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“Mate, we tried,” Dan said. “Me and Santa. We tried to get out and it—it didn’t end well.” He glanced at me, and I knew what he was trying to say. We needed to get back to Santana.
“Joel,” I said gently. “Joel, listen to me, Santana’s hurt. Will you be okay here for a few minutes if I go and see what I can do?”
Joel shook his head uncomprehendingly, but I wasn’t sure if he was really listening to me, or just brokenly trying to refute the reality of what was in front of him.
“Joel, listen, I have to go and try to help Santana,” I said, “but I’ll be back, okay? I will come back, so just stay here, all right?”
“All right,” he whispered, but I had no idea if he was just echoing back my own words, or if he’d really taken in what I’d just said.
“Come on,” I said to Dan. “Show me where she is, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Dan nodded, and I followed him away from the wreckage of Joel’s villa and into the trees.
DAN AND SANTANA’S villa was another hut, like Joel and Romi’s that was buried deep in the trees, but theirs had been luckier. Several trees had come down, including one right across the path, but none had hit it, and the roof was still intact. Whoever had lost the huge chunk of roof that I had seen scudding along the beach this morning, it wasn’t them.
Inside, though, it was a mess. Santana was lying on a pile of pillows against the headboard of the big double bed, her face gray and sweating, and her hair plastered to her forehead. There was blood all over the sheets, and when I arrived, she gave a ghastly rictus smile.
“Hey Doc.”
“I’m not a doctor,” I said, shaking my head, but I could tell she was joking. “Are you okay?”
“Never better, darling,” she said with an effort. “Just this little old… thing.” With a convulsive jerk she pulled back the bloody, wadded sheet covering part of her leg, and I saw that her thigh had been ripped open, a six-inch bloody gaping wound all down the outside.
“Oh Jesus,” I said involuntarily, and Santana gave a sickly grin.
“You’re politer than me. I used the f-word when I saw it. A lot.”
“Oh shit, Santana. This is bad.”
“Right? Lucky me!” She was panting in little shallow gasps.
“What can we do?” Dan asked. He was shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other like an expectant dad in a hospital waiting room, only with a much lower prospect of a happy outcome. “I tried to put pressure on it. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
“You did right,” I said, though in truth I didn’t really have any idea, but I was pretty sure that pressure would be the correct thing in the short-term. Whatever he’d done, it seemed to have stopped the worst of the bleeding. It had slowed to a trickle, but when I knelt at the side of the bed and looked more closely at the wound, I could see dirt and pieces of rust adhering to the sheet, and more stuck to the raw flesh. I pressed my lips together. This was why I had never wanted to be an actual doctor. And now here I was, stuck with pretending to be one.
“Okay.” I was thinking hard. Given it seemed like Santana wasn’t bleeding out, infection control was going to be the next most crucial thing. It was a long time since I’d properly studied microbiology, but I dimly remembered that some forms of sepsis could set in very fast, possibly even before the Over Easy could get back here to rescue us, and definitely before anyone could airlift Santana to a hospital. It was crucial to stop the wound getting infected. Which meant washing—ideally pressure washing, though I didn’t want to do any additional damage—and covering. “Okay, we need to clean this wound. Any idea when you last had a tetanus shot?”
“Did we have one to come here?” Santana asked Dan.
Dan looked blank.
“God, I honestly don’t remember, we got so many jabs. Was that one of the ones on the list?”
I was racking my brain, trying to remember tetanus vaccine protocols, and the lengthy health forms Nico and I had filled out for the show. I had been up to date on everything—one of the less exciting perks of working in a lab is they’re pretty rigorous about requiring employees to be vaccinated against any pathogens they might come into contact within the course of their work. Nico had required a few boosters, and I had a vague recollection tetanus had been one of them.
“I’m fairly sure that tetanus was on there,” I said. “And from what I can remember, tetanus vaccines take effect pretty fast—in fact you can have them postexposure, so you’re probably fine.”
That was one thing off my mind. There was only sepsis left, and without antibiotics, that was in the lap of the gods. I looked around the room, trying to see if what I needed was here. The answer seemed to be no: the small minibar fridge in the corner of the room was empty apart from a bottle of wine, and a stack of what I guessed must be Santana’s spare insulin, in little boxes.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Santana, shutting the fridge. She nodded, but Dan looked alarmed.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to get supplies. Clean water for one, and bandages if they’ve got any.” I had no idea if the bathroom taps were working, but even if they were, bottled water would be safer, and I was fairly sure I remembered seeing some in the staff kitchen. “I’ll be back, I swear.”
And with Dan looking mournfully after me, I ran down the pebbled path and into the forest.
IT TOOK MUCH longer getting to the staff area than it had last night, in spite of the fact that it was now daylight and I could see my way. Partly because I didn’t know the way from this part of the island and kept getting turned around by the layout of the paths, but partly because so many trees were down, and I kept having to stop and scramble over them or force my way through the undergrowth—not easy in just my underwear.
