Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart / Small Town Marriage Miracle by Meredith Webber / Jennifer Taylor Page B

Caroline checked the dressings, picking up signs of anasty ooze, and knew immediately that an infection had taken hold.
    ‘I think Jorge might have to operate again. I hate asking you to watch Ella for me, so perhaps there’s someone else. I’m happy to pay someone to—we call it babysit—if you can find someone you trust.’
    ‘Mima will do it—but not for money. She is happy Jorge has helped us so much here in the settlement and she likes little Ella. I will get her and take her to the hut and tell Jorge what you think.’
    By the time Jorge and Juan returned, Caroline had updated their patient’s status, filling in her findings on the file by the side of the bed. She was bathing him with wet flannels, hoping to lower his temperature, not wanting to give him drugs before Jorge decided what he’d do.
    ‘I’ll have to open up the wound and clean it out,’ he said as he examined the stained dressings. ‘You will assist?’
    He looked at Caroline and she read his distress. An infection could kill the man, and Jorge would surely blame himself for not having headed it off.
    ‘Of course,’ she said, and knowing how he thought added, ‘and it wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d been here all afternoon. Juan said he only developed the fever in the last hour.’
    Jorge nodded, accepting her words, although she knew he’d still be wondering.
    He and Juan shifted the man into the treatment room, Juan taking up his position at the man’s head, ready to watch over the anaesthetic and the monitor. Jorge openedthe big cupboard and began to pull out what he’d need, while Caroline unwrapped the injured foot, grimacing as she saw the swollen, angry wound.
    ‘I wanted to keep his heel if possible as it would give him more stability, but the blood supply to the foot is so poor it might not be possible.’
    It was an exercise in patience and precision and Caroline could only watch in wonder as Jorge probed and cut. She was kept busy swabbing and flushing, doing all she could to keep the intricacies of the wound clear for his scalpel. Juan reported the monitor findings—the man’s blood pressure was stabilising, his temperature coming down.
    ‘It’s tricky,’ Jorge said, ‘because of the way the calf muscles hook onto the heel, but the smaller muscles hook further forward so they get better leverage. You have to balance the amount of bone you keep—all surgeons think more is better—against the amount of support the bone will get. I’m taking it further back towards the heel so he’ll have good fleshy support but it means sacrificing some of the tendons.’
    It was easy for Caroline to see that he was totally immersed in the surgery and it made her wonder just where his new life would take him.
    ‘Have you seen many of these injuries or have you been reading up on amputations?’ she asked, her fascination in the operation taking precedence over all the emotional stuff she’d been battling since she arrived.
    ‘Making mud bricks, building and reading,’ Jorge said lightly. ‘That’s been the pattern of my life lately.’
    Then, as if sensing that she wasn’t going to accept so easy a reply, he looked up at her.
    ‘I’ve been reading widely,’ he admitted, ‘across a multitude of medical disciplines. I know myself well enough to know that whatever I do next, it will have to be a challenge—a real challenge.’
    He carefully attached a tendon to the tarsal bone, saying, almost under his breath, ‘I don’t think this will do much good.’
    That done, he straightened for a moment while Caroline swabbed and flushed.
    Working with her like this, Jorge decided, was exciting somehow. The agonising emotions her sudden arrival had stirred back to life were set aside more easily while they worked as professional colleagues. And probably because of this professional closeness, he found himself telling her things he’d only, at this stage, discussed in his head.
    ‘Given the state I was in when I