Hainan Dao

Book III Chapter 03

“So, how bad is the flooding?” I asked him as we worked.

“Bad.” Dr. Croft shook his head. “As soon as we saw the water coming, we began moving the patients and the equipment upstairs, but…”

“Did you manage to save much of it?”

“We got most of the IV pumps and EKG’s up, and I think they’re still working, though there’s been no time to test them.”

I nodded.

“Listen.” Dr. Croft looked up at me. “You keep working here. Meihwa and Muling will help you out. I’ll be in the next room.” He took off.

I ground my teeth together and cursed. Bending to the task, I finished off with the man who had the bleeding leg. I told my helpers to clean up for me and moved on to the next one.

This new patient was a woman. Her left arm was all twisted up and black and bruised. All the while I was examining her fracture, she was nattering into my ear non-stop. She was talking too fast. I couldn’t understand her. Something about rocks falling, but I wasn’t sure. Well, a broken bone is a broken bone. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t a lot I could do for her anyway, so I told the young man standing beside her, a relative I presumed, to stay with her, keep her warm and make sure she was drinking water all the time.

“Water?” He screwed up his eyes at me. “Where can I get water now?”

I pointed to the window and the rain outside. “Ta da!”

Shaking my head, I moved on.

The next patient had his eyes closed and looked limp. I tried shouting into his ear but couldn’t wake him. Checking under his sheet, I found a bandaged stump where his left arm should have been. I felt for his pulse, then his breathing. Still there, both of them, but his colour wasn’t the greatest. I had seen slabs of defrosting pork with a pinker hue.

I searched for the patient’s veins beneath his skin on the back of his right hand. Most of the vessels were already collapsed. I didn’t want to have to start an IV on one of the larger ones, like the one in the antecubital fossa, the one the nurse usually takes the blood out of when you go to the lab for routine bloodwork, but it appeared I had no choice. The only other option would have been to start a central line but we didn’t have that kind of equipment, or maybe a tibial bone insertion, which I have never done before in the whole of my medical career so far. So I went back to the crook of the arm and began to prep the site.

As I continued to work on the man, it started to happen again. The sights and sounds around me dimmed, and I began to drift further and further away from my own body. It was like I wasn’t even there at all, but only peering down at myself from a great distance. I saw my hands flying back and forth, picking up the alcohol, wiping down the skin. I saw them slap on the man’s vein to make it bulge and stand out more. One of the women behind me spoke and then handed me an opened IV kit. I heard my own voice barking out instructions and urging them to go faster. But I wasn’t really there. I was just part of the audience, watching the whole event from a corner in the stands. I frowned and said a prayer. God, I hope I knew what I was doing.

***

I lost count of how many I had treated.

I asked Meiling or Muhwa, (or was it Meihwa or Muling?) who was standing beside me to set up another IV bag on the patient that I had just finished off, but the woman just stared back at me and shrugged her shoulders. She told me we had run out.

“What do you mean, ‘run out’?”

She shook her head.

I raced out the door and jumped into the next room. Dr. Croft wasn’t there.