The next milestone was first aid. Or, to be exact, Advanced Emergency First Aid. Important for everyone, of course, but especially for one who expected to soon be in an unfamiliar gravitational field.
And this course, too, went beyond mere whiteboard instruction.
“As you arrived this evening,” announced Margaret Burch, RN, MS, NP, while striding among her students in the large conference room where the course was held, “half of you received one of these.” She held up a sealed envelope. “If you are in this group, then you are, for the purpose of this exercise, a victim.”
Across the room, forty eyes widened.
She continued. “Now victims: Upon my instruction you will open the envelope. You will discover what injury or illness has befallen you. And then, to the best of your ability, you will act it out. While the rest of you . . .”
It was the turn of the other forty eyes to widen.
“You are the rescuers. You will take one of the Red Cross cases you have been provided. You will find an unattended victim. You will make a diagnosis. And then, using all that you have learned during the past eleven weeks, you will administer Advanced Emergency First Aid.
“Any questions? No? Very well. You may be certain that you will not have enough time for this exercise, and that any tomfoolery will result in the tomfool being ejected from this room and this course. Proceed.”
Rapidly, two sounds followed each other. First the sound of ripping paper, then the sound of cries and moans, all blending into a stricken chorus.
By Burch’s feet a young professional clutched her arm, grimacing desperately, while beside her a man in khakis did his best imitation of a grand mal epileptic seizure.
The acting was amateurish, of course. But as always, it worked, being just realistic enough to jolt the rescuers into a sense of crisis, while convincing a few of them, for the good of everyone, that they weren’t quite suited to Advanced Emergency First Aid.
Not that there were many of those in this group, noted the instructor approvingly. True, by the door, an accountant did seem to be backing away from a lively case of gastroenteritis. But apart from him . . . no, wait, at the back, that tubby fellow—the one with the round face and the sandals—what was he up to?
He was pinned, after a fashion. For some reason he had lain down, laid a chair over his right leg, and was now pretending he couldn’t get out from under it. Pretending very loudly, in fact. Moaning and groaning while declaring—what? What was he saying? That he was an endothermic vertebrate? That he required a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere? True enough, but why announce it? And why the hell was he wasting all that gauze, wrapping an entire roll around his thigh just above the toppled chair?
Yet so engrossed was he in this behavior that he didn’t see her until she was right over him.
And when at last he did, how did he react? He smiled.
It was a brave smile—resolute, unconquerable. The heroic grin of someone able, even in the teeth of monstrous pain, to greet someone else politely and good-naturedly.
“Nice of you to come by, Ms. Burch,” he said, between pants. “I was kind of hoping you would, since, as you see, I’m in a bit of a jam.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “You are giving up any prospect you might have had of becoming certified in Advanced Emergency First Aid.”
He nodded as if that didn't surprise him.
“It’s the knowledge I need,” he said. “As for the credential, well, where I’m going I doubt they'll care if—” And he might have said more, except that a bolt of apparent agony shot through him, making further speech impossible.
For a moment, anyway. Then he was talking again.
“Losing strength . . . gotta tie it . . . advise me, please, I have to know how to do this.”
“Tie? Tie what? What are you going to tie?”
“My leg.”
“Why?”
“So I can saw it off.”
The words hit her like a swinging weight.
“Unfortunately, this sort of situation is far from unheard of,” he gasped. “Particularly among explorers who . . . injured . . . alone . . . may have no choice but to . . .”
And as he spoke, she noticed a scalpel from one of the Red Cross cases, lying all shiny and ready beside the pinioned leg.
Urgently she tried to recall her psych courses from years before. But all she could remember was the word affect, pronounced with the accent on the first syllable. Yes, that’s what she needed: the right AFFect.
“You’re going to be all right, Mr., uh, Michelin, isn’t it?” she said, kneeling beside him, struggling out of anger.
“ShmishkissMarshallShmishkiss,” he said.
“Yes, I know it hurts, Mr. Michelin,” she said. “But believe me, I’m familiar with this sort of predicament and can tell you, you’ll be all right if only . . .”
If only what? Fortunately, another tidbit of the old training came bubbling up.
“If only you’d share a few details about how you arrived at this critical juncture.”
He nodded.
“What I want to understand,” she continued, “is why you have subjected yourself to this dreadful accident, which, as you know, I did not assign and may even require, as we observe, a life-threatening above-the-knee amputation.”
He pursed his lips and considered. “Well you see, Ms. Burch, the reason I’m taking this course is that I have to learn to do things myself. Which means everything. Even the most horrible things.” He looked worriedly at the chair.
“But why? Why do you assume that nobody would care enough to come to your aid and”—she too observed the chair—“and, well, lift it off? Whatever it is.”
“Not care?” he said. “Of course they would care. They would probably care at a level that you and I can barely fathom. But what then? When they removed the boulder. Or the rubble from the explosion. What could even they do if they’d never seen a human leg before? Or a mammalian one? Or one that didn’t grow back?”
He scanned her face for understanding. She scanned the classroom in alarm.
For by now it had grown extremely quiet, with everyone ignoring their assignments and attending only to the scene playing out between her and this . . . this individual almost certainly on the brink of self-harm.
But Margaret Burch had not spent thirty years dealing with every sort of crisis to accept such a prospect. There was, she was certain, something she could say, something consistent with this person’s fantasy world, that would defuse him. And darn certain she was going to find it.
Aha!
Once again she forced herself into empathy.
“Now, Mr. Michelin—”
“ShmishkissMarshallShmishkiss,” he said.
“Yes, I know it hurts, Mr. Michelin. But don’t you see? You have already shown that you can handle this situation. And quite brilliantly too, I might add.”
“I have?”
“Yes, of course. By, uh, tying off your femoral artery exactly, uh, two centimeters above the patella, you have done all that was required.”
“Except for cutting off the leg, of course.”
“Well, to be sure. But are you certain you want to go through with that? It’s really just a detail, you know, after everything else.”
“But I thought if you showed me exactly where to position the cutting tool and how to—”
“But why, Mr. Michelin? There is no doubt you have mastered the technique. Indeed, it is uncanny how you have mastered it. You are, I would say, a natural—no, more than that, a paragon in the field of Advanced Emergency First Aid, as I’m sure your classmates will agree.”
And turning her face from him, she vigorously mouthed the word “agree.”
But was she vigorous enough? And were they astute enough to understand the instruction? She was, and they were. And soon a shower of compliments mixed with applause was bathing the seated figure, who, despite the chair, began nodding at everyone and thanking them.
Whereupon it was over. And Burch, gripping his arms, was steering him to the door in an effusive send-off. “And I believe I speak for everyone,” she said, “in wishing you, Mr. Michelin, the utmost success in all the brave expeditions you undertake.”