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He took the leg off just above the knee. He tied off damaged blood vessels, working carefully, quickly and skilfully.
Finally the bleeding eased, and by the time the remains of the fisherman’s leg could be removed and taken away for burial, everyone there knew that Sam had a fighting chance at life. And this had been no butchering job. The remains of the leg were viable. He’d have a stump which could be used as a basis for an artificial limb. The operation couldn’t have been done much better if it had been done in a major city hospital.
For the first time, Morag felt the wash of hopelessness recede. Sam had suffered massive blood loss, but if he was going to go into cardiac arrest, surely it would have happened sooner. Now they had saline and plasma flowing at maximum rate, and Jaqui was watching his breathing like a hawk.
Jaqui might look an unlikely doctor—a middle-aged woman, almost six feet tall, skinny and shiny in her canary yellow overalls—but there was no doubting her skills as an anaesthetist. The bleeding had been stemmed and the otherwise healthy fisherman now had a chance to fight back.
Finally, as Grady worked over the dressing, Morag found herself with time to step away. For the first time since she’d seen that awful wall of water, she had time to assimilate what had happened.
Marcus was standing behind her. The big fisherman was waiting in the shadows, as if he, too, was taking a breather from the horror he’d been working with. She stepped back to him, taking in his shocked and haggard face. She knew her own face must mirror it.
‘What’s happening?’
‘The world’s arrived,’ he told her in a voice that was barely audible. It was as if every ounce of strength had been sucked out of him with the shock. ‘The chopper that these people came in on was a forerunner. Two Chinook helicopters full of army personnel are here now, using the paddock up the top of the fells as a landing base. Teams are searching the island. There’s boats out to sea, still searching.’
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