‘Not that I know of.’
‘Then let’s start with this. It won’t help with the pain so much as make you not care about it.’ She grabbed a green tube from a tray. ‘Here, take a few sucks. It’ll make you a bit lightheaded, and if you feel sick at all, tell me.’
She held the tube up to his lips, instructing and encouraging, her hand light on his back, a glance at Flynn telling him to be ready if Aaron got dizzy. He knew all about the green whistle. He’d had them a few times in his days of playing footy and through horse riding accidents. Normally they were carried in ambulances, but given they were a forty-five-minute drive from the nearest ambulance station in either Traralgon or Moe, the local doctors carried them as a quick fix for pain relief.
Soon enough, Aaron was looking misty eyed and grinning a bit goofily.
‘Okay, so now I need to look at the shoulder. Flynn, can you help me here? Just hold his arm in place while I remove the sling and his t-shirt.’ She carefully untied the sling and removed the icepack Nat had bound in place. Then she cut off Aaron’s t-shirt, sliding the material away. ‘Definitely a dislocation,’ she said after looking at the squared-off shape of Aaron’s shoulder joint, palpating the front of the joint a little. ‘Good job on the icepack and sling.’
Flynn shrugged. ‘First aid’s important.’
She glanced at him, as if trying to read something in his eyes, but then turned back to her patient. ‘Given the time lapse and the drive here, there’s surprisingly little swelling, so we should be able to put it back in with no problems. He’ll need to take some diazepam first. Given he doesn’t seem to have taken any serious pain medication or anti-inflammatory before, it’s important I ask if there’s any family history of reactions to muscle relaxant medications too.’
‘None that I know of. I’ve had them quite a few times with nothing happening.’
‘Good.’ She paused, leaned closer to him and said quietly, ‘What about your wife?’
‘Dad doesn’t like talking about Mum,’ Aaron said from his position on the bed, swaying a little.
The muscles in his chest tightened at his son’s words. Why did he think that? ‘It’s okay, Aaron.’ He stroked his son’s hair and answered Prita. ‘Not that I know of. Anna was always pretty healthy.’
‘Okay.’ An expression flickered across her face that could have been an apology, or concern, but she turned back to Aaron too quickly for him to figure it out. ‘Well, let’s get some more morphine and some diazepam into him and then we’ll put this shoulder back in place.’
She put in a line, explaining to Flynn and a groggy Aaron what she was doing and why. ‘It’s best to inject intravenously now as it will act immediately, so I’ll put a canula in. It means if they have to give further medication at the hospital later or he needs an operation in case there’s trauma to the joint or ligaments, they can do so easily.’
‘An operation?’
She nodded. ‘Sometimes there can be a compression fracture of the humeral head or a chip fracture of the glenoid fossa—although neither of those will stop us from being able to put it back in place now. I also just need to check his pulse in a few places to make sure there’s no blockage to the arteries.’ She did some further checks, both with her fingers and her stethoscope, asked Aaron to wiggle his fingers and probed the rest of the arm and along the collarbone. ‘It doesn’t look like he’s broken anything, and his pulse is good, but I would like him to go down to the hospital to have a full workup of X-rays just to be sure. He will still need to keep the arm immobilised for 12-16 weeks, but we’ll know more about that once he’s been to the hospital and had the X-rays. He’ll also probably need some physio.’
Flynn nodded, blanching at the idea of trying to keep Aaron inactive for so long. ‘I know the drill.’
‘You’ve dislocated your shoulder before too?’
‘Broken collarbone and dislocated my knee and ankle.’
Her mouth quirked. ‘Let’s hope you don’t follow in your father’s footsteps, hey, Aaron?’
Aaron swayed and said something that was completely unidentifiable as words.
‘I think he’s ready,’ Prita said. ‘Let’s lie him down and try the traction-counter-traction method.’ She grabbed a piece of cloth as Flynn helped Aaron lie down, threaded it under his armpit and handed the ends to Flynn then stood beside the bed and took hold of Aaron’s arm. ‘Now, when I say, pull the sheet towards you. I’ll pull the arm towards me at the same time creating the counter traction. Don’t jerk it or pull too hard—the shoulder wants to achieve reduction, so all we need do is stop the muscle from spasming. As we pull, the muscles should relax and the humeral head will return to its normal position.’
‘Will he feel pain?’ There’d already been too much pain. ‘Maybe he should be completely under for this.’
‘Total anaesthesia should only be used when absolutely necessary. He’ll be fine. Once the joint’s back in place, the pain should decrease dramatically anyway, so it’s best we do this now. You should know this if you’ve suffered dislocations.’
He did, but he also remembered that moment of piercing agony as the joint fell back into place. Then again, he’d done the manly thing, surrounded by his footy mates, and insisted on no pain medication except for the whistle—which in that moment of reduction, hadn’t made a difference to his pain level at all.
‘If you can’t do this, I’ll try another way. It’s just that they can take a little longer.’
‘No. I’m fine.’ He took a deep breath and looked
