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and first-aid kits, but there was less chance of anyone being inside those
cars.
McIntosh wasn't happy about her decision to be on one of the search teams.
He'd wanted her to stay put. But as she'd informed him, she was highly capable
when it came to field medicine.
The car was dark inside.
Annja wanted to use her flashlight, but McIntosh had forbidden their use and
she understood the reasoning. A flashlight would attract sniper fire if their
attackers had only drawn back to a safe range instead of leaving the area
completely.
Nine people were inside the car. All of them were frightened. Thankfully, all
of them spoke French so Annja was able to calm them down and allay their fears
that they were the attackers.
One of the men had a compound fracture of his left leg. With the slight glow
of the moon in the car, Annja could see where the white bone had pushed
through the dark flesh of his thigh. The femur was jagged and uneven. He'd
bled heavily at first, but most of that appeared to have stopped.
McIntosh cursed.
The man's eyes widened and he clutched at the hand of the woman cradling his
head in her lap.
"Stop," Annja told McIntosh, kneeling beside the wounded man.
He was in his early sixties, white-haired and clearly frightened. His eyes
rolled and his breath came in short gasps. The woman who cradled his head in
her lap looked as though she was his wife. Three small children, probably
grandchildren, sat nearby.
"This man is scared enough," Annja went on in a calm voice. She smiled
reassuringly at the man. "If you get upset, he's going to panic."
"If that wound doesn't get closed up, it's going to get infected. This train
isn't the most hygienic environment."
"I know."
"If infection sets in, he could lose that leg."
Annja forced herself to draw a deep breath. She knew that, too.
"Have you ever dealt with an open fracture before?" McIntosh asked.
"No," Annja admitted. "But I know how to handle it. I need a med kit and some
kind of anesthetic."
McIntosh talked briefly over the radio. Within a few minutes, one of the
agents showed up with a medical kit they'd salvaged from the locomotive.
"The engineer and the brakeman are both dead," the agent said. "Took a direct
hit up there. They probably died instantly."
Annja didn't let the news touch her. It was too depressing. So far they knew
of seven people who had died in the attack. One of them had been a child.
You'll grieve later, she told herself. Do what you can for the others now.
She opened the med kit and found ampoules of morphine. In a calm voice, she
told the man that she was going to give him something to take some of the pain
away, and she told him there would be pain involved in her fixing his leg.
Grimly, face ashen in the darkness, the man nodded. "Thank you for everything
you're doing, miss."
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"You're welcome. Now just lie back and try to take it easy." Annja used an
alcohol swab on the inside of his right elbow. She gave him the morphine and
waited.
Gradually, the old man's eyes glazed and his breathing slowed and deepened.
Annja turned to McIntosh. "I can't do this in the dark."
McIntosh sighed. "I know. Give me a hand and we'll cover the windows as best
as we can."
Together, they scrounged for something to use to cover the windows and found
bolts of cloth in one of the cargo cars. They cut the material into squares
with pocketknives and used strapping tape they'd found there to hold the cloth
in place.
By that time, the old man was deeply under the influence of the morphine.
"I'm going to need you to help me do this," Annja said. "If I knew he'd get
medical attention within the next two hours, I'd just immobilize the leg. I'm
going to have to assume that it's going to be longer than that. We've got to
align the break."
"Tell me what to do." McIntosh put his rifle down nearby. Following Annja's
directions, he gripped the man's upper thigh.
The man groaned a little.
"I'm hurting him," McIntosh said.
"It's going to hurt," Annja replied. "If I could put him out, I would."
"You've got more morphine there."
"I could give him too much. I've given him all I think I safely can. Just hold
on to his thigh. When I start realigning the bone, I'm going to pull it back
into the flesh. If that jagged end slips around too much, it could cut the
femoral artery and he'll bleed out in minutes and there's not a thing we can
do about it." Annja looked at McIntosh. "Are you ready?"
He gave a tight nod.
Working carefully, Annja stripped the man's shoe off and gripped his foot by
the heel and by the top. She pulled steadily, ignoring the man's cries of pain
and his wife's plaintive cries to stop what they were doing.
Finally, after a lot of hard work, the broken femur oozed back through the
hole in the flesh with a slight sucking noise and disappeared. Annja kept on
working, feeling the ends of the bone grate together until she judged she had
the best fit possible.
Annja then fashioned a splint for the man's leg using materials she salvaged
from the train.
After she'd finished, the man quietly went to sleep.
"Watch him," she told the woman. "Keep him still. If there's any problem, come
get me."
"Of course," the woman said. "Bless you for all that you have done."
Annja smiled at the woman. "He's going to be fine. You'll just have to take
care of him for a little while after the doctors finish with him."
"Always," the woman said proudly. "I always take care of him."
A few minutes later, Annja stood outside again. The wind felt cool after being
inside the train car. McIntosh put a bottle of water in her hand. She opened
it and drank gratefully.
McIntosh nodded toward the train car. "What you did back there, most
archaeologists don't do that, do they?"
"Not unless they have to take care of someone who's been hurt. Most of us have
taken first aid."
"How many times have you done this?"
"Counting this time?"
McIntosh nodded.
"Once."
Dawn streaked the eastern sky purple and gold. As night swiftly disappeared,
so did some of the fear that had hung over them since the attack.
If it hadn't been for the skull-faced corpses littering the ground, and the
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