Page 17 of Paging Dr. Breakup
Tuli shook his head. “That’s what I said. The trail was clear a few days ago. I was helping out Uncle Leonard by checking traps before the storm, figured I’d speed things up by using the snowmachine. Still not sure how it happened. It was like a bunch of branches had been shaved and set up to face the trail. I had stood up to see over a rise. One of the branches caught me. It was sharp enough to come through my clothes. Probably due to speed. Though I wasn’t speeding! Force plus velocity plus sharp pointy object equals…” He took a shaky breath. “Oh, man. It could have been someone else on that trail. A different injury. Worse.”
Deirdre glanced at Mav, who frowned. She knew that look. He’d make sure law enforcement checked out the accident site after things stabilized here.
She jumped in. “What can I do to help?”
Calvin paused and stared at Tuli, then met her eyes. “He needs emergency surgery.”
She squinted at the ceiling. Monday. “We don’t have our outreach surgeon here today. The CRNA is likely breaking away from an endoscopy case to get over here as soon as possible.” She turned to the unit coordinator to confirm. “OR crew should be in-house for the endoscopy cases, so they can prep an OR.”
The coordinator continued to scribe the trauma timeline while dialing her portable phone.
“An OR for whom?” He grimaced, his gray eyes wry and intense. “None of those things are a surgeon, just surgeon-adjacent.”
“Transfer?” she asked Calvin. Asked the room. Anyone.
Mav piped up from outside the room where he’d parked his gurney, “We could go by ground, but I don’t think that’s wise. Latest weather update says that this storm is set to turn into a blizzard here in the next hour.” He glanced over at Louise, who nodded as she wiped down the bloody EMS gurney. “Skies might clear tomorrow for Fairbanks to fly a fixed wing to our local airfield, but not anytime soon. No chopper today with the wind and snow, obviously.”
“Damn it.” Calvin’s chest rose and fell, slowly. It was a deliberate movement. His voice came out tight, controlled. “Okay. So, we have no transfer ability and no surgeon, but we need both right now.”
Tuli’s head rolled weakly from side to side, but he gave a small laugh. “Yo, people, I might not be a fancy doctor, but I am a first responder. I know what a punctured femoral artery acts like.” His voice shook. “Gotta say, the irony is not lost on me. I did not plan to go out in this kind of blaze of glory.” He glanced toward the glass door where Louise grimly continued to clean equipment.
Amberlyn placed a second large-bore IV and hooked up another bolus liter of IV fluid. “I’m surprised you aren’t livestreaming this on your socials, Tuli.”
“I asked Lou in the ambulance, but she wouldn’t let me,” he whined. “We’d be going viral by now.” He flashed a halfhearted smile, goofy if not for the white-rimmed fear in his eyes. “I like to say that I’ll do anything for likes and follows, but this isn’t what I meant.” He paused. “It was kind of weird getting a callout for myself after my cousin called 911. Glad he was riding in the machine behind me, not in front of me.”
Louise scowled at him as she shrugged out of her blood-soaked EMS jacket and cleaned her blood-spattered face with the skin-safe sanitizing wipes Mav offered her. Neither Louise nor Mav went far. As Yukon Valley district fire chief, Tuli was part of the local first responder team. He was one of their own. One of the community’s own. If he’d been any farther away when the accident occurred, he wouldn’t be alive right now.
Deirdre’s heart thudded double-time.
Calvin looked down at where his hand pressed against the upper leg, then said, “Let’s get two units of blood, stat. How fast can we have a crossmatch?”
The lab tech waiting at the doorway said, “As soon you give me the tubes, I should have crossmatched blood ready in fifteen minutes.”
“Let’s do that,” Calvin said.
Deirdre could only guess at what it took for him to remain this composed.
Amberlyn handed off the requested blood specimen from the rainbow set of vials she had drawn.
Calvin called to the retreating lab tech, “Also send over two units of O negative blood to have at bedside, stat. In case it takes longer than fifteen minutes for crossmatch or we need blood sooner.” He took in another huge breath, his shoulders heaving up and down, like a methodical, centering movement. “What are the latest vitals?”
“Blood pressure one-oh-eight over sixty. Pulse one ten. Oxygen sat ninety-six percent,” Amberlyn responded.
Calvin nodded and glanced at the ceiling. “Someone get, ah, Fairbanks acute care surgery on-call on the phone.” He lifted his hand, and another gush of blood poured out. “Shit. Maverick, tighten that tourniquet again. Looks like I’m going to need a lot of exposure, good lighting, and an extra set of hands.” His grim gaze locked onto Deirdre’s with what felt like an ironclinkof resolute determination.
She swallowed. She had some experience many years ago as an OR nurse. Time to dust off those rusty skills. She shrugged out of her jacket, which she placed on the counter. She took the laceration repair tray Clyde had retrieved, opened it in sterile fashion, placed it on the metal Mayo stand, and waited for Calvin’s next request.
“Which docs are here today?” she asked, eyeing her brother as he retightened the field tourniquet on the upper thigh until Tuli grimaced.
The unit coordinator pulled up information on her tablet. “Dr. Burmeister is doing the case in endoscopy right now. Nurse practitioner in the clinic. Dr. Tipton is in labor and delivery with a patient who is pushing.”
“So, you’re saying there’s lots of help, just not for me.” His mirthless laugh sent a chill down Deirdre’s spine. “We can’t wait for one of them.” Calvin turned to Tuli. “We’re going to take care of you.” As Mav increased the tourniquet tightness, Calvin released the downward pressure from his hands and grunted in what sounded like temporary satisfaction.
“I trust you, Doc,” Tuli’s voice had grown weaker. “You got this.”
“Pull up twenty ccs of lidocaine for local injection,” Calvin said to Clyde.
“Wait, what?” Tuli squawked. “Myatta boydidn’t mean you could try to repair my femoral artery while I’m awake.” He eyed the large syringe. “Are you kidding me?”
