of a dirty, purulent wound. So many possibilities. Infection, pneumonia…

  “Take a deep breath for me, will you?” she asked, wondering about the extent of his rib injuries. Had he constricted his breathing so much that pneumonia could be setting in already?

  “It hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does, but I need to have a listen to your lungs, and the only way I can do that is if you take a nice, deep breath for me.”

  “My lungs are fine,” he argued.

  “Then let me have a listen, and if they are, I’ll be the one to tell you, instead of the other way around.” She wished she had a stethoscope, because an ear to the chest wasn’t going to tell her much. But she didn’t. So, after she’d unbuttoned his shirt all the way down, she pressed her ear to his chest and listened. Nice, strong heartbeat. So much so it was almost hypnotic. And a nice mat of soft hair, too. Something she shouldn’t be noticing.

  She held her own breath for a second, listening for fluid, then breathed out a sigh of relief. No audible sounds meant there was a pretty good chance he didn’t have pneumonia. “Excellent,” she said, straightening back up. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “You can listen again,” he said. “Your hair smells nice.”

  Self-consciously, Solaina reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. It was down. The pins that usually kept it up gone. “I’ve got to unzip your pants now,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face. “Evaluate your belly for rigidity or tenderness, to see if you have…” No point in telling him. If he was truly medical, he knew she would be looking for signs of internal bleeding. If he was not medical, there was no reason to scare him. Though, amazingly, he didn’t seem scared. Not at all.

  “I don’t like bats. Don’t mind tigers, but I don’t like bats.”

  Not scared, but apparently in delirium again. Solaina smiled. So many truths slipped out in delirium, deep dark secrets and long-hidden personality traits. “I don’t mind them so much,” she said, pulling his jeans down below his waist, then probing his stomach for any obvious wound—obvious to the touch, since in the dimness of the headlights she couldn’t see much.

  Nice stomach. Hard, flat. And, thank heavens, not rigid from an internal injury. This man was getting luckier by the minute. “Bats eat the mosquitoes, which are so much worse out here than the bats. So I think the bats are fine.”

  She really needed a better look overall. But before she moved him, or before she even tried getting him into her auto, she did want to have a more complete idea of what she was dealing with. “Look, I’ll be right back,” she said. “I’m going to pull my car up closer and turn the beams straight onto us. So you stay here. Don’t move. Don’t get up.” As if he could.

  It took only a minute before Solaina was back at his side, this time in the full glare of her car headlights. As she bent down next to him and got her first good look, she saw that he was handsome. Handsome underneath an awful lot of dirt, and covered with dried blood and particles and pieces of the jungle. “Are you awake?” she asked, deciding that instead of zipping up his jeans she was going to remove them to make sure he had no serious leg injuries. He might, and in his condition he wouldn’t even know it.

  “Take away the scalpel,” he said. �
��I don’t want it. Not yet.”

  “Trust me. Nobody in their right mind would let me go near a scalpel.” Before the jeans came off, Solaina removed his shoes and socks, and saw that his feet looked good. No evident injuries. Then she pulled down the jeans, and set about an exam of his legs, first the right, then the left. There were so many bruises, she noted, almost as horrified by that as by anything else she’d seen. No fractures that she could tell as she ran her hands from his hip bones to his ankles on both sides. But dozens and dozens of bruises, large and small. And not fresh.

  This man had certainly taken a beating and, as best as she could tell in the light from the car, they were taking on the greenish-yellow hue of being several days old. Something quite noticeable on a fair-skinned man, as he was.

  Suddenly, Solaina looked at his hair. Blond? It was so dirty she couldn’t really tell, but she thought he was. “This isn’t how I wanted to meet my blond man,” she said, lifting his right leg to make sure there were no horrible cuts on the back of it.

  “Sandy,” he said. “Not true blond.”

  “So you’re with me right now?” Seeing nothing but bruises on his right leg, she took a look at the underside of his left, discovering only more bruises.

  “For a minute, then I may have to go away again.”

  The man was astute. He knew his condition, knew what he was fighting against here. And he was struggling to stay with her. That was good, because until she could get him to help, real help, the only thing he had going for him was a strong will. Certainly, that was much better than her paltry skills in a situation like this. “OK, so while you’re with me, can you tell me your name?”

  “David. David Gentry.”

  Solaina gasped. She’d heard his name almost a year ago, in Cambodia, when she’d sent a couple of her nurses off to have a go with IMO—International Medical Outreach. He had been a lead doctor with IMO at the time—an amazing orthopaedic surgeon, everyone had said. But he’d walked away from it all. No reason. At least none that she’d heard. “David Gentry,” Solaina repeated. “Are you Dr David Gentry?”