Chapter 18 - A lunatic moon: Recovery

"What a fuckin' mess." He muttered under his breath.

He had just traded off with Dr. Joshi not more than fifteen minutes ago and he was already up to his wrists in viscera and gore. Doctor McHarg had been called in to help at four in the morning. Not a big deal, because he was usually up at five and the hospital was only ten minutes away. But he'd had to leave in a hurry without a shower or breakfast. There'd been just enough time as he got dressed for his wife Jessie to make and pour some fresh coffee into a travel mug for him.

"More suction, please. No here, not there."

He indicated with his finger and the nurse removed liquid and debris, exposing the leading edge of the peritoneum he was trying to repair. The boy had been brought in on a life flight with a horrible gut wound. He'd been lucky to have had the luxury of the bright orange helicopter flying him to the trauma center. If he'd been transported by ambulance, he surely would have bled out. At least three of the Ileal arteries had been severed. There'd been some decent clotting, but each time he'd been moved, they'd started bleeding again. Doctor Joshi had done a wonderful job of stopping the bleeds and closing the tears in the intestines.

That was just the tip of the iceberg, though. There was so much fat, it made it difficult to work in there and the kid's abdominal muscles were torn to shit. Quite literally. Since the intestines had been ripped, their contents were now mixed in with all that blood, fat and other debris, like dirt and grass. Yeah...a fuckin' mess.

"This is an animal wound?" He asked, pausing to get some sweat mopped from his forehead.

The nurse replied, "Yes, they said it may have been a wolf and someone else said a wild boar, so we don't know which."

McHarg laughed. "A wild boar! Ha ha, around here? Jesus...never heard of them being this far north and it must've been pretty big to do all this. I know they have pretty sharp tusks, but a boar around here? Huh...definitely not a wolf though."

He returned to the wound, shaking his head. The nurse considered telling him that the police were anxious to speak with their patient, as soon as he regained consciousness, but then decided against it. Doctor McHarg had his hands full at the moment and he was also known to have a bit of a temper, too. Especially in the morning and especially when cops wanted to harass his patients immediately after surgery,

"Who knows?" McHarg said mostly to himself. "Maybe he'll tell us in his own words what happened when he's all stitched up and in recovery."

Then to his head nurse. "I'll not have any cops hounding him, though. Do you understand?"

"Yes, doctor."