at Lilly as though waiting for her to provide an answer. She stares at the Governorâs ravaged body for another moment.
At last she turns to Bob and says with a newfound air of authority, âBob, gimme a prognosis here.â
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The first twenty-four hours had been anybodyâs guess. Once they brought the Governorâs decimated body back to the infirmary, the main issue was keeping his heart beating, followed closely by stanching the blood loss. Despite the fact that he had a crudely cauterized stump halfway up his right arm at the point of dismembermentâslowing the bleeding from the amputation, which was mercifully clean thanks to the sharpness of the katana swordâthere had been massive bleeding at other wound sites, especially the detached penis. Bob had done a lot of hasty battlefield stitching with the storehouse of dissolving catgut Doc Stevens kept on the shelfâreattaching the severed penis at one point with shaking hands. When he ran out of sutures, he used a needle and thread procured from the general store on Main Street.
The old lessons from the war zone came back to him in waves. He remembered the four stages of hypovolemic shockâbattlefield medics call it the âtennis match,â since the stages of blood loss mimic tennis scoresâ15 percent loss is minor; 15 to 30 percent is serious, resulting in plummeting blood pressure and tachycardia; 30 to 40 percent is life-threatening, bringing on cardiac arrest; and 40 percent plus is deadly.
For hours, the Governor wavered in between stage two and three, and Bob had to resort to CPR twice to keep the manâs heart beating. Luckily, Stevens kept enough electrolytes in the storeroom to maintain the IV drip, and Bob even found half a dozen units of whole blood. He couldnât figure out how to type the Governorâthat was beyond Bobâs skill setâbut he did know enough to get plasma into the man as soon as possible. The transfusions werenât rejected, and after six hours the Governor had stabilized somewhat. Bob even found an old oxygen tank that was half-full, and administered it in dribs and drabs, until the Governor seemed to be holding his own. His breathing steadied and his sinus rhythm returned to normal, he settled into a semi-comatose state.
Later, in the fashion of an insurance investigator piecing together the chronology of a fatal accident, Bob Stookey had drawn crude sketches in a spiral-bound notebook of the instruments of torture left in the Governorâs living room (as well as the assumed points of entry). The puncture wound from the drill was especially problematic, in spite of the fact that it had apparently not severed any major arteries. It had come within two centimeters of a branching vein of the carotid, and Bob had worked for nearly an hour cleaning out the site. He ran out of gauze, ran out of tape, ran out of hydrogen peroxide, ran out of Betadine, and ran out of glucose. Another issue was internal bleedingâthe treatment of which was, again, just out of Bobâs reachâbut by the second day, Bob was convinced that the assault on the Governorâs rectum, as well as the profusion of blunt-instrument trauma to 75 percent of his body, had not resulted in any internal hemorrhaging.
Once the man was stabilized, Bob turned his attention to infection. He knew from front-line experience that infection is the silent partner in most battlefield fatalitiesâthe number one tool of the grim reaper once a soldier is out of immediate dangerâso he rifled through the supplies and ransacked the infirmary cupboards looking for antibiotics. He worried that the Governor was a perfect candidate for sepsisâconsidering all the rusty, filthy, oxidized tools used on himâso Bob used up every last cc of Moxifloxacin in the IV and administered hypodermically the last drops of Netromycin left in Woodbury. By the morning of the third day, the wounds had
Back in the Saddle (v5.0)