bottom window pane.
Ten seconds later they were in the room.
Niall went straight to the woman beside the bed, leaving Jess to follow. She didn’t follow immediately. Jess took seconds to muzzle the dog and clip a short lead from his collar to the bedpost. She’d given him minimal dosage and she didn’t want him waking.
Finally, she joined Niall.
‘What…?’
‘Trouble,’ Niall said briefly. He’d rolled Ethel Simmons into the recovery position and his hands were moving swiftly over her. ‘We’re dealing with major blood loss, I think.’
‘But…’
Then Jess saw what Niall had found and she drew in her breath in horror.
Ethel’s right hand was a bloody, mangled mess. She’d lost a finger-two, maybe-and the rest of her hand was sliced and crushed.
‘It’s my guess she had her hand on the wall when the chainsaw came through,’ Niall said grimly. ‘If she was yelling at him not to be so stupid-and he shoved the thing through, anyway…’
Niall was searching Ethel’s arm for pressure points. ‘Jess, in the ambulance there’s saline and there’s morphine in my bag. There’s a burn here-look-she got shocked the same as her husband. There must be circuit breakers on the power supply or they’d both be dead.’
‘She’s not…?’
‘There’s still a pulse-faint. No, she’s not dead. Go, Jess…’
Jess went.
Outside, the yard had come alive. The electricity servicemen had arrived and set up huge floodlights to show them what they were dealing with. Jess grabbed what she needed, threw orders for stretcher bearers and returned at a run.
She worked beside Niall in silence, concentrating fiercely on anticipating his needs.
He had the pressure points.
‘Take over here, Jess,’ he ordered in the same clinical tone he’d use for a theatre nurse. ‘Press down here-hard. If the bleeding restarts then you’re not pressing hard enough.’
With Jessie controlling the bleeding, Niall was free for other things. In minutes he had the worst of the bleeding staunched by pressure bandage, a drip set up and morphine administered into Ethel’s limp body.
Still the woman didn’t stir.
How badly had she been electrocuted? It couldn’t have been lethal if she’d moved afterwards.
‘Blood pressure about ninety on fifty.’ Niall swore. ‘And dropping. We’re going to need some plasma fast. I’ll radio ahead to Geraldine to prepare for crossmatching.’
He looked up then, assessing his manpower.
‘OK, let’s move her,’ Niall said swiftly. There were men crowding into the room behind them and he snapped a warning.
‘Watch your feet,’ he told them. ‘Don’t move until you see what you’re standing on. There are two fingers missing-and if they’re intact they might be salvageable. Find some ice in the refrigerator and bring them down to the hospital after us. Jess, I need you to come. Now.’
They shifted Ethel’s slight weight to the stretcher and Jess followed the bearers back into the night As she went she cast a sympathetic glance at the dog.
‘There’s a kennel out the back,’ she told the men remaining. ‘Carry the dog out, tie him up and remove the muzzle before he wakes. Make sure he has plenty of water available. I’ll decide what needs to be done for him in the morning.’
There was nothing more she could do for the dog.
There was only Ethel.
The fingers were unsalvageable.
The men found remains of them spattered onto the chainsaw. They brought them down to the hospital and Niall inspected them in grim silence as Jess and Geraldine prepared Theatre.
‘Non-viable,’ he said bitterly. ‘Damn…’
The surgery was difficult enough, anyway.
Jess gave the anaesthetic-a role she’d learned as the island’s vet One doctor and one vet on the island meant that the only option was to give anaesthetics for each other’s patients in emergencies, despite genetic differences.
‘It’s only learning about one more sort of animal,’ Jess had joked to her cousin the first time she’d been asked to do it-but it was more than that. Human life was infinitely precious-and infinitely complex…
And Ethel was frail at the best of times.
Jess concentrated fiercely on Niall’s instructions as he debrided the wound and tied off slashed blood vessels.
Niall operated as if he was completely at home at the operating table and Jess had the feeling that he was competent to deal with worse dramas than the one he was dealing with here.
He took Jessie’s lack of human experience on board without a murmur, swiftly assessing how much she knew and didn’t know and changing his own role accordingly. His fingers moved swiftly and skilfully-and Jess was sure that she was looking at something other than basic general practice training.
‘I thought you were a GP,’ she said bluntly and Niall smiled.
‘Well, I guess I am,’ he agreed. ‘Or was. But I’m also a surgeon.’
‘I…I see…’
Jess didn’t see at all. There were things about this man that she could only guess at.
She couldn’t guess at them now, though. There was too much else to concentrate on.
To Niall’s and Jessie’s relief Ethel had stirred from unconsciousness briefly before going under anaesthetic-but had welcomed the anaesthetic like a friend.
There was no joy for her in consciousness.
Geraldine crossmatched blood as they worked, leaving Jess as the only assistant. Ethel needed unit after unit of blood.
‘She’s so thin,’ Niall muttered as he operated. ‘There are no reserves. Tell me about her, Jess.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Jess was concentrating totally on the task at hand. She hardly heard the question.
‘What sort of woman are we operating on?’
Jess forced herself to think.
‘A pathetic one,’ she said at last. ‘Barry knocks her round-it’s common knowledge on the island. She doesn’t have enough money for the basic necessities.’ Jess paused as she concentrated on her row of dials and then started again. ‘Barry drinks all the little money he earns-and most of hers. She takes in ironing and does other people’s housework.’
‘There are bruises here not caused by any chainsaw.’
Jess nodded. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘Has anyone talked to her about leaving him?’
‘I have.’ Jess had agonised over intervening the first few times she’d met the haunted, softly spoken woman but had finally decided that she couldn’t ignore Ethel’s cringing every time her husband was mentioned.
‘Last time her dog was vaccinated I had to stitch the dog’s shoulder where Barry had planted a boot-and Ethel had bruises which looked worse.’ Jess shrugged. ‘I didn’t achieve much. It’s a huge thing for Ethel to walk away from her husband. She married him thirty years ago when she was sixteen. Her children have long since left the island because of Barry’s evil temper.’
‘Well, she’s not going to get a lot older if she stays with him, that’s for sure.’ Niall sighed and straightened. ‘Reverse please, Jess.’ He moved position to assist her. ‘I’ve done all I can-but she needs a trip to the mainland.’
‘For plastic surgery?’
‘They can rebuild her thumb. By the look of the wear on her hands she’s left-handed and she’ll be lost without the thumb. With clever grafting they’ll shift a toe-if she agrees.’
