The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For Read Free Page B

a bag of fluid ready, and she turned her light onto the cliff-face behind their patient in search of small ledges where they could place the bags.
    They changed places, Kate starting the fluid flowing into Jack’s vein, then setting the bag so it would continue to gravity feed through the tube. And all the time she talked to him—not about how he’d come to have a bullet in his leg, but about what she was doing, and how it would help.
    ‘Once Hamish has you hooked up on that side, we can start pain relief and antibiotics. It’s the infection from your wound that’s making you feel so lousy.’
    ‘Actually,’ Hamish said mildly, ‘getting shot in the first place would make me feel pretty lousy.’
    Jack gave a snort of laughter, and relief flowed through Kate. Surely if he could laugh he’d be OK. But he was very weak and the wound, now she could see it, was a mess. A deeply scored indentation running from halfway down his thigh towards his hip, then disappearing into a puckered, blue-rimmedhole. Dried blood on the bandages suggested it had bled freely—but not freely enough to keep infection at bay.
    Hamish set the second bag of fluid on the ledge behind Jack, then probed through the contents of the backpack.
    ‘I’ll get some antibiotics into you with that fluid, then I want to check your distal pulses and test sensation in your foot and lower leg. Kate, would you watch for renewed bleeding from the wound? We know you’ve been lucky, Jack, in that the bullet didn’t go into your femoral artery. And how do we know that?’
    Hamish had found what he wanted—a small bag of fluid Kate recognised as IV antibiotic medication diluted with saline. He spiked it with an IV administration set, connected it to a second port in the IV line he had running, then placed the small bag on the ledge so the drug could be administered simultaneously with the fluid.
    ‘Because you’d have bled to death by now—that’s how we know the bullet didn’t hit your artery,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But it might have damaged a nerve, which is why I’m going to prick your foot, or the velocity of the bullet might have chipped a bone and sent that as a secondary missile to squeeze against the artery, which is why I’m going to check to see if blood is still flowing in your foot.’
    Kate watched Jack’s face and saw that Hamish’s matter-of-fact approach was just what the young man needed. In fact, he was interested enough to ask, ‘Why does Kate have to watch for bleeding?’
    ‘Good question! Go to the top of the class.’ Hamish smiled at him. ‘Kate has to watch because you’ll have damaged some blood vessels, but smaller veins and capillaries have the ability to close themselves off if that happens. Problem is, once we build up your fluid levels, they might get all excited and open up again—bleeding all over the place.’
    ‘Ouch!’
    Jack jerked his leg, and the bleeding Kate was watching for began right on cue.
    ‘Well, you’ve feeling in your toes and a weak but palpable pulse in your ankle, so I’d say you’ve been a very lucky young man. Unfortunately, that luck’s about to change. I need to clean up that wound and, although I’ll anaesthetise the area around it with a local, it won’t be comfortable. Kate, how about you shift over to Jack’s other side and talk to him while I work? Can you talk and pass instruments and dressings?’
    Kate stared at the man who was taking this situation so calmly, chatting away to Jack as if they were sharing space on a city bus, not a cave at the bottom of a gorge at nightfall, while someone with a gun lurked somewhere in the darkness.
    ‘Well?’
    Hamish smiled at her and she shook her head, then realised he might think she was answering his question.
    ‘Of course I can talk and pass things,’ she said, immediately regretting the assurance when his smile broadened and he threw a conspiratorial wink at Jack.
    ‘I thought so,’ he gloated. ‘Most women can talk and do