Returning with the clear bottle of alcohol, she asked, “Are you going to sterilize the wound with it, or give it to him as an anesthetic?”
“Neither, Natasha,” he said as he twisted open the bottle and chugged a significant amount. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, smiled, and then took another long swig before twisting the top back onto the bottle. “I’d give him some as an anesthetic if I were doing major surgery or amputating the limb, just to get him to lie as still as possible, but we’re trying to get the bleeding stopped, and alcohol can thin the blood, making it harder to accomplish that. The vodka was for me, to steady my hands and give me strength, because Lang,” he said, now looking Lang straight in the eye but with an encouraging smile on his face, “this is going to hurt youway more than it’s going to hurt me.”
Peter extracted one of the cloths from the water with the knife from Lang’s pack, and, when it had cooled only a little, he balled up the cloth and applied heavy and direct pressure with the sterilized rag on the wound for five full minutes. This was a bigger chore than one might think, and Lang grimaced from the pain but found the pressure to be soothing in a way that seemed contradictory to him.
After the five minutes was up, Peter released the pressure and gave the wound another five minutes to seep a little so that he didn’t rob the whole arm of necessary blood and oxygen. He then reapplied the pressure with the second rag and returned the first one to the boiling water. The five minutes of pressure seemed like a short time to Natasha, but on the spot and under stress, it seemed like a lifetime to Peter and Lang. She was surprised when Peter removed the pressure this time, and the bleeding had slowed to just a faint trickle.
Natasha viewed the whole scene with amazement, and she was impressed with both Peter’s skill, and Lang’s bravery and calm during the procedure. She watched as the older man went through his pack, pulled out the first aid kit, and withdrew some tweezers and a scalpel and scissors. He sterilized the medical tools from the first aid kit in the boiling water, and when he was ready, he turned to Natasha and said, “Lang did well with the last step, daughter, but we’ll see howmanly he is now!”
Lang grimaced at that, turned the wince into a weak smile, then closed his eyes, and rolled his head back until the back of it pressed against the stone building.
Peter had Natasha hold the flashlight from Lang’s bag, and then he carefully and cautiously removed the dead skin and dying flesh with the scalpel and scissors until he was reasonably certain that the wound was clean and ready to bind up. He then packed the wound with sterile gauze bandages, wrapped it loosely with more gauze from a roll, and then secured it all with medical tape. “You want to keep it fairly loose,” he said. “We definitely don’t want to cut off the blood supply. A wound needs oxygen, blood flow, and as sterile an environment as possible without infection in order to heal.”
“Shouldn’t we sew it closed or cauterize it?” Natasha asked.
“No. That’s almost never a good idea when in the field, at least in my limited and unprofessional opinion. I would only cauterize it if we were on the run and either Lang, or the limb, was probably not going to make it otherwise. That process is really only for sealing veins or arteries when you don’t have time to actually work carefully on the wound. And when you sew it closed, you sew in infection and any dead tissue that we probably missed. Since it doesn’t have a way to exit, the wound can then get infected. Better to leave it open and let the body heal itself. There’ll probably be fluid and pus discharge, and we want that. That’s the body’s way of cleansing and healing the wound. We’ll just keep an eye on it and change the dressing when we can. And listen, Natasha,” Peter saw her trying to catalogue all the steps in her mind, and wanted to help her understand, “there are as many opinions about ditch medical care as there are people who have to do it. Always keep your eyes and ears open. Learn and listen. I’m not a doctor or even a paramedic. I’ve had a few lessons through the years, and I’m just doing what I know. You can always learn to do things better.”
Natasha nodded her head. “What about antibiotics?” she asked.
“Uncle Lev had some Cephalexin and Doxycycline in that first aid kit. Grab the Cephalexin and bring me the equivalent of 500 milligrams. If they are 250 milligram pills, then bring me two.”
“They are 500 milligram capsules, Peter,” Natasha said, bringing the whole bottle to him.
“Just give me one then. We’ll give him two a day for a week and hopefully that will knock out any infection.”
Peter gave the pill to Lang with some water from a water bottle to wash it down. “That’s one of the good things about Warwick—” he paused, not really wanting to say anything good about the town. “Anyway, that was one good thing. We didn’t have to have prescriptions from a doctor to get first aid medications that are non-addictive. In America, they have to outlaw anyone treating themselves because the medical system and pharmaceutical businesses were a lynchpin in the whole economic system. That little bit of corruption was just another finger in the dike of western civilization. The socialists looked at the system and said, ‘See! We’re keeping the economy afloat!’ but look around now and see what their logic has given us. You can float a house on a balloon, but it will pop, and when it does… ahhh, such is the ruin of that house!”
Peter looked at them, to see if they were following his argument. Both of his younger companions seemed more concerned about Lang’s pain and discomfort than his argument. They were unaware that he was trying, precisely, to draw their minds away from the injury by diverting their attention elsewhere. “Ahh, children,” he smiled. “I didn’t tell you I was also a Doctor of Philosophy, did I?” He looked at them and pulled a long face, clowning like a parent does with a child who has scraped a knee, until the two youths finally gave in to his merrymaking.
Lang, who had been stoic and brave throughout his treatment, was the first to smile, even though the process of removing the dead and damaged flesh was to the very limit of what he thought he could handle. He thought about what it would be like to be in one of the gulags during a Siberian winter. It’s strange what the mind locks onto in such moments. He looked at Peter and told him with his eyes that this experience had not been bad at all.
When Peter was done, Lang thanked him for the work. Peter looked at him and said, “Tonight is probably going to be tough for you, little son. You probably won’t sleep because the wound will swell a lot and throb. The shock of the run and the adrenaline from your close escape will wear off, and then the pain will set in. Tomorrow it will hurt a lot, but less so than tonight. If, by tomorrow night, the bleeding has stopped and it looks like healing has begun,” he paused, and winked, “I’ll get you loaded on the vodka so you can have some relief from the pain and get some sleep.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ll need that!” Lang said, laughing.
“That’s what you say now. But tomorrow will be a different story. And if not, then… more for me.” With that, Peter took another swig from the bottle before stowing it away in his bag.
CHAPTER 22
When she awoke in the morning, Veronica D’Arcy sat bolt upright from her sleeping bag on the hard, flat floor and felt around in the dark for her son.
“Stephen!”
Her voice echoed through the smallish chamber and disappeared into a darkened door leading down a narrow concrete corridor. She peered into the darkness, feeling her son’s empty sleeping bag beside her, and called out again, this time with rising emphasis.