‘So plenty of casualties, a tactical environment, with your guys under pressure,’ Mattie confirmed. ‘From our perspective it will be more about seeing the medical treatment the medics can provide and we’ve got about one hundred and forty medics taking part.’
‘For a lot of these guys it will be the first chance they’ll have had to see real-life amputees made up to look like the accidents have just happened. We’ve got another infantry unit coming in to keep them under constant fire to really ramp up that pressure. It’s going to be about making sure they can keep calm and seeing how fast they can select a good building in which to set up medical treatment facilities.
‘And stressing the new tactical set-up?’ Mattie surmised.
Kane bowed his head.
‘Right.’
‘Okay, so all of that seems as expected as we’d planned for them next week, using exercise casualties from this hospital. Amputees for Armies are being flown in next week, and we have HFMSs, high-fidelity mannequin simulators.’
‘I’m familiar with them,’ he confirmed. ‘Full-size dummies, computer controlled, which you’ll make up to look like injured soldiers—even those caught by IEDs or mines and losing limbs.’
‘They can recreate physiological issues such as blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, as well as normal and abnormal heart sounds, lung sounds and pupil findings,’ Mattie continued, clearly beginning to find her feet now they’d moved away from the personal and into the medical side of the operation.
It was ridiculous tha
t he couldn’t seem to do the same. Couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering to her lips and remembering how soft and plump they felt. Or following the sweet curve of her neck and recall how she’d quivered in his arms when he’d kissed that sensitive hollow by her collarbone.
Not to mention the primal, caveman part of himself that was barely containing itself from stripping her and throwing her on her desk, hearing her scream his name again as he buried his head in the sweet heat between her legs.
The way he’d promised himself he would do the moment this exercise was over, when he’d thought all he had to do was return to the hospital and find her there, waiting for him.
When he’d planned to tell her everything.
‘The mannequins can vary blood pressure, heart rate and breathing, and many of them can simulate going into cardiac arrest,’ she continued, oblivious to his wild, uncontrollable thoughts. ‘Depending on how far you want to test your different level of medics at section level, platoon level or company level, HFMSs can even respond to medication and oxygen administration, receiving electrical cardioversion and procedures such as diagnostic peritoneal lavage and central lines.’
‘Okay.’ Moving forward, Kane tried to get a grip of his wayward thoughts and settled in front of the large map on the pinboard on the side wall of the room.
He did it more to move away from her than because he needed to. Because if she got any closer he knew he would smell that familiar, vanilla scent of her hair, as tightly scraped back in that bun as it was. And his fingers were already itching with the desire to pull it free and tunnel his fingers into its luxurious silkiness.
‘So,’ he managed, ‘to summarise, we can’t get the Amputees for Armies flown in any earlier than scheduled, but we should be able to use the HFMSs and your guys made up to look like casualties. I suggest we go through each potential scenario one at a time, decide on what can best be gained by it, and then feed it into a new time and grid reference.’
‘Fine.’ Mattie whipped through the pages, annotated with her own notes, before standing up and moving to join him at the board. ‘Starting with the incident on page four, where you’ve highlighted a bridge collapse.’
He sidestepped again. Like a besotted teenager next to their crush. It might have even been comical, if it wasn’t so damned tragic.
‘Yeah.’ He coughed brusquely. ‘We’re looking at setting up a tank fall so the Engineers can have a play with their toys.’
‘How about if we use it to introduce a crush scenario? We can have a two-stage approach, with stage one concentrating on your medics and soldiers in the field, right up to extraction using one of our MERT helicopters. Stage two will be for us back at the field hospital.’
The Medical Emergency Response Team were always an essential part of any operation, as was the field hospital.
‘Okay.’ Kane nodded, taking his own notes. ‘I’m aware that there are arguments and recommendations for leaving crush victims in situ if they have been trapped for more than fifteen minutes, but on the other hand there’s an argument concerning crush syndrome for releasing them as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, so let me explain,’ she began, her evident passion for her work making him smile despite everything.
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
‘In layman’s terms, Mattie,’ he cautioned.
At least she had the grace to flush. But that only made him wonder if the stain was spreading down her deliciously creamy chest. To the gentle swells that he ached to touch again.
To taste them again.
‘Right. Of course. When the human body is crushed, in this instance between a vehicle and a bridge deck, it is subjected to pressure. Muscular compression damages the muscle cells and leads to a process called rhabdomyolysis.’ She eyed him briefly before hastily skating over the explanation he knew she’d been about to give him.
If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was talking for the sake of it. That, in reality, she was finding this conversation as distracting as he was. And he could have sworn her breathing was a little shallower than it had been. A little more rapid.