Dianne Drake - P.S. You're a Daddy!

“Good, because it’s going to happen pretty fast now.” He watched Deanna direct the stretcher to just outside the truck then recheck the supplies laid out for this part of the rescue. Sill cool as the proverbial cucumber, she was the only one involved here who didn’t seem frantic.

“Can I ask you one favor, Doc?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Somewhere in the back I’ve got a birthday present for my granddaughter. However this turns out, would you see that she gets it?”

A lump formed in Beau’s throat. “How about I save it for you to give to her?” he said. “And I’ll tell her to save you some birthday cake.”

“Appreciate it, Doc. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to call my wife …”

“You talk while I splint your leg and get you ready to move.” He didn’t want to hear the conversation, it would be too personal.

So he bit his lower lip hard to create a distraction for himself and quickly splinted Mack’s lower leg, trying to block out the way Mack was trying to be supportive to his wife even though he was the one in critical condition. Trying to block out thoughts of Nancy, who didn’t have it in her to think of anyone but herself in a critical situation.

Pulling the last elastic bandage into place around Mack’s splint, Beau started to withdraw himself from the cab to allow the standby firefighters and medics their turn with him. “OK, let’s get you out of here and on the next helicopter to the hospital. You with me?”

Mack’s cellphone dropped to the floor, which was actually the passenger-side door, and as Beau twisted to grab it for him, he saw the wrapped birthday present and grabbed it as well. Something soft, a stuffed animal, he guessed.

“Deanna,” he yelled, then tossed it out for her to catch. “Mack, cross your arms over your chest and let the medics do all the work. And, please, don’t fight against them.” After one last check to make sure Mack was as stable as possible, Beau unwedged himself all the way and practically poured out of the front of the truck, bouncing off the hood then hitting the ground with a thump, landing rather ungraciously on his bum right at Deanna’s feet.

“You OK?” she asked, extending a hand to him to help him up.

“No, I’m not,” he snapped, taking hold of her hand—such soft skin—and righting himself. “Sorry. I’m OK, but my patient …” He shrugged then looked back at the truck as the firefighters cut away large chunks of the truck to get at its driver.

“Look, Beau, I don’t do this too often … patient care. Especially trauma and field rescue. But I understand the basics, we’re as ready for him as we can be. So just tell me what I need to be doing.”

He nodded. “What about the car that went over?”

“Both people inside are injured, one conscious, one not. Until the rescuers get into the car, we won’t know any more.”

“OK, then.” He looked at the MAST trousers, which Deanna had laid out on the ground and opened up all the way. They were essentially the same as a blood-pressure cuff, with all the same sticky fasteners, gauges and tubes running in and out to blow them up. If knowing how to get them ready was what Deanna called the basics, she was greatly underestimating herself. “Let’s do this.”

Giving a nod to the rescuers in the truck, who were awaiting his direction, Beau stepped away from the trousers to allow the rescuers a clear path then turned to watch them cut away the steering-wheel and dashboard, almost in the blink of an eye.

In that same blink of an eye his patient ripped out the most blood-curdling scream imaginable. Beau drew in a shuddering breath and felt the squeeze of Deanna’s hand on his arm. “I hate this,” he whispered. “Damn, I hate this.”

“I’ve got morphine ready.”

Another awful scream and her squeeze tightened. “If he lives that long.”

“He’ll live that long.” Deanna dropped to her knees as the firefighters ran forward and laid the driver directly atop the open trousers. Immediately she began to pull one of the legs over Mack’s left leg, while Beau did the same with the right, and in a fraction of a second, they were both closing the fasteners.

There was another scream from Mack but this one weaker, and at the end of it he passed out. “Stay with us,” Beau said, as he pumped pressure into the trousers. “You’ve got birthday cake to eat.”

“Birthday cake?” Deanna asked, without diverting her attention from the site she was cleaning on Mack’s arm for an IV.

“His granddaughter’s birthday. You’re not bad for a writer, by the way. Pretty good skill sets in the field.”

“Not bad for a writer who’s putting an IV in someone who doesn’t have a blood pressure,” Deanna corrected, then smiled as she slid the needle into the vein near the crook of Mack’s left arm.

“Do you like working trauma?” he asked, still astounded by her efficiency.

After she had taped the IV in place, she glanced over at Beau, who was listening to heart and breath sounds. “Don’t dislike it. Not sure I’d want a steady diet of it, though.” Returning her attention to her patient, she attached the IV tubing then hooked that to a bag of Ringer’s, which would help replace fluid volume lost through bleeding. “And you?”

“Surgeon, by training. Country GP … by obligation. Maybe by choice, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Ah, two diverse worlds with just as diverse appeals.” She signaled for the medic to hand her an oxygen mask then placed it on Mack’s face.

“Maybe too diverse,” he said, leaning over Mack to check his eyes for pupillary response. “Not sure where I fit yet.”

“Which is why you’re here?”

“I’m here because my grandfather isn’t able to manage his practice any longer, and there’s no one else to take care of his patients until I decide if I want to stay or bring somebody else in. He needed me, even though the old coot isn’t about to admit it.”

“Am I sensing family discord?”

“More like family stubbornness.” He pushed himself away from Mack, then stood up and waved for the medics to take the man. “Not such an endearing trait, I’ve been told.”

“So now what?” she asked, as she also stood, then stepped back. “An hour or so to the hospital? Will he be able to do that in his condition”

“Less, by helicopter.”

“If you can get one. Airlift in areas such as this isn’t always convenient when you need it.”

“Unless you own a helicopter.”

She arched her eyebrows. “I’m impressed.”

“I was too when my grandfather bought it. Not so much now that I have to fly it.”

“You fly?”

He shrugged. “Somebody has to. But normally I sit in the back with the patient and let Joey do the flying. He manages the ranch, tends the horses and my grandfather, flies the chopper.” Something about her made him lose all caution, and just when he thought he’d perfected the fine art of keeping his privacy at all costs. Another pretty face, he decided. Like Mack had said—watch out!

“So we’ll transport Mack to your helicopter, and …”

“And hope the people they’re going to bring up from over the edge can make do with an hour’s ride in the back of an ambulance.”

“You really are deprived out here, aren’t you?”

“Not deprived,” he said, not so much offended by her remark as curious about it. “Slowed down, forced to be inventive.”

“My mistake,” she said, following Beau, who was running along behind the medics who were ready to load Mack into the back of an ambulance that would transport him to the Alexander landing strip.

“Logical conclusion. Look, you handle the rest of it. I’ve got to go.” Which was exactly what he did. He climbed into the ambulance with Mack then watched Deanna until the doors shut on him. Even then, he stared through the tiny window until she was but a speck in the distance.