The Wife He's Been Waiting For. Dianne DrakeЧитать онлайн книгу.
transportation, but the thirty or so people squeezed into a space that should have accommodated twenty or so didn’t mind the inconvenience. In fact, they all got rather chummy as the bus bumped its way through town, stopping at various street corners, letting people out, then letting other people back on.
From her rear seat which she shared with a plump woman named Mimmie and her chubby son who answered to the name Delroy, Sarah stared through the bus window at tourists scurrying into the various shops, some on the tourist map, some not. They were lining up at the doors of all the recommended cafés, happy to queue simply to have a taste of the local food, and flock into the Straw Market for the best of the best souvenirs. After fifteen minutes of being pinched against the side of the jitney, though, with Delroy smearing his sticky red lollipop up and down her arm, Sarah decided it was time to get off and find something better to do. Maybe take a walk through the botanical gardens.
So, at the next stop, she managed to squeeze her way past Mimmie and force herself through the standing passengers until she was down the aisle and out the door. Mimmie followed right behind her, though, with Delroy, who made sure his lollipop came into contact with the back of Sarah’s white shorts at least five times. But once they were on the sidewalk, and Sarah was sure Delroy’s candy was not attached to her shorts, she started to head down a side street, paying more attention to a street map than she was to her surroundings. Behind her, when she heard the sound of the jitney rev its clanking engine, she assumed it to be off on its route, but all of a sudden the sound of a horn, followed by screams of hysterical men and women, split the air.
Her maps slipped from her fingers and slid to the ground as Sarah spun around.
What was going on? It was hard to tell from where she was, but multitudes of people were running to surround the jitney, and those on the bus were scurrying to get off. And Mimmie…Sarah caught a glimpse of the woman trying to shove her way through the crowd, screaming at them, crying, pounding people aside with her fists.
Warning hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck prickled and she immediately broke into a run, pushing herself past even more people crowding in to see whatever was happening. When she reached the jitney, she was still at the rear of the congested knot, but even from there she heard someone shouting about the little boy. Then a blood-curdling scream pierced the noise of the crowd. “Delroy!”
“Let me through!” Sarah cried. “I’m a doctor.”
Some people moved for her, others didn’t. “Let me through,” she cried again. “I have to get through. I’m a doctor!”
All of a sudden, the crowd stepped aside for her, almost creating a corridor that led her straight to the front of the bus where Delroy laid sprawled, unconscious, most of the way under the bus, with only his toes sticking out. His mother was on her knees at his side, wailing, pulling on him, trying to get him free.
“Don’t,” Sarah warned her. But Mimmie was so frightened she was comprehending nothing but her son’s dire injury. “Don’t move him,” Sarah said anyway. Once she’d dropped to her knees she immediately checked Delroy for a pulse. A quick press to the femoral artery in his groin, which was the only pulse point she could reach without actually crawling under the bus, did reveal a pulse, but not a good one. It was thready, cutting in and out like his heart was deciding whether it wanted to keep beating or quit. “He’s alive,” she told Mimmie, who was still tugging on Delroy’s arm.
She had to get the woman to stop. “Somebody, please, don’t let his mother move him,” she called to the crowd. “I need help here. I need someone to hold his mother back.” With that, two women jumped forward and wrapped arms around Mimmie, forcibly pulling her away from her son. She struggled for a moment then, with big tears rolling down her cheeks, looked pleadingly at Sarah. “Please, please, help him!”
“He’s alive,” she told the woman. “But he can’t be moved.”
“He must come out from under the bus.”
“No, he has to stay where he is.” There was no time to explain, no time to waste trying to calm a tortured mother when the pulse she was feeling under her fingertips was fluttering even more tentatively now. “I need an ambulance,” she cried to the crowd, not sure what the procedure was in Nassau. Then she bent down, pressed her cheek to the black pavement to see what she could of the little boy.
Nothing was trapped under the bus tire. That was good. But he was pressed very close to it, just inches away, with his shirt actually caught under the tire, and nothing about him was moving. That was bad. Head injury, perhaps? At the very least, internal damage. And here she was without a medical kit. This was the first time she’d regretted that since she’d left her practice. Funny thing was, it was still intact, still packed with all the necessities, sitting just inside her apartment ready to go, like it had always known she’d back for it someday.
Today was that day! And now she had to get closer, had to have a look before anybody touched the child or moved him. So, without another thought, Sarah got down on her belly and inched her way slowly along the pavement under the bus, trying all the while to forget that she’d been claustrophobic lately. Her hands were shaking, her head going light…all the classic signs of a panic attack coming on. Except she couldn’t do that. Had to get control. Had to save a life.
Breathe, Sarah.
She inched even farther in, stopping every second or two, taking a look at what she could see from her angle, feeling for a pulse point, running her fingers lightly over the boy’s body for an assessment.
You’re the doctor. This child needs you. She couldn’t let him down. Wouldn’t.
As she moved her way alongside his limp body, she saw that Delroy still clutched the red lollipop in his hand, and that caused a hard lump to form in her throat. “We’re going to get you out of here, Delroy,” she said to the boy, even though he wasn’t conscious. “Then take you to a hospital, where they’ll give you a brand-new lollipop. Is red your favorite color? I like green.” She felt stickiness over his abdomen, and was sure it wasn’t from his lollipop. Hopefully, it was only blood from a cut, and nothing significant.
His breathing was shallow and rapid, and her own breaths were fighting against her, trying to go shallow and rapid, too.
Don’t quit now, Sarah. You can do this. “When my mother used to buy a bag of lollipops, my sister and I always fought over who got the red ones, even though I really wanted the green ones. But because Annie wanted the red, so did I. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Delroy?”
She was nearly at his shoulder now, sickened by the twist of his right arm. It was a bad break, easy to diagnose even from her awkward position. Not a compound fracture, though, thank God. No broken skin, no bone sticking out. But it would require surgery. She couldn’t even imagine how many bones had been crushed in his little arm, and there was no way to tell. “Looks like you’re going to have to use your left hand for your lollipops for a while,” she said, doing a second check of his arm just to make sure she hadn’t missed an area where the bone might have been protruding. Under here, in the dark, it was hard to tell, but her second check confirmed her first impression.
Pulling herself a little closer to Delroy, Sarah reached across his body, trying as best as she could to make an assessment of other injuries, but it was difficult, given that she was so far away and still in such an awkward position. She decided that once she reached his head she’d try to get over to the other side to do the same exam as she’d done on the right side.
“Pupils?” someone called from behind her. Somewhere not under the bus.
“Haven’t assessed them yet. Don’t have a light.” The voice was familiar, but it was hard to tell through the noise of the crowd.
“It’s on its way,” the man shouted. At that moment a small flashlight was thrust, with some force, under the bus, and she grabbed it, grateful that a medic had finally arrived on the scene. Now, if only she had enough room to push herself up to her knees for this. But she didn’t. This was an exam she had to do either on her belly or her side.
“Are