Read Online Doctor...to Duchess? by Annie O'Neil - Free Book Online

pushed an arm under the portion of the cab pinning Reg to the ground and felt his extremities. “Nothing seems to be blocking blood flow. His legs are still warm. Let’s see what we can do.”
    She nodded and continued to swab away the blood on Reg’s forehead, hoping Oliver didn’t see the slight shake in her hand. He might be used to traumas like this in Africa, but it was Julia’s first. Volunteering at military family clinics hadn’t prepped her for this. The fact there was even a semblance of calm steadying her heart rate made her feel proud. And she was not a little relieved Oliver was there. The man exuded control. He was definitely in his element.
    “Mike.” Julia turned to Reg’s son. “I don’t want you to worry, but we may need to help your father breathe. We think he’s fractured some ribs and it makes it very difficult for him to breathe on his own.”
Or near impossible.
Flail chests led to a decrease in oxygen exchange at the site of the trauma and affected both lungs. Pendulum respiration was no joke. With the same air moving from one lung to the other, hypoxia or respiratory failure weren’t far behind.
    “Can you make a call to emergency services and say we need a helicopter right away? Tell them it’s a flail chest. Got that?” He nodded, pupils wide with stress. She had to keep him focused. “Then can you help Oliver with the ropes, please? You’re going to have to help pull the tractor off when the helicopter arrives.”
    “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”
    “We’re going to do everything we can. Maybe you could start by unhitching the muck spreader?” She knew better than most you couldn’t make promises. Matt had never promised he’d come home safe—he’d only told her that his heart was always with her. She pulled a fresh swab out of her kit and got to work.
    “You’ve got all the bells and whistles.” Oliver nodded toward her kit, rising as he spoke. “You all right on your own for a bit?”
    “Yeah. You two go ahead. I’ll do what I can here.”
    Julia fine-tuned her focus and quickly went to work cleaning the wound on Reg’s head before applying a bandage. Next, she lowered her cheek to his mouth to check on his breathing.
    It was still strained, and Reg remained unresponsive.
    She needed to stabilize his chest wall before they moved him. If it wasn’t secured now, just one misstep and he could die. It was as simple as that.
    She popped her stethoscope on and forced a slow breath through her lips as she established his respiratory rate and pattern. The full minute she timed felt like a century. She checked for neck swelling, swollen veins along his cervical collar and hyper-expansion in his lungs. There didn’t appear to be a pneumothorax but, from the cooling of his skin, things weren’t looking good.
    “Mike, how are we doing on the helicopter?
    Mike appeared around the corner. “They say one can be here in ten minutes.”
    “Brilliant, thanks.” It could’ve been an “I told you so” moment, but Oliver was nowhere to be seen, and smugness wasn’t her style. “How are you holding up?”
    “Muck spreader’s unhitched. Just attaching the tow lines now.”
    Right.
Focus, focus, focus
. The number of things that could go wrong in ten minutes was mind-numbing: cardiac tamponade; pericardiocentesis; to chest drain or not to chest drain? Not to mention all the things they should be considering now that Reg was going to fly to hospital.
    “Right, we’re all hitched up. What do you need me to do?” Oliver’s voice wrapped round her like a warm blanket. Oliver the doctor was a much nicer person to spend time with. He made her believe she could do this.
    “We need to splint up his rib cage before the tractor is raised. Any ideas?”
    “Obs?”
    Julia rattled off what she knew while reaching into her kit for a trauma blanket.
    “Maybe we could use this for splinting. If we can turn him round to the flail side as we wrap him in the blanket, it