Chapter 30 #3
Cat was still breathing. Her leg needed straightening.
The pulse in her neck was still there, bumping weakly.
Straightening was going to hurt her, so it was best to do it while she was unconscious.
It was what First Aid and Safety for Dummies called a closed fracture, which meant the bone wasn’t sticking out of the skin.
So that was good, and that helped me keep moving and thinking, gaining a sort of momentum I could use.
I knew what to do – splints, something to tie them with, and so on – and as I got everything ready, I was also steeling myself for the hard moment of pulling the leg back into place, especially with my wounded hand now feeling like it might be pretty useless again.
And so when that moment came I’d worked out the mechanics of how to do it, and so that too was easier.
I got up on the table straddling Cat’s broken leg, holding the thigh in place with my knees as I leaned forward, took a deep breath and then straightened the horrible angle of her lower leg, pushing towards her foot as I did so, since I needed to try and make a little space for the broken bone-ends not to grind against each other.
I was pleased that my wounded hand was still able to make a strong grip.
I did everything fast as decisively as I could because my brain was back in charge and I realised that doing it hesitantly was more likely to fail at the first attempt and thus cause more pain and maybe more damage.
Feeling the two pieces of bone move under my hands angling against each other where there was no joint made me feel nauseous again.
But the fact Cat was unconscious must have helped because her muscles, normally so taut and wiry were slack, and so not fighting me.
And by the time I’d done my fast and hopefully well-controlled wrench, and Cat bucked against me, and the muscles did clinch and spasm, the thing was done.
Cat made a noise that was half a gasp half a gurgle and then dropped her head back on the tabletop and lay there, tremors of shock making her shake so badly I feared I’d done something very wrong.
I leaped off the table as cleanly as I could without knocking her any more and spun round to look at her face, but she was still unconscious.
I checked her breathing and pulse, my own heart pumping with anxiety, but was relieved to feel life was still coursing through her veins.
I put my ear on her chest and listened to the fast thump and whoosh of her heart.
That was when I noticed that though she was breathing, it was at a sped-up pace, and, more than that there was definitely a sharp crackle in each intake and outflow, like her lungs were stuffed with dried twigs and thorns.
But because I was now in the triaging business, I decided breathing happening and a pulse present was good enough for now, and so decided to quickly see to the babies crying so insistently in the background.
Luckily there was enough goat milk from the day before, so I wheeled them in to the kitchen space and fed them while I watched Cat in case she woke and tried to get off the table and so fell on the concrete and made a terrible day even worse.
It took a while feeding and changing them while continually checking on Cat every time I thought I heard a change in her breathing.
By the time it was done both of the babies were happily in their pen which I had dragged in the kitchen so as to be close to us.
The rain had stopped and I left them to have a closer look at Cat despite a terror of what this might reveal about her injuries.
Her face was no longer pale because the bruising had set in, as had the swelling from the impact of her fall so there was more colour, but it was colour of the wrong kind.
She definitely had a big injury across her upper torso where her ribs on one side were bent into a sharper curve, offset with the other side.
The good news was that if they were broken the bones did not stick out of her skin.
Her chest was already blue and purple with a bruise that spread the whole way across her body.
It was horrid to look at because it seemed to be telling me there was worse damage inside her that I could not see.
The pink stuff was still dribbling out of her mouth which worried me a lot.
But when I looked inside her mouth I could see that she had bitten her tongue as she landed which was probably the cause of that bleeding not – I hoped against hope – the result of some deeper internal injury.
Her breathing was steadyish but still crackly, and though her heart was still beating faster than normal it was a regular beat which I also – desperately – took to be a good thing.
And as I stood back, I looked at her splayed out on the table and the two babies in their pen on the floor beyond I realised I was not going to be able to cope with this by myself.
Not for long anyway.
I was pretty sure that whatever was wrong with Cat was going to need more and more of my time to help her with, which would be less and less time for the babies.
That was when I decided to light the tyres.
It was a decision I had to make by myself because of course Cat was unconscious and couldn’t discuss it with me, and even though I did not really think that Freya and Storm would turn back if they saw a column of black smoke in the sky coming from where they had just fled from, it was still a small chance worth trying for, that they might come back to see what the emergency was.
There was of course the very real possibility that they would think it was Russians signalling to each other, but there was also a slim chance that they might realise it came from the Bunker, and that might prick some conscience or remorse in them that would make them come back to see why we had lit the tyre signal.
Like I said, it was a very thin chance but at that stage I had to try anything.
As I went to where we kept the tyres covered up and dry under a tarp I imagined the conversation I would be having with Cat if she was with me.
I think she would have agreed it was worth trying, but I think she would also have told me to prepare myself for the other chance, which was that Russians might see the smoke signal and think it was meant for them.
It might bring them to our doorstep. And maybe because Cat was not actually with me, I found myself answering that maybe if the Russians did come, and it was the ones we had seen up in Stitch Country, it might not even be a bad thing after all.
I still felt that the one I’d first seen in the tank in the Bear shirt had kind eyes.
It’ll be OK, I said. I mean, I think it’ll be OK. I just didn’t get a bad feeling from them, not like Storm did.
And then I started laughing at myself, crouched in the middle of the old airfield trying to kindle a fire under the signal tyres.
Because who was I talking to and why was I talking?
I think the fact that I might never speak to Cat again nor she to me was making me voluble, wanting to say things out loud rather than just leave them to rattle around inside my head unspoken and unheard.
The bare truth of it was this: I needed help, needed it so badly it was worth taking risks to get it because the cost of not getting it would be too high. It wasn’t a perfect solution but we weren’t living in a perfect world, just the one we had in front of us.
And then it was too late for second thoughts as the tinder took and the fire caught at the crumbling old tyres sent their stink into the sky along with a dark plume of smoke.
I turned my back on it and ran back into the Bunker, trying to make my mind settle and be calm about the uncertainty of what the black pillar in the sky above me might bring.
That afternoon was full. I made a splint for Cat’s leg and lashed it on.
I kept the babies occupied and cleaned and sometime in mid-afternoon I went out and milked the goats, at the same time putting another couple of tyres on the fire.
I then had to deal with the problem of both how and whether to move Cat from the table, which she might fall off, to the bed.
In the end I decided that it was good having Cat at table height rather than low down in a soft bed where it would be hard for me to work on her if I needed to.
So I pulled the mattress from the bed into the kitchen and awkwardly lifted Cat on it as I pulled it on to the tabletop.
It was probably a rash thing to do, but in the end I got it done and she lay there looking bruised, weak and almost terminally asleep beneath her rainbow of bruises.
I pushed the table against a wall so that she was safe on one side from falling and then I went and got some of the wood from the workshop and strapped it on the other side of the table, making a cot out of the tabletop so that she was protected on both sides but I could still get to her to help her.
As I covered her with a blanket I wondered if I was really doing it to keep her warm or just so that I didn’t have to look at the changing colours of her massive bruises.