Under My Care by R.L. Dunn
4
Pete could see Noah crawling to him and Linde. The little girl was whimpering, cold, afraid, and badly burned. Pete’s right arm remained wrapped tightly around her.
“Boston, you okay?” Noah screamed over the wind.
“Get her to the helicopter. I’ll follow.” Pete tried to take a breath and pointed with his right hand, coughing hard. His lungs burned from the smoke, and his ribs screamed from the fall. His left arm dangled uselessly, its fingers tingling and stinging. His left shoulder was dislocated.
Noah cut Linde free from the gauze wrap and ran to the helicopter’s open doors. When Pete didn’t move, two operators slipped their hands under his armpits, dragged, and ran with him. The other men and women jumped inside the helicopters.
Headlights rapidly approached from the distance. “Webb, get us out of here. We got company.” Josh “Hoist” Stone racked his rifle and readied to defend the aircraft. “Go. Go. Go.”
“Chase Care Air Medical One, get airborne,” Mike yelled from the ascending other aircraft. It gained the medical call description once they got Linde onboard.
Webb and Gene fought to get the helicopter into the air. As they rose, bullets ricocheted off the frame.
“Go Chase Care Air Medical One. We will return fire,” Chase Security Bravo One’s co-pilot called.
Webb banked the bird and managed to get out of range. Chase Bravo One fired at the headlights of the first approaching vehicle. A fireball erupted from below as they also made it out of range.
* * *
Parker stomped her feet on the mat in the Guardian Hospital lobby. “The reservation clinic sent us.” She carried her five-year-old, Matilda, in her arms.
A blonde woman in her sixties with cat-framed eyeglasses, standing by the security guard, waved her inside. “C’mon, I’m Estelle; we will get you signed in.”
Parker lay Matilda on a bed that Jacob and Paul had pushed toward them to help. Rowena’s sons were working as orderlies. Estelle called, “Dr. Rowena.”
* * *
Nakoma, the head nurse, stepped inside the curtained room. “What’s going on during this blizzard that you took a chance to come in?” She smiled and said, “Thank you, boys,” as she kindly dismissed them.
“Maddy hasn’t been feeling well. I didn’t want to get stuck at home without antibiotics. The nurse at the reservation clinic said we needed to come here. They said to bring you this.” She handed Nakoma a bubble envelope containing some papers and three tubes of blood.
Nakoma looked at the paperwork. R/O leukemia or lymphoma. She tucked the paperwork back in the envelope. “Let’s get Maddy into a gown and in bed.” She used a forehead thermometer to take her temperature, which registered 102.4. “Have you given her anything for the fever?”
“They did about thirty minutes ago at the clinic,” her mother said. She began undressing her little girl. Multicolored bruises were visible on Matilda’s upper arms and back.
Nakoma chewed her lip. She would alert Rowena there was a little girl with a new cancer diagnosis.
* * *
Pete disregarded the tearing pain racking his chest. In the dimly lit helicopter cabin, he got his first good look at Linde. Her eyes were puffy slits, and moans merged with each breath.
“He hurt Mama.” Her teeth chattered. “Mama…Mama,” she gasped for air.
“Linde, who hurt tu mama?” Noah asked, opening the med bags for Pete and tossing him a pair of nitrile gloves and a stethoscope.
“The man with the mean eyes.” Linde coughed hard, her eyes flew open, and she gagged before she stopped breathing.
“She’s in respiratory arrest. Breathe for her,” Pete directed. Working with only his right hand, he yanked the pediatric bag-valve device from the cabin wall and tossed it to Noah.
“Pete, something’s wrong. I’m getting resistance.” Noah was having trouble getting air into her lungs.”
Linde was coated in black soot, and her airway was swelling. Pete needed to insert a tube to help her breathe before it became impossible, but he needed both hands. It would be difficult for him to intubate her one-handed. The medics on Bravo Team would find it nearly impossible.
“Get her wet clothes off and cover her with blankets.” Pete groaned, “Guys, my left shoulder is dislocated. Len, get behind me with Nick. Pull me back. Joe, Josh, take my wrist and pull my arm as hard as you can straight ahead.”
The men managed to get into position in the bouncing helicopter. “Josh, on your count.”
Josh chewed his lips. “On my count, one, two, three.”
Pete’s eyes closed, and he bit back a cry as his shoulder slipped back into its socket. Panting, he opened and closed his hand and forced his fingers to work. He grabbed the laryngoscope to insert the tube. The minute the scope made contact with her lips, she started to retch and cough again. He used his other fingers to scoop out the mucus and vomit. “Noah, keep trying to get air into her.”
Quickly, he searched her body for access to insert an IV. She was dehydrated from her captivity. There was no easy access in the unburned flesh. “Little one, I’m sorry. Joe, hold her leg still.” He drilled an intraosseous needle into the bone below her knee.
Linde choked again on her tears and cries.
Pete hoped she wouldn’t remember any of this. He ached at the sight of her tearstained cheeks.
The memory of two severely burned little Afghani children assailed him as he worked. Forcing himself to concentrate, he injected a sedative and a paralyzing agent. Attempting to hold his own breath, he guided the tube into Linde’s swelling trachea. Only when he attached the transport ventilator to the tube did he take a deep breath. His efforts ended in his own searing coughing fit.
He examined her as carefully as the back of a helicopter would allow. Her lungs, even with the tube, wheezed from the smoke. Pete hung an IV bag of ketofol to keep her sedated. “What’s our ETA?” he choked out.
A warning alarm blared throughout the helicopter.
“We are in trouble, boys and girls. We’re losing fuel. And the wind is worse than predicted. I can’t get above the mountain,” Webb’s voice deepened.
“Webb, find me a hospital,” Pete growled and choked.
“Raptor, Webb can’t keep us up here.” Noah detailed the helicopter’s situation to the other helo.
The helo bounced up and down, pounded heavily by turbulence. “We’ve got Guardian Hospital, one minute out,” Gene said.
“I think we can make it,” Webb answered.
Pete looked toward the cockpit. More alarms blared. Webb and his co-pilot white-knuckled the controls. Through the window, he could see the second bird registering the severe turbulence too.
“Pete, connecting you to Guardian Hospital. They have a helipad on the east side of the building,” the co-pilot said.
Chase Care had just purchased the tiny, basic facility in the middle of nowhere. Pete hoped they’d be a warm, dry oasis. He had enough medicine and supplies to keep Linde alive for seventy-two hours. “Guardian, this is Chase Care Air Medical One, requesting permission to land.” Pete continued working on the little one with Len’s help, covering her body with dry dressings and another rescue blanket.
“Chase Care Air Medical One, what are you carrying?” a female voice asked.
“I have a four-year-old female, intubated with forty-percent thermal burns. Severe smoke inhalation,” Pete reported. His own breaths now were coming in fast pants.
“Chase Air Medical, we are a Level-IV community hospital. We do not have pediatric care beds.”
“Guardian, we are declaring an air emergency. We are losing fuel, and we cannot stay airborne much longer due to worsening weather,” Webb interrupted the transmission as another alarm blared.
“Chase Care Air Medical One, we will light up the pad,” the voice replied. “Godspeed.”
* * *
“Ma, what’s happening?” Jacob bounced from foot to foot.
“A medical flight is coming in with a little girl. Tayen, set up our trauma room for a pediatric burn patient,” Rowena ordered the nurse.
The snow had begun to pile up against the door. It occurred to her that they called their flight Chase Care. Were they related to the company that just bought the hospital? She didn’t have time to think. A sick child was coming in.
Bagram, we are coming in hot with two burned children. Another memory from the past hit her.
“Mom, can we help?” Paul asked. “It’s really bad outside.”
“Boys, get your coats and grab the shovels. Clear the entrance of snow.” She tucked loose hair behind her ear.
Jacob stood in the doorway, pointing into the sky. “Ma…they’re having trouble. And there are two.” The helicopters bobbed up and down, the engines squealing.
Rowena closed her eyes. “Dear God, let them land.” She stared out into the blizzard. Another storm came to mind. That time it was sand. She remembered a French troop plane dropping down onto a Bagram runway, smashing into a large boulder and bursting into flames. She’d watched as the corpsmen and the PJs ran fearlessly into the flames. They managed to save half of the passengers.
Peter Walter was one of the rescuers. She remembered how happy she was to see him in the mess tent the morning after. Sharing a breakfast of bad coffee and powdered eggs with him was her reward.
* * *
“Chase Security Bravo One, can you do a fly-by? Tell us what we are landing on?” Gene, the medical flight’s co-pilot, asked.
“Negative. Medical One, take the lit circle. I assume that’s the pad. You have the innocent. We will put down in the area next to the pad. We can handle a rough landing,” the pilot of Chase Security Bravo One responded.
“Buckle up tight.” More alarms sounded. The lights inside the helicopter cabin went dark. “Damn it. We are going down. Brace. Brace. Brace,” Gene yelled.
Pete threw himself over Linde.
The helicopter vibrated heavily the lower they got to the ground. “Fifty feet… twenty-five… fifteen… ten… five…” The craft hit the ground hard, bounced up and hit the ground again. The cabin shook in the wind. The second the wheels touched down, the pilots cut the remaining power.
Webb Brett, the pilot, scrambled from his seat to help the team. “Move it. We have leaking fuel.”
The team readied to exit as the second helicopter dropped down. Their landing was heavy and hard too, but they made it safely to the ground.
Parka-coated and wearing hats and gloves, two people from the hospital carried a stretcher to the helipad. Pete disconnected Linde from the onboard machines, switching her to portable equipment. Bravo Team created a gauntlet, lifting her from the helicopter to the hospital stretcher and running her, along with the hospital staff, through the brightly lit lobby and into the tiny emergency department. Guardian Hospital did not defy its description in the purchase agreement. It was as expected: a very small, rural hospital.
As a level-IV center, it guaranteed an ability to regulators to provide advanced trauma life support prior to transferring patients to a higher-level hospital center. They guaranteed the prompt arrival of general surgeons and anesthesiologists. “Prompt” was a relative term. They didn’t guarantee a twenty-four-hour presence. Advanced care was available by helicopter or ground transport, none of which was happening in this storm.
“What are you bringing me?” the female voice from the radio turned to face the group of men and women flanking the stretcher.
Pete’s voice gave little hint of an accent, barely emitting a harsh, raspy whisper from the rear of the pack. “Linde Fuentes is a four-year-old girl, about twenty kilos, victim of violence, forty percent second- and third-degree burns, chest, abdomen, parts of anterior arms and legs. Smoke inhalation. Soot present in nasal and oral airways. Airway secured with a four-point-five ET tube. IO established, right tibial tuberosity. Running ringers’ lactate, two hundred plus fifty ccs per hour. Ketofol drip established at one milligram per minute. Burned areas are grossly cleared of material. Body temp is ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit. Pulse, one hundred fifty and regular. BP, sixty by palpation. She needs an NG tube and Foley. Plus, active warming. We are approximately thirty-two minutes since time of injury.” The report was followed by a wet, coughing fit.
“You’ve had her thirty-two minutes and…” the female voice sounded critical.
Mike moved to face the questioning woman. “He said thirty-two minutes from injury. Our medic just risked his ass going into a burning building, without a mask, mind you. Crawling through fire, finding her, climbing onto a burning roof, grabbing a rope dangled from the helicopter with her in his arms, and flying off said roof to fall fifteen feet to the ground, landing on his side to protect her, because, lady, if you didn’t realize, there’s a hell of a storm happening out there. By the time we got her here, she had only been under direct care for six minutes before we were forced to crash land. So, before you get your panties in a bunch, take care of this kid.” Mike rolled up his sleeves and loosened the zipper to his flight suit collar.
Nursing staff directed the people circling the stretcher to move her into the trauma room. Pete, feeling lightheaded, couldn’t tell if Mike was angrier at the doctor or him for risking his life to go after her. He pulled off his sooty helmet and stepped forward through the pack to see who Mike was yelling at.
Pete’s heart pounded. Rowena Andersen wore a lab coat over a black mock turtleneck and black wool slacks, accentuating a curvaceous body. With warm honey-colored eyes and long ebony hair tied in a braid, she stood face-to-chest with Mike.
Dr. Rowena Andersen’s eyebrows rose as she turned. Hands on her hips, she offered a small smile. “Staff Sergeant Peter Walter, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you walk into mine?”