Hell Happened by Terry Stenzelbarton, Jordan Stenzelbarton Page A

that girl I didn’t know. Who is she? MacGyver’s illegitimate daughter?” Kellie smiled and Mike snorted.
    “She does look like she knows what she’s doing, though,” Kellie added.
    Placing the stethoscope first on his chest, then his stomach she listened. “Mike, I need you.” He got up and hurried over. She told him in a low voice what she wanted and Mike rolled Tony gently onto his side while Monica placed one of the funnels on several places on his back while listening to the other end. She nodded to Mike and he gently laid him back down flat on the table.
    “His heart is beating strong,” she said. “That’s a good sign.”
    Then she called Jerry and Kellie in to help hold Tony down.
    “I’m going to set this bone while he’s still out of it. We don’t have any anesthesia here and if we did it while he was awake, he’d probably pass out again,” she said. “I’ll eventually need a splint for it when we get it straight, but want to get the swelling down before we put it on.
    “He’s lucky, if you can find any luck about this. I think it’s a simple break and not a compound fracture. Looks like someone stomped on his leg above the ankle. It feels like a simple break and setting it now, even if it is wrong, has got to be better than having it off kilter like it is.
    “Mike, push gently down on his shoulders because this is going to hurt. Yes, I see the bruises, but they are superficial and nothing is broken up there.
    “Kellie, use that towel under his head and hold down on his forehead. He might have a concussion, but there doesn’t appear to be any bones broken in his head. There are two bumps, so be careful.
    “Jerry, lie across his legs and hold him as still as you can. I hope I remember how to do this. Everyone take your place,” she ordered, a quiver in her voice betraying the confidence she had been showing. Mike and Kellie had to work around each other to get in position Jerry just leaned over the prone Tony and held on tight. Tony, not fully unconscious tried to move some, but the three held him still.
    Jerry started to look away from what Monica was going to do before deciding this procedure might be something he’d have to do in the future so didn’t look away.
    He watched as she firmly grasped the foot and the heel, her arms crossed. “Here we go,” she said as she pulled and twisted the foot. He could hear snapping or cracking but when she was finished, the foot was facing straight up, like the other foot and the blue color seemed to be changing to red. Tony moaned and murmured something, but never came fully awake.
    “Good job,” Jerry told her.
    “He’s not out of the woods. I think I set it right, but we don’t have an X-ray machine or an MRI. There might be bone fragments, torn ligaments, any number of things still wrong with that ankle, but at least now it is facing the right way, and it felt like it set.”
    She ran her hand across the top of the foot and felt for a pulse in the ankle. “It feels warmer already and I can feel the pulse better. “For the next 24 hours, let’s put him on the couch with the leg elevated and alternate hot and cold to bring the swelling down. Day after tomorrow the swelling should be down enough and we’ll splint it.”
    “What about the blood he was spitting up?” Jerry asked.
    “Yeah, I heard what you said about that and was worried he had a perforated stomach or some other internal injuries. But when I looked and listened to his chest and belly area it sounded clear. There’s some congestion in his chest, some rasping, but I don’t know what to do about that and think maybe nothing is the best treatment until he comes out of it. He’d been punched in the stomach, but it didn’t look like critical hits...like he was hit, but not real hard.
    “The blood he spit up was from the blood he swallowed when his teeth were knocked out or from his bloody nose. He’s lost two teeth on the left side and it looks like he bit his tongue