Jessie's Promise by Rosie Clarke

Author:Rosie Clarke [Clarke, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784977177
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2016-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

*

Jessie was just helping Lady Kendle to settle comfortably the next morning when Alice came into the room. She bobbed a curtsey to the invalid and begged her pardon for interrupting.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s been an accident. Jessie’s wanted downstairs at once.’

‘Is someone hurt?’ Lady Kendle asked and looked anxious as Alice nodded her head vigorously. ‘Off you go then, Jessie. I shall be fine now, but someone must come back and tell me what’s going on later.’

Jessie promised she would and hurried after Alice.

‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s one of the gardener’s lads,’ Alice said. ‘He has cut his arm badly and he’s in the kitchen bleeding all over the place. Captain Kendle has phoned for the doctor but he told me to get you because the doctor is out and it will be a while before he can come.’

Jessie flew down the stairs, knowing that such an injury could be very serious. When she got to the kitchen the lad was stretched out on a rush mat, his face very white. Cook and Maggie hovered uncertainly over him, too frightened to touch him.

Someone had knotted a tie above the deep wound to try and stop the bleeding but it wasn’t tight enough and the blood was still coming out in gushes.

‘I shall need a wooden stick – one of your cooking spoons please,’ Jessie said, ‘and some linen strips.’ She knelt down on the mat beside the lad and smiled at him. ‘This is going to hurt a bit, I’m afraid, but I need to stop the bleeding.’ His eyelids flickered but it was obvious he was fainting from loss of blood and hardly heard her.

‘Here you are, Jessie – a spoon and some clean muslin.’

She took the items held out to her and made an efficient tourniquet, then removed the tie and makeshift bandage that someone had put on earlier. The gash was deep and had cut through the muscle to the bone, making a terrible mess of the lad’s arm. Jessie knew that he would be lucky if he ever got the full use of his limb back again after a cut like this. She had wondered if she ought to use the materials she carried in her nursing bag, which was in her room, to try and do a temporary repair but the extent of the injury would need a competent surgeon and she might do more harm by attempting it. Instead she pressed the torn muscle and flesh back into place and made a pad of gauze, binding it tightly to keep it in place as best she could. She had just finished her work when she was aware of someone standing beside her and she glanced up to see Captain Kendle watching her.

‘It’s a nasty cut, isn’t it?’

‘Very deep, I’m afraid,’ Jessie said. ‘He ought to go straight to hospital. I’ve stopped the bleeding for the moment but if he doesn’t receive immediate attention he could lose the arm or at the least the use of it.

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