Hired: GP and Wife / The Playboy Doctor's Surprise Proposal by Judy Campbell / Anne Fraser Page A

the mud—it looked as if it would need a tractor to pull it out.
    ‘You won’t get near Hamish,’ said one of the men. ‘Those bloody dogs just keep going for us every time we get near him.’
    ‘I know them only too well,’ said Atholl grimly. ‘They’re called Whisky and Brandy, and, believe me, that’s what you need when you’ve dealt with them…but at least they know me. Let’s see if we can distract them with these biscuits. Have any of you got belts we can use as leads?’
    Two of the men took off belts and Atholl gave the dogs some biscuits to tempt them away from their master, then he edged his way towards the stricken man. Terry swallowed hard, taking in the unpromising situation—a man with an acute myocardial infarction in the middle of a field with rain lashing down, an ambulance stuck up to its axis in thick mud and two mad dogs baring their teeth at them. It couldn’t get much more dramatic than this, surely?
    ‘Terry, follow closely behind me and we’ll take it slowly towards Hamish. I don’t want to upset these dogs more than they already are. Bill, do your best to keep them back from us while I listen to his heart.’
    Hamish was lying on his back, his colour a chalky grey as he laboured to take breaths.
    ‘The pain…’ he gasped, plucking at the neck of his jumper. ‘It…it’s crushing me…’
    Atholl dropped to his knees beside the stricken man. ‘We’re here to help you, Hamish,’ he said calmly. ‘And we’ll give you something for the pain.’
    Both doctors were doing a quick assessment of the man’s situation, noting his pallor and the faint sheen of perspiration on his brow. Terry crouched down and took Hamish’s hand in one of hers, putting her other on his forehead and feeling the clamminess of his skin. He had to be reassured and calmed, to feel he was in safe hands even if he could hardly take in what she was saying. The all-consuming pain across his chest would be like steel bars compressing him, impairing his ability to breathe. She bent down close to his ear.
    ‘You’ll be OK, Hamish. Don’t try and talk.’
    Hamish mumbled something, his frightened eyes staring at her, although somewhere in the back of his mind and through the crushing pain was the comforting feeling of Terry’s hand holding his. She watched as Atholl pulled up Hamish’s shabby jumper to listen to his labouring heart through his stethoscope, and laid two fingers on the side of his neck. Atholl’s eyes met hers and he shook his head slightly as he heard the heart giving off the irregular thudding of ventricular fibrillation as the lower chambers of the heart contracted rapidly out of beat.
    ‘Get the oxygen from the ambulance,’ he shouted to the paramedics through the heavy rain and the frantic barking of the two dogs trying to get round the men fending them off the patient.
    Two men staggered over with an oxygen cylinder, slipping and sliding in the mud, and Terry took the attached mask and placed it over the man’s face. She watched Atholl slip the cover from a syringe he’d taken from his bag.
    ‘I’m giving him ten thousand units of heparin split into two doses,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to give it to him all at once and start a massive bleed. We also need some Xylocard. It’s in the pack—can you get it into him?’
    ‘Yup,’ said Terry. ‘Four mils, OK?’ She pulled the syringe from the pack, checking it was the right one, then pushed the needle firmly into Hamish’s upper arm muscle, giving him the full dose of the local anaesthetic.
    ‘Let’s hope that does the trick,’ muttered Atholl.
    Sounding more confident than she felt, Terry said reassuringly, ‘Xylocard’s very effective in settling an unstable heart rhythm.’
    Although Hamish Stoddard probably didn’t realise it at the moment, he was one lucky patient, she thought. Atholl had obviously had great experience with cardiac attacks. She watched his expression as he listened intently to the man’s chest