Feisty Firefighters Bundle Read online

  Their patient was lying on the floor near the back corner of the restaurant, a cushion under her head and two more under her feet. An anxious-looking man was holding her hand and a slim, well-dressed blonde woman had her hand on the other wrist.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Kathryn Mercer. I’m a nurse.’

  ‘Hi.’ Tim’s smile was fleeting. ‘I’m Tim and this is Laura.’

  Laura didn’t acknowledge the introduction. The patient looked shocked. She was pale, sweaty and barely conscious. Thankful that she had grabbed one of the high-concentration oxygen masks from the floor, Laura jammed the tubing onto the cylinder outlet. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Jillian,’ the man beside her answered.

  ‘Jillian, can you hear me? Open your eyes for me.’

  The only response was an incoherent groan.

  ‘No radial pulse,’ Tim reported. ‘Airway’s clear.’

  Laura started connecting up the leads for the life pack. A very shiny pair of black shoes appeared behind her elbow and her gaze flicked up for a second, expecting to see the restaurant manager moving in to watch proceedings. The pair of immaculate, pin-striped grey trousers belonged to a stranger, however.

  ‘Come on, Kathryn. It’s time we left. There’s no need for you to be involved here any longer.’

  Tim looked up swiftly from where he was wrapping the blood-pressure cuff around Jillian’s arm. He ignored the man in the nice suit. ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘Only a couple of minutes. She seemed to come right after I got her to lie down and put her feet up. Then she insisted on sitting up and started to look shocked very quickly. Her radial pulse was palpable until her GCS dropped.’

  Laura was sticking on electrodes. She heard what seemed to be an exasperated sigh as the shiny shoes disappeared. She paused for just a moment to rub a knuckle on her patient’s breastbone. ‘Jillian? Open your eyes.’

  The response to the painful stimulus was another groan and an uncoordinated attempt to push Laura’s hand away, but Jillian’s eyes remained closed.

  ‘I’d put the GCS at 7,’ Laura said to Tim. She looked up at the other people, her gaze taking in both the nurse, who looked to be about her own age, and Jillian’s husband, who was well into his sixties. ‘Any medical history?’ she queried. ‘Does she have a heart condition? Diabetes?’

  ‘She’s got high blood pressure,’ her husband responded. ‘Has done for years. She’s not having a stroke, is she? Oh, God!’ He covered his face with his hands and they could all hear a sob.

  The restaurant manager was almost wringing his hands with anxiety and Laura caught his eye. ‘Could you take care of Jillian’s husband for the moment? It’ll be a few minutes before we’re ready to leave.’

  The manager looked relieved to have a task. He put his arm around the man’s heaving shoulders. ‘Come with me, sir. Let’s get you sitting down just for a minute. Jillian’s in the best hands possible right now.’

  ‘It didn’t look like a stroke.’ Kathryn shook her head. ‘She was quite alert earlier and she didn’t complain of a headache. I didn’t notice any speech difficulties or obvious neurological deficit.’

  Tim released the valve on the sphygmomanometer and the air rushed out of the cuff with a hiss. ‘BP’s 70 over 40,’ he reported grimly. ‘What’s her rhythm like?’

  ‘Sinus,’ Laura said. ‘Seventy beats per minute.’ Oddly normal, in other words.

  ‘I’ll get an IV in.’ Tim reached into the kit for supplies and Laura picked up a penlight torch and lifted Jillian’s eyelids.

  ‘Pupils are equal but both dilated and sluggish.’

  ‘Kathryn.’ The clipped word from somewhere behind Laura was a command for attention, but the blonde woman had her gaze fixed on Tim.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

  ‘You’re a nurse, you said?’

  ‘Yes. I used to work in Emergency, though it’s been a while. I’m just a general practice nurse now. Part time.’

  ‘Could you do a blood sugar for us maybe? That is, if…’ Tim’s raised eyebrow was intended to question the advisability of her staying to help.

  ‘That’s fine.’ Kathryn raised her head only for a moment. ‘Just give me a minute or two, Sean. Please?’

  ‘I’ll get a second IV in,’ Laura decided. ‘She needs fluids, stat. What are you using, a 14 gauge?’

  ‘Yeah. The wider the bore the better right now.’

  Kathryn had opened the BGL kit. She held one of the woman’s fingers, used the lancet to elicit a drop of blood and then deftly collected the tiny sample on the end of the Glucocard. The meter beeped as it started its calculation.

  ‘You’ve done that before.’ Tim glanced up as he secured a luer plug to the IV cannula he’d just inserted.

  ‘It’s one of the few invasive procedures I get to do these days.’ The blonde woman’s smile was wry. ‘I envy you guys.’ The meter beeped again and she picked it up. ‘BGL’s in normal range. It’s 5.6.’

  ‘Good. Thanks for that.’

  Laura was slipping her cannula into place on Jillian’s other arm. ‘Could you draw up an extra flush for me, please, Tim?’

  ‘I could do that,’ Kathryn offered eagerly.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ The irritated snap came from Kathryn’s well-dressed partner. ‘I’ve had about enough, Kathryn. Our dinner has already been ruined and now you’re making a spectacle of yourself, crawling around on the floor. I’m leaving.’ He proved his intention by turning and walking away. ‘If you want to stay and play doctors and nurses that’s fine, but you’ll have to find your own way home.’

  Kathryn bit her lip, hesitated fractionally but then scrambled to her feet. ‘OK, Sean. I’m coming.’ Hurriedly, she reached down to grab an empty syringe packet and a pen. She scribbled down a telephone number.

  ‘Could you…? I mean, would you mind ringing me, please?’ she asked Tim. ‘To let me know how she gets on?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Kathryn turned but walked only a step or two before turning back. ‘What do you think it is?’ she asked quietly. ‘An MI?’

  Tim shook his head. ‘She’s presented with acute abdo pain, rapid deterioration to shock and she’s hypotensive but hasn’t developed a rise in her heart rate. My pick is a dissecting or ruptured aortic aneurysm.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Laura said seconds later as Kathryn vanished through the front door of the restaurant. ‘There’s no palpable femoral pulse on the left side.’

  ‘BP’s coming up.’ Tim pulled the stethoscope from his ears. ‘Let’s see if we need to get some morphine on board and then we’d better load and go.’

  An hour later, Laura was again restocking the resuscitation kit. She removed empty packaging and a full sharps container so she could see what was missing. ‘Amazing how much of a mess we can make, dealing with a medical emergency.’

  ‘Great job, though, wasn’t it?’ Tim sounded happy. ‘And we were right. It was a dissecting aneurysm. I’ll wait till she comes out of Theatre and then ring Kathryn to tell her about it.’

  ‘She’s been lucky,’ Laura said. ‘If she hadn’t been so close to a hospital she would have been in serious trouble.’

  Tim didn’t appear to be listening. He was hunting in his pockets. ‘You didn’t throw that package away, did you? The one with her phone number?’ He tried his shirt pocket and sighed with relief. ‘No, here it is.’

  Laura bit her lip. She had never seen Tim look rattled about something so minor. ‘So you’re going to call her, then?’

  ‘Are you kidding? The woman of my dreams just gave me her phone number and asked me to call her.’

  ‘But, Tim…’ Laura frowned. ‘She wasn’t exactly alone.’

  ‘I don’t think she liked her dinner date any more than anyone else did. What a jerk, complaining about having his meal interrupted because Kathryn’s trying to help someone who’s seriously sick.’

  ‘But…’ Laura cleared her throat. ‘She