“By a miracle. Stay out here, Brown, until you’ve finished with the men from inside, then we’ll try to find some rest for you.”
The three huskies carrying Jorgenson placed the body on the table set up, and began ripping off the bulky armor as the truck got under way. Fresh gloves came out of a small sterilizer, and the two doctors fell to work at once, treating the badly burned flesh and trying to locate and remove the worst of the radioactive matter.
“No use.” Doc stepped back and shook his head. “It’s all over him, probably clear into his bones in places. We’d have to put him through a filter to get it all out!”
Palmer was looking down at the raw mass of flesh, with all the layman’s sickness at such a sight. “Can you fix him up, Ferrel?”
“We can try, that’s all. Only explanation I can give for his being alive at all is that the hopper box must have been pretty well above the stuff until a short time ago — very short — and this stuff didn’t work in until it sank. He’s practically dehydrated now, apparently, but he couldn’t have perspired enough to keep from dying of heat if he’d been under all that for even an hour — insulation or no insulation.” There was admiration in Doc’s eyes as he looked down at the immense figure of the man. “And he’s tough; if he weren’t, he’d have killed himself by exhaustion, even confined inside that suit and box, after the jerks set in. He’s close to having done so, anyway. Until we can find some way of getting that stuff out of him, we don’t dare risk getting rid of the curare’s effect — that’s a time-consuming job, in itself. Better give him another water and sugar intravenous, Jenkins. Then, if we do fix him up, Palmer, I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty chance that all this hasn’t driven him stark crazy.”
The truck had stopped, and the men lifted the stretcher off and carried it inside as Jenkins finished the injection. He went ahead of them, but Doc stopped outside to take Palmer’s cigarette for a long drag, and let them go ahead.
“Cheerful!” The manager lighted another from the butt, his shoulders sagging. “I’ve been trying to think of one man who might possibly be of some help to us, Doc, and there isn’t such a person — anywhere. I’m sure now, after being in there, that Hoke couldn’t do it. Kellar, if he were still alive, could probably pull the answer out of a hat after three looks — he had an instinct and genius for it; the best man the business ever had, even if his tricks did threaten to steal our work out from under us and give him the lead. But — well, now there’s Jorgenson — either he gets in shape, or else!”
Jenkins’ frantic yell reached them suddenly. “Doc! Jorgenson’s dead! He’s stopped breathing entirely!”
Doc jerked forward into a full run, a white-faced Palmer at his heels.
4
Dodd was working artificial respiration and Jenkins had the oxygen mask in his hands, adjusting it over Jorgenson’s face, before Ferrel reached the table. He made a grab for the pulse that had been fluttering weakly enough before, felt it flicker feebly again, and then stop completely. “Adrenalin!”
“Already shot it into his heart, Doc! Cardiacine, too!” The boy’s voice was bordering on hysteria, but Palmer was obviously closer to it than Jenkins.
“Doc, you gotta—”
“Get the hell out of here!” Ferrel’s hands suddenly had a life of their own as he grabbed frantically for instruments, ripped bandages off the man’s chest, and began working against time, when time had all the advantages. It wasn’t surgery — hardly good butchery; the bones that he cut through so ruthlessly with savage strokes of an instrument could never heal smoothly after being so mangled. But he couldn’t worry about minor details now.
He tossed back the flap of flesh and ribs that he’d hacked out. “Stop the bleeding, Jenkins!” Then his hands plunged into the chest cavity, somehow finding room around Dodd’s and Jenkins’, and were suddenly incredibly gentle as they located the heart itself and began working on it, the skilled, exact massage of a man who knew every function of the vital organ. Pressure here, there, relax, pressure again; take it easy, don’t rush things! It would do no good to try to set it going as feverishly as his emotions demanded. Pure oxygen was feeding into the lungs, and the heart could safely do less work. Hold it steady, one beat a second, sixty a minute.
It had been perhaps half a minute from the time the heart stopped before his massage was circulating blood again; too little time to worry about damage to the brain, the first part to be permanently affected by stoppage of the circulation. Now, if the heart could start again by itself within any reasonable time, death would be cheated again. How long? He had no idea. They’d taught him ten minutes when he was studying medicine, then there’d been a case of twenty minutes once, and while he was interning it had been pushed up to a record of slightly over an hour, which still stood; but that was an exceptional case. Jorgenson, praise be, was a normally healthy and vigorous specimen, and his system had been in first-class condition, but with the torture of those long hours, the radioactive, narcotic and curare all fighting against him, still one more miracle was needed to keep his life going.
Press, massage, relax, don’t hurry it too much. There! For a second, his fingers felt a faint flutter, then again; but it stopped. Still, as long as the organ could show such signs, there was hope, unless his fingers grew too tired and he muffed the job before the moment when the heart could be safely trusted by itself.
“Jenkins!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Ever do any heart massage?”
“Practiced it in school, sir, on a model, but never actually. Oh, a dog in dissection class, for five minutes. I… I don’t think you’d better trust me, Doc.”
“I may have to. If you did it on a dog for five minutes, you can do it on a man, probably. You know what hangs on it — you saw the converter and know what’s going on.”
Jenkins nodded, the tense nod he’d used earlier. “I know — that’s why you can’t trust me. I told you I’d let you know when I was going to crack — well, it’s damned near here!”
Could a man tell his weakness, if he were about finished? Doc didn’t know; he suspected that the boy’s own awareness of his nerves would speed up such a break, if anything, but Jenkins was a queer case, having taut nerves sticking out all over him, yet a steadiness under fire that few older men could have equaled. If he had to use him, he would; there was no other answer.
Doc’s fingers were already feeling stiff — not yet tired, but showing signs of becoming so. Another few minutes, and he’d have to stop. There was the flutter again, one — two — three! Then it stopped. There had to be some other solution to this; it was impossible to keep it up for the length of time probably needed, even if he and Jenkins spelled each other. Only Michel at Mayo’s could — Mayo’s! If they could get it here in time, that wrinkle he’d seen demonstrated at their last medical convention was the answer.
“Jenkins, call Mayo’s — you’ll have to get Palmer’s O.K., I guess — ask for Kubelik, and the extension where I can talk to him!”
He could hear Jenkins’ voice, level enough at first, then with a depth of feeling he’d have thought impossible in the boy. Dodd looked at him quickly and managed a grim smile, even as she continued with the respiration; nothing could make her blush, though it should have done so.