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“Eric, we just got in a trauma case, please come help me,” says Dr. Jack Alsworth.
“You got it, boss.”
I follow him to a room where there’s a young boy, no older than ten, lying on a stretcher. One of the nurses injects him with what I assume is morphine and his whimpers and cries slowly fade, and he passes out, his dark cheeks stained white with salty tears.
I gasp as I look down at his ankle. It’s facing in an odd direction and the bone is protruding, but hasn’t broken the skin.
“Fuck,” I curse.
Jack gives me a look. He doesn’t allow cursing and honestly, I need to stop. These young ears pick up on everything. These children are learning English and I don’t need to be the one who teaches them the F-word. Thankfully, it’s just American and British adults in here at the moment, along with the patient.
“Fell off his motorbike that he wasn’t supposed to be riding. It landed on top of him after he snapped his ankle in the fall.”
I see large scrapes up and down his leg and some on his forearm where he must have put his arm up to break his fall. Poor kid.
“Set the foot, then we’ll try to cast it,” Jack instructs.
I look at him, incredulous. “You wantmeto set it?”
“Are you not a DPT?” he asks, referring to my doctorate certification of physical therapy.
“I was...” I answer.
“No,” he snaps. “You’re still a doctor. Pieces of paper don’t mean anything, especially over here. Or have you forgotten how to simply reset a bone?”
He’s got a point.
“No, sir. I absolutely have not forgotten. I just thought maybe you wanted to do it.”
He puts both hands on my shoulders and stares at me with intense brown eyes. “No. I want you to do it, Eric, and I’m going to watch. Not that I think you need supervision.”
It warms me to hear he trusts me. He’s been kind of busting my balls since I got here, and I took every whip and lashing because I deserved it. And I still do.
“You got it.”
“He completely out?” I ask the nurse, an older lady with a brown ponytail in dirty blue scrubs holding the needle.
She nods.
“One, two, three,” I say, then I forcefully twist the joint so it’s facing the right way. The boy doesn’t flinch, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I cannot imagine the blinding pain that would have caused if he was conscious.
I feel around the ankle and foot, and all bones seem to be in their place, except I can feel the break in the ankle bone.
“X-ray machine, please.”
The nurse scurries off and comes back wheeling a small, portable X-ray machine. The thing is a piece of shit compared to what we have in Denver, honestly, but beggars can’t be choosers. I set his ankle on the machine and can make out the break. I shove his foot up a few inches so the breaks are lined up and put his foot back on the cot.
Another new doctor is watching, so I say, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Clive,” he replies.
“Clive, hold his foot just like this. Don’t move until I get back.”
“You got it, mate,” he replies in a strong English accent, young and eager.
I help the nurse get plaster and strips of cloth together. She fetches a bowl of water that doesn’t exactly look sterile, but again, I have to take what I can get. It’s just being used to wet the strips anyway.
She fetches iodine and while Clive holds the foot, we slather the boy’s foot in the orange antiseptic and then begin wrapping it up in a crude cast from toe to mid-calf, leaving his toes exposed to allow circulation.
