Page 26 of Saving Veronica
They all stopped when they saw the man lying in the bed. The Pennyworths on the far side and the Larsons on the other. Finn tried to swallow, but his mouth was dryer than the desert he’d spent the last three years in. When he felt a straw at his lips, he sucked greedily. “Thanks,” he croaked out.
“You’re welcome, Son,” William said, and smiled when Finn’s eyes popped open.
“Dad.” He looked around and saw the others. “Grandpa. Maggie, Gerald. When did you get here?”
“Five minutes ago. What the hell happened?” William said, and looked over his son from head to toe. He sucked in his breath when he saw that his left ankle was encased in plaster. “You broke your leg?”
“What?” Gerald asked in shock and looked at his legs.
“Ankle.”
“How? Why didn’t you tell me when we saw you at the ravine?” Gerald frowned harder.
“Because, I didn’t break it until we were on the way up.” He tried to sit up and it was William and Gerald that helped him. “After Major found where she went into the ravine, I started down and slipped on the way down and twisted it. I slipped at the same spot on the way up. It was on the afterbirth. You know how dark and wet it was there, couldn’t really see it.”
“God, I’m so sorry,” Gerald said, and he sat in the chair beside the bed, and put his head in his hands. After several minutes he looked up with an anguished expression, and asked, “Can you tell us exactly what’s wrong with Ronnie? You didn’t get a chance to tell me in the ravine, and Maggie tried to tell me on the way here, based on what the sheriff told her from you telling him.”
“Breathe, General,” Finn said, when he saw the older man getting upset. “When Major and I found her, she was at the bottom of the ravine, lying on her right side and both legs from the knees down were in the running water. She wore only her boots, jeans and a tee-shirt. And a red down vest.”
“What was her core temp?”
“Eighty. The first thing I did was get her on a back board and out of the water. I assessed her starting at her head on the left side. I only found lacerations on her forearm.” He lifted his own to show them where.
“Defensive wounds?” Maggie frowned at him. “From what?”
Finn looked at Gerald, and at his nod he drew in a deep breath and took one of her hands in his. “Twenty feet from Ronnie was a dead cat. A knife stuck out of its eye socket.”
“Oh god, was she mauled by it?”
“Yes, and no. I’m not being evasive, she had scratches on her left arm and the outer right thigh. But, remember I said I found her on her right side. There was no other damage to the left side except for the scratches on her forearm. I’m thinking she lay there and the cat tried to get her and she knifed it.”
“Makes sense.” Maggie and Gerald looked at each other and nodded.
“How do you figure?”
“Ronnie’s left-handed. The left side is her dominant side.”
“Okay then,” Finn said, and told Ronnie’s grandparents everything he had found down in that ravine. As he talked, he swore Gerald aged before his eyes. It impressed him that neither one of them broke down once. He figured it would probably happen when they were alone together, but for now, they were holding up well.
“So, she only has broken bones?” Gerald asked, and hugged Maggie to him.
“Yes, but they’re severe,” came a voice from behind them, and they all looked up to see three doctors standing there. They introduced themselves and it surprised Gerald and Maggie when Eric and William grabbed one of the doctors and encased him in a hug and thumped his back.
“Did you work on Finn, or Ronnie?” William asked.
“Ronnie,” Patch said, and everyone looked up, and smiled when Major walked in the room ahead of a nurse. He jumped on Finn’s bed and settled beside him, heaving a huge sigh. “Need me to take him out?” Eric asked.
“I just did. He was a big help. We had a child having a rough night, and Major helped calm him down, so he could fall asleep. If you ever need someone to watch him, bring him back here and the kids will take care of him.” The nurse petted Major, then quickly left.
“So, how’s Ronnie?” Finn asked
“Good. She’s in ICU. Her surgeries were successful. Several of us worked on her at once. Plastics, that’s plastic surgery, closed the laceration in her head. She ended up with thirty-two stitches. The lacerations on her arm and thigh were too deep and wide to stitch, so they gave her skin grafts, with donor skin.”
“I’m Dr. Benton, and I’m the lead Orthopedic Surgeon. My team and I were able to put her leg back together, but couldn’t cast it.” He pointed to Finn’s leg. “The damage was severe enough that we put it back together with pins and plates. She has pins sticking out of her leg and it’s connected with a bar.”
Dr. Benton stepped up to Finn, and grinned when he lowered his gown to expose his muscular chest. “Sorry, but I’m going to use Finn here as a demonstration. When we put Ronnie on the table, the first thing that stood out was a horseshoe-shaped bruise here.” He traced the spot on Finn’s right pectoral muscle. “Tests and scans indicated that it missed her heart, but it was high enough to cause her collar bone to break. Until she wakes and we can ask her, we won’t know if it caused the damage to her shoulder, or if she landed on it. Because of her broken forearm, shoulder and collar bone, I had to snug them all up.” He took Finn’s right arm and put it across his sternum. “I didn’t want to put pressure on her shoulder and collarbone from the weight of the cast for her arm, so I combined them. With her arm in this position, I encased her whole upper chest in plaster.” He used his hands and indicated on Finn how he’d done it.
“What about her ribs?” Finn asked.
