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She prayed so, and saw as fierce a hope in his eyes. She wasn’t up to facing such intensity now. She looked away, examined Mikhael’s leg. Her heart thumped. “His leg is swelling. Could he develop compartment syndrome now?” This which would cut off the blood flow and cause gangrene!
He nodded.
Without another word she handed him instruments and he performed a fasciotomy, cutting bone-deep through the thigh separating its compartments, the only way to relieve the build-up of pressure there.
He sighed when he was done. “I’m not happy I added more trauma, increasing risk of infection, but the alternative—”
She shuddered and administered the highest possible dose of antibiotics and tetanus toxoid, then rechecked Mikhael’s leg. Though it looked horrifying, she knew Dante had managed to save it. There would be scarring, but Mikhael would walk on it, probably run again. If they survived this.
She was applying a dressing to the limb when Dante made a strange sound. She raised her eyes, sought his. She didn’t find them. Just blank whites staring back at her. Then his lids slammed shut just before he slumped to the floor.
CHAPTER THREE
“DANTE! Dante!”
A shrill sound slashed through the darkness. Something shook his immovable body. He wanted to make it stop, to leave him alone in the dark. He couldn’t. He had no voice. No muscles. He should be worried, but he wasn’t. Then it wasn’t dark any more, but a painful red burning on the backs of his eyelids.
Suddenly it dimmed and he ventured to open his eyes. He stared into forest-lush green. Eyes. Gulnar’s. That was her name. The woman who belonged in dreams. In abandoned fantasies. What was she doing in this nightmare?
Now she was pouncing on him, stinging him. He heard a protest. His. “Ow. That hurt…”
He remembered snatches of…surgery? A vascular repair, a fasciotomy…Had he finished? Yes—yes, he guessed so. The last thing he recalled was watching dainty hands in surgical gloves wrapping Vaseline gauze around a mutilated limb, then there were flashes of blue and purple and intense, nauseating yellow. Then everything blinked out.
He’d fainted.
She’d been right. He didn’t have enough blood to spare. Pathetic. Just a liter and a half of blood and his system had shut down. They’d forgotten to initiate his fluid replacement, had gotten sidetracked tending to Mikhael. And he’d lectured her about not being of any use to him if she fainted!
Now she was rectifying their oversight. His arm throbbed where she’d shoved the cannula without any finesse this time. She hooked it to the line of the Ringer’s solution bag.
She heaved herself up to her feet to hold the bag up so the fluid would flow—and staggered. She would have fallen if he hadn’t somehow summoned enough strength and co-ordination to get to his feet and catch her.
She was limp, shaking like a leaf. It had to be from starvation and dehydration. Concussion. But what if it was more? What if an artery had ruptured inside her head? What if all that life, all that beauty was being snuffed as he watched, helpless, useless? Like he would watch all those others…
He heard her gasped words from a long, narrowing tunnel of panic. “Stood up too suddenly, got light-headed…”
He tightened his arms around her when she swayed again.
“And postural hypotension is becoming the constrictive type now.”
What?
“You’re cutting off my circulation.”
His frantic gaze swept her incredible face. Was she joking?
She was!
So was she OK? Dared he relax?
Dante pushed Gulnar down beside the emergency bag. “I’m examining you. And you’re getting fluid replacement, too, whether you agree or not.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He couldn’t believe it. She was teasing him. And he wanted to whoop with laughter. He must have snapped. She must have, too, long before him.
He shone a penlight into her eyes. Good. Equal, brisk pupillary reflexes. No cupping of the optic disc, no hazing of the retina. Normal fundus, if a little pale. That had to do with her dehydration. Probably anemic, too. But no brain swelling. Her reflexes were all fine. OK. No detectable sequels to the blow. On to fluid replacement.
