Direct Action

36

Doc Ellsworth leaped over the rocks, his medical pack in hand and Blake Murdock on his heels.

Razor Roselli shouted, “Everybody stay put and keep your eyes open. The Doc don’t need no help. Now sound off!”

“Jaybird.”

“Magic.”

“DeWitt.” And then the same voice. “I’m here with the Professor.”

Murdock found DeWitt applying direct pressure, with his only good hand, to a wound in Higgins’s side.

“I didn’t see any other wounds,” DeWitt said to Doc. And then: “I … I tried to get a battle dressing open, but I couldn’t.”

“You did just fine, sir,” the Doc said soothingly. “Don’t worry, Higgo, we’re under control here.”

Murdock stripped off Higgins’s radio pack, then elevated his legs to force blood back into the upper extremities and prevent shock.

Doc cut away part of Higgins’s jacket so he had room to work. “Okay, sir,” he said to DeWitt. “Take your hand off.”

Doc took a close look at the wound, then inserted a woman’s tampon into the hole. It was a little battlefield medical trick. The tampon absorbed blood and swelled outward, sealing off the wound and effectively stopping the bleeding. The size and shape were perfect for fitting inside wounds.

Higgins was staring into the sky, blinking hard, groaning through gritted teeth, but not saying a word.

Then Doc placed a four-by-seven-inch battle dressing compress over the wound, winding the two long green gauze strips around Higgins’s torso and then tying the ends together over the compress. He checked Higgins for other wounds. Finding none, the Doc listened to Higgins’s chest with his stethoscope and slid on a blood pressure cuff. He gave Higgins a shot of morphine, clipping the empty syrette to his collar to keep track of the dosage. Finally, Doc started an intravenous line and hooked up a clear plastic bag of Lactated Ringer’s solution. DeWitt held the IV bag up.

“No sweat, Higgo,” the Doc said confidently. “You’re going to be fine.”

Higgins nodded. The morphine was starting to kick in.

Doc slid his nylon stretcher underneath Higgins in case they had to move fast. He covered the Professor with a green foil space blanket to keep him warm, and then wrapped the stretcher straps around the whole setup. Then he slipped away to give Murdock the score.

“It doesn’t sound like the fragment’s in the thoracic cavity,” Doc repeated. “Lungs are clear, and thanks to Mister DeWitt he didn’t lose too much blood. He’s stabilized. Other than that, I’m not psychic.”

“I know you’d like to get him out now,” Murdock said. “Can he wait until dark?”

“He’s got to,” Doc replied, putting it as simply and bluntly as a SEAL corpsman could. “If he stays stable, he should be all right. But not too long after dark, okay, sir?”

“Do my best,” said Murdock.