Hands-On Learningdraft 1 Amy washed her hands and stood next to Wendy, reaching for the steel equipment table for a pair of latex gloves. The older nurse ripped open a package of gauze pads and poured some rubbing alcohol into the sterile plastic tray while Amy picked up the plastic tweezers and grabbed a piece of gauze. The intern dipped it into the alcohol and started to carefully clean around the traction and external fixator pins while Wendy took care of the open wound caused by the compound.
The two women worked in silence, focused and meticulous until the work was done and everything was clean and covered once more. Wendy cleared up and Amy threw her gloves in the trash, washing her hands and returning for take a set of vitals.
"I've got to take my lunch break, so I'll leave you to finish up, okay?" Wendy inquired, pulling on her sweater.
"Sure thing," Amy agreed, and the older nurse left, leaving just her and James alone in the room. Amy slowly directed her gaze to the sleeping man. And he did sleep
a lot.
Good, you're annoying when you're awake, Amy scowled, flicking her eyes back to her paperwork, then back to his chest to count his respirations. His eyelids flickered and he muttered something under his breath.
No no, stay asleep. That's fine. Sleeping is good for you.Too late, he was awake, ever-damp and slightly unfocused eyes making their way sluggishly toward her. James swallowed audibly, and Amy could hear every mechanic of his throat working to perform the action step by step. She passed him a glass of water and he reached up for it without thinking, taking it in his hand and going cross-eyed as he tried to aim it at his mouth. Had the man been lying flat the water would have gone up his nose. Being propped to forty-five, it trickled down his face, some of it managing to make it inside his open mouth, but most dribbling off his chin. Amy quickly intervened before he could give himself a bath and properly aligned the cup.
James eagerly emptied the entire glass, hand hovering near hers as if he wanted to operate the cup himself, but knew at least partially that things would not turn out as hoped if he did. He made a satisfied sighing sound as he swallowed the last of the water and blinked drunkenly at her. Amy scowled. "What do you want?"
"What's that?" James pointed roughly in the direction of his leg.
"That is your leg."
Just shut up and go back to sleep. I can certainly help with that if you're having trouble. Amy's fingers twitched, wanting so badly to crank up his drugs so he would be quiet and drift far enough into happy land to disconnect completely from the real world. Then she would not have to converse with him.
"I know
that," James scoffed. "But what's
that?" Still vague, and still pointing roughly in the same direction. The man gave his finger a wave in a shaky circle, trying to explain.
Amy stood up and pointed at the pins inserted either side of his knee and the wires connected to them, a similar system set up in his ankle. The whole thing held his leg up off the bed, the shin horizontal to the floor, and everything under tension. "This?"
"Yeah," James blinked, curious. Remove the drugs from the equation, and Amy had a sinking feeling those eyes would no longer be staring blearily at her with a child-like interest. No, there would be other things swirling in there too. Surprise maybe. Confusion. Pain definitely. Maybe even panic and remorse. Fear. Especially when he was sober enough to
understand just what he was looking at.
"This is called traction," Amy walked back to him and held her fingers right over his face so he could see them. "When a bone gets split all the way through, you have to make sure the two pieces fuse properly. If we didn't use traction to pull back on the pieces, they could slide against each other and heal incorrectly, and your leg would actually get shorter, on top of being incorrectly healed." She demonstrated with her fingers so he could visualize the procedure.
"Aha," James offered slowly. At least he appeared to understand, though Amy wondered if he would remember later. She could very well find herself being asked a lot of questions twice. Maybe even more than that, depending on how much of his drugged adventures he remembered. "What about that other thing?"
Amy backed up and pointed next to the external fixators secured to his thigh and shin. "These?"
"Yeah again."
Amy returned and sat down, pulling a scrap piece of paper from her bag and placing it on the table. "Well, when a bone is in multiple pieces you have to hold all those pieces in the right place," she began, drawing a first diagram and glancing up to make sure he was following. He was, fascinated, yet disconnected from the fact that this was happening to
his leg. Amy continued, unaware that her annoyance was fading into mild and well-contained enthusiasm. She
loved how al this stuff worked, and she
loved when someone else was interested in it too. "Also, when a break is compounded, which means the bone makes an open wound, you can't simply set it and put straight into a cast. The open wound needs to heal first before you can enclose it in a solid contained with no way of checking it, and no air flow."
"Makes sense," James replied, enjoying her drawings.
"You want to see what it looks like?" Amy asked, allowing him to take the drawings from her while she reached for the envelope with all his reports and x-rays in it.
A look of seriousness passed across James' face, and his eyes snapped into focus for a moment as he drained of any colour he'd managed to get back. The paper with the drawings on it trembled in his hand. Very slowly, he shook his head, realised suddenly that those x-rays were
his bones. The vitals machine began to beep faster and faster as his heart started a one-man race fuelled by pure and building panic.
"Okay, I think you should go back to sleep," Amy said quietly, gently taking the paper from him. Rebecca might have burst into sympathetic tears if she were here to look at his face.
I'm not looking forward to when he's sober enough to fully understand the situation, Amy thought as she turned up the medication and watched the effects displayed almost immediately. All expression started to drain from the man's face and his muscles relaxed like a machine powering down. Then he was asleep again, blissfully unaware of his situation. And Amy found herself sliding her drawings in with his reports, then tucking in his blankets before sitting back to do her homework beside his bed.