Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 191: Gun Shot Wound

Chapter 191: Gun Shot Wound

I handed the bag to Cheng Bo Jing, trusting that he would be able to help me.

"Are you injured?" I asked quickly as we walked toward the first patient lying on the ground. I cringed at the sight, but there was little to be done about it.

"Yes, but nothing that can’t wait until we get home," he replied, and I appreciated his honesty. I didn’t want him passing out from blood loss while I was dealing with another patient, but I wasn’t willing to risk my secret being exposed, either.

Nodding that I heard him, I went onto my knees beside the man. "Hello, my name is Doctor Wang Tian Mu. Can you tell me where it hurts?" I asked.

If I had just taken off my gloves and touched him, I would have been able to know exactly what was wrong with him, but I still hesitated. I was not ready for that.

And that was fine.

"Bullet to rib," he grunted. I looked down at his left side and saw his shirt saturated with blood.

"So it appears," I chuckled, the smile and bedside manner engrained in me coming out in full force. "I am going to have to take off your shirt to see that wound. Is that okay?"

"Just don’t tell my wife," he chuckled back before wincing in pain.

But that was a good sign. He was able to carry on a conversation, and blood wasn’t bubbling out of his mouth. If it were, then we were looking at a punctured lung, and that wasn’t something I could treat out here.

Cheng Bo Jing opened my backpack and looked at me expectantly as he waited for my instructions.

Gently pulling the shirt up and away from the wound, I rolled the man over on his side. Seeing the giant exit wound, I breathed yet another sigh of relief. For someone on the ’critical’ side of the triage, it was good to see that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

"You are a very lucky man," I assured him as I looked over my shoulder. "0.1 mg of morphine."

"0.1 mg morphine, understood," repeated Cheng Bo Jing as he measured out the correct dosage for an adult before handing me the needle.

"This will take the edge off. Then I am going to put a topical freeze on your skin as I clean out the wound and then stitch it up," I explained to the man as I plunged the needle into his arm. Back in the ER, I found that patients responded better when they knew what was happening and why.

"I am going to need you to stay on your side, just so we don’t get any more dirt in the exit wound," I continued. I looked up to see Fan Teng Fei standing over us. "Can you hold him still? Even if he can’t feel the pain, it doesn’t mean that he won’t react."

The other man nodded and went down on his knees, holding the patient still.

"You are an angel," sighed the man as the morphine kicked in. "If I wasn’t happily married for the last fifteen years, I would ask you to marry me."

"You would be surprised at the number of proposals I have gotten over the past few years," I joked with him as Cheng Bo Jing passed me the 5% Lidocaine cream. Morphine always got the patients talking... and proposing.

"No, you really are an angel. We are so lucky to be in a city with both an Angel and a Princess," he continued, his words starting to slur just a bit.

I hummed in agreement as I applied the cream and waited the appropriate length of time to make sure that it had started to work.

"A lot of men propose to you?" asked Fan Teng Fei as he looked down at the man lying between us. I wished that I could put in an IV, but with limited supplies, there was no way I could. Hopefully, the man hadn’t lost so much blood that it became an issue.

"Yeah," I grunted, poking at the skin around the entrance wound. When he didn’t so much as twitch, I held out my hand to Cheng Bo Jing.

He passed me the bottle of saline solution, and I poured it into the wound. Alcohol would have worked in an emergency, but it also would have damaged the wound itself and dried it out.

However, anything that you had on hand that killed germs would work in a pinch. A nasty scar from improper treatment was much better than a missing limb or death due to gangrene.

"The only times it creeped me out was when I was underage. I have nothing against age-gap romances... as long as both sides are legal," I joked, not looking up at either man.

Satisfied that I had cleaned out the wound pretty well, I once again held out my hand to Cheng Bo Jing.

Knowing what I needed, he placed the suture kit in front of me. It had been one of the many ones I had practiced on, but it had everything that I needed inside a small little carrying case. Picking up one of the needles, I threaded it and went back to work on the man.

This would not have been acceptable in the ER; I wasn’t doing half of the things that I should have done, but out here on the field, it was good enough.

I quickly stitched him up and applied a bandage to the wound before I took a look at his back.

The saline had dripped all the way through the wound, and I was confident that the interior was as clean as I could get it, but I wanted to make sure the outside was tended to.

"Is there a blanket or something in there?" I asked as I thought about how to deal with this latest problem. I needed him on his stomach, but I didn’t want to have him on his stomach in the dirt. It would defeat the whole point of disinfecting everything.

Not to mention, he should not be putting any weight on the wounds.

But I needed him on his stomach to be able to see and work on his back.

"I can hold him," offered Fan Teng Fei, not balking at all about having to hold a stranger. I knew he didn’t like to touch people, so his offer meant even more to me.

"Thank you," I said again.

He only nodded his head and pulled the patient closer to him, letting me get a better look at the exit wound.