Bad Case of Loving You

Whoever the stupid fuck was that decided forty years ago that sliding glass doors were fashionable should fucking well have to come and clean up this sort of mess.

“Turn the music off!” I shouted, and I squatted down beside the young woman, who was kneeling down amidst the shattered glass, blood welling freely from her arm.

Matthew handed me a pair of latex gloves, and I had a vague memory now of there being some beside the bed. “Call an ambulance, tell them it’s a hemorrhage,” I said. I peeled the girl’s hand off her arm, and silence descended on the house.

She was sobbing, quite reasonably in my opinion considering the mess she’d made of the tendons in her arm, and I said, “I’m a doctor. Let me have a look.”

Oh, yeah, great chunks of glass in her arm. I couldn’t apply pressure until the worst of them were out, so I grabbed the bits I could see and pulled them out. Matthew was doing the right thing, gloves on, too, soothing the woman, who was called Heidi, trying to stop her from pulling at her arm. There must have been people standing around, but if they didn’t get in the way, I wasn’t interested in them.

The big shards came out easily enough, and there was fuck all I could do about the smaller bits without some decent supplies, so I took the wadded-up shirt Matthew handed me, and pushed the ragged edges of the wound together as well as I could, then wrapped the shirt around the girl’s arm and clamped my hand over the top. There was blood welling up through the fabric, but I’d be damned if I was going to try do anything as fancy as tie off an artery when there was an ambulance a few minutes away.

“Do you have a medical kit in your car?” Matthew asked me, and I shook my head. Medical kits were for doctors who didn’t get pissed off at them being stolen all the time, not for me.

The losers in the house must have rubbed their mutual brain cells together, because they carried the mattress from the living room over, and we lifted Heidi onto it. This was an improvement. With Heidi lying down, I could get some decent elevation on the arm and have a better chance of slowing the blood loss.

“Have you got an IV catheter kit here?” I asked Matthew, and he nodded and bolted back up the stairs. I’d hoped he would have; like the NGTs it was something he could reasonably be expected to practice on himself. And if I could get a line in ready for the paramedics, it would speed things up for them, and if Heidi lost enough blood that her veins went flat, an existing line could make all the difference…

Matthew was back in a moment, handing me a bundle of equipment. “Take over,” I said. Matthew’s hands clamped over mine, and I slid mine out.

Jesus Christ, we were both awash with blood now.

I ripped the catheter kit open and put it on the bed beside Heidi, who was starting to look a little shocky. Damn, but I didn’t want to be doing this, and I supposed Heidi probably felt the same way, too.

The IV catheter went in first go. That was one of the advantages of general medicine; I’d spent all my training putting IV lines into people with dodgy veins. Kind of like anesthetics, only nobody had ever sued me.

“I don’t suppose you’ve stolen some Ringer’s Lactate and a giving set, too?” I asked Matthew.

He shook his head. “Sorry. No IV fluids at all. We’re actively discouraged from stealing expensive stuff.”

Oh, yeah, that would be me lecturing them about the cost of stock.

Now I had my hands free I checked Heidi over quickly. She was conscious, and looking panicked, so I nodded reassuringly. Pulse was fast and thready, but that could just be the fear and pain, not the blood loss.

I checked her arm where Matthew’s hands were clamped so tightly over my poor green shirt that his knuckles were white. The shirt was soaked through completely and blood was seeping down her arm. Figure a cup in the shirt, another cup on the mattress, and one on the floor. She was going to be running out of blood volume soon.

“How long?” I asked Matthew.

“Four minutes,” he said.

Damn, we had another five or so to wait for an ambulance.

I grabbed the cleanest looking housemate and got him to hold Heidi’s legs up with his hands. Heidi was breathing fast now; hypovolemic shock was a bitch.

We waited. I’d learnt something about detachment during my miserable ER rotation, and there was a certain comfort in finding that it was still there, just waiting for someone to bleed all over me.

I looked at Matthew’s face. He was completely focused on Heidi, and it took me a moment to realise he was counting her respirations. I felt for her pulse in her wrist, and it was there still. Good, she hadn’t lost so much blood pressure that her peripheral pulses were gone.

There were sirens outside. Sirens were good. Then two burly looking men in the St. John’s green uniform were kneeling down beside Heidi.

“I’m a doctor,” I said. “There’s tendon and artery damage, vitals are off. I put an IV catheter in for you.”