Locked Down with the Army Doc

Jack nodded and headed into the main gymnasium. Rain was thudding down onto the floor on the half where the ceiling was missing. Everyone still inside had been moved to the other side. There were a number of people lying on the floor.

Jack shrugged his pack from his shoulder and walked over, setting it down on the floor next to one of the injured. “You over there.” He pointed to Amber, then turned to Jamal and Lana. “One over there, and one over there. Let me know what you’ve got.”

Amber took a deep breath as she approached the young woman lying on the floor ahead of her. The woman looked around the same age as herself but her arm was lying at an awkward angle and she had a gash on her head.

Amber knelt down next to her, reaching in her pack for some supplies. “I’m Amber. I’m one of the doctors. What’s your name?”

“Kel,” she breathed.

Amber tried to do a quick assessment of the patient, pulling a small flashlight from her pack and checking her neuro obs. The woman gave a little groan and her eyelids fluttered open for a second. She attempted to move then let out a yelp. Her arm was obviously broken. Amber grabbed a dressing and covered the wound on the woman’s forehead after she’d checked it. The arm was going to take a bit more than a wound dressing.

“When was the last time I dealt with broken bones?” whispered Amber to herself. She touched the woman’s other shoulder. “I’m going to give you an injection for the pain,” she said lowly, “before I try and move your arm.” It only took a matter of seconds to draw up the injection. Amber kept talking to the woman the whole time. She gave her the injection and waited a few minutes for it to take effect. She found a sling in among her supplies. Once the woman’s pain was under control, she very gently put the injured arm in a sling.

Where was Jack? She couldn’t see him and there were a number of other patients to deal with. Jamal and Lana were dealing with patients of their own, checking wounds and patching dressings. Amber moved on to the next patient. Then the next, then the next. It seemed that lots of people in the evacuation center had been injured, some before the storm, some on the way to the center and some as a result of the roof being ripped off.

Eventually one of the firefighters came to her side. “Dr. Jack said to come and find you. He needs a hand, and wants a rundown on your patients.”

A hand she could do. But should she be offended he wanted a rundown on her patients? She asked one of the volunteers to keep an eye on a few people and followed the firefighter outside, then followed him down a corridor into a back entrance of the damaged gymnasium.

There were a few people who looked as if they were standing guard outside one of the doors. “What is it?” she asked.

“The school janitor. He was already injured trying to help someone. Now we think he’s been electrocuted.”

Amber gulped. Water had seeped into every part of this building due to the roof damage and storm. One of the firefighters handed her a pair of rubber boots. “Put these on before you go any further.”

She threw her shoes to the side and pulled on the rubber boots, nodding to the firefighter once she was ready.

But when he opened up the door, she realized she was anything but ready.

Jack was almost hanging from the ceiling, above a floor covered in a few inches of water, and holding on to a man who was trapped in twisted bleachers. He had a plastic portable gurney in two bits next to him.

“Great,” he said once he saw her. “Amber, can you bring an airway? I need you to maintain this guy’s airway for me.” His hands appeared to be on the patient. “But don’t touch the floor. You’ll need to climb around, across those bleachers. Get a pair of gloves from somewhere.”

She tried to make sense of the room. The bleachers were twisted into an almost unrecognizable state. One of the large ceiling lights had landed in the pool of water on the floor. The firefighter next to her spoke into her ear. “The janitor pulled a kid out of here just before that light landed on the floor. He was flung up onto the bleachers with the shock. He’s been groaning ever since.” The firefighter nudged her. “Your Dr. Jack is quite the gymnast. He managed to make it over there better than some of our boys.”

Amber was trying to plot her course along the edge of the water-lined floor then up toward the tangled bleachers. After a few seconds, she gave a nod. “Okay, I think I can do it.” The firefighter handed her some gloves.

“Wait,” she asked. “What’s Jack going to do while I hold the airway?”

The firefighter pressed his lips together. “Oh, he’s also trying to stop the bleeding.”

“What bleeding?”

She looked back at the floor again and directly under the bleachers to where Jack and the patient were. The water was stained with red. This guy was bleeding heavily. However he’d landed on those bleachers, it hadn’t been pretty.

She shook her head. “Don’t worry. I get it.”

It was obvious that Jack couldn’t take his other hand from wherever the wound site was. She bent down and pulled one of his wound pads from her pack and stuffed it inside her jacket. It took a few moments to maneuver her way around the edge, taking care to avoid any hint of water, to where one of the firefighters was waiting to give her a punt up onto the bleachers.

“Ready?” he asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” she replied. Her hands caught on to a plastic chair and she moved from one to another, ducking between them and squeezing her body from side to side.

“Any word from the power company?” shouted Jack. “If we could be sure the power was off, things would be a whole lot easier.”

“Can’t even get through,” replied one of the firefighters. “Ironic, really. The one place we actually want a power cut is the place we can’t get it.”

Another guy came up alongside him and shouted over to Jack. “We’ve looked for the breakers but we think the box has been covered by the debris from the roof.”

Jack pulled a face as Am

ber continued to thread her way through the twisted bleachers. The last part was the toughest; she had to shrug off her jacket and push it through first before she could squeeze through the small space, finally ending up breathless next to Jack.

“How on earth did you get the plastic gurney up here?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “It’s plastic. We just threw it across the floor then had to work out a way to pick it up on this side without getting shocked.” He gestured to the large plastic pole next to him and a thick pair of rubber gloves. As she looked down at them she caught sight of the blood on Jack’s clothes.

“Are you okay?” she asked, instantly worried.

“It’s not mine,” he replied quickly. His jaw was tense with a little tic at the side, as if his muscles were straining. One hand was positioned at the patient’s head and neck, keeping his airway propped open, the other pressed hard against the patient’s side.

Something flickered in her brain. “Wait,” she said quickly as she unfolded her jacket. “I brought one of your wound pads.”

His eyes lit up. “Great. Thanks.” He rolled his eyes. “I left my pack behind when I came in here. We thought he’d just been shocked. I didn’t realize there were other injuries.” She opened the wound pad and held it toward him. He grabbed it and replaced it with the one he’d been using. As he pulled it upward Amber could see that the traditional dressing had virtually disintegrated.

“Let me help,” she said as she moved her position to near the head of the trolley. She pulled an airway from her pocket and worked around Jack, inserting it into the janitor’s mouth. Once she was sure it was safely in position, she placed her hands carefully on either side of the janitor’s head, her fingers covering Jack’s. He looked up and met her gaze.

“You got it?” he asked.

There was something about his words and the expression in his gaze. All the way along she’d felt as if his natural position was to take over everything. To take charge. But now Jack was the one asking for help.