Oscar was nothing if not efficient. Steve was whisked at once to what was obviously a private room off the main ER, and he heard the thunk of the door closing solidly behind them, a barrier to the world.
"Anything any of you see or observe in this room is to be considered a military secret," Oscar stated firmly. "It is not to be discussed among yourselves aside from the extent needed for medical care or revealed to anyone. And it is not to be charted. You will use his left arm for all monitors or lines instead of the right. Understood?"
Three voices acknowledged, and Steve did his best to pin their locations down. A doctor and two nurses, he decided. The doctor was next to his head on the left. The nurses were one on each side. Oscar still stood next to Steve's head on the right, and he still had his hand on Steve's shoulder. Any questions those three might have had, Oscar had the authority to command prompt agreement without debate. Steve was glad that he didn't have to give that speech himself; they never would have taken it without question from him that quickly.
The doctor spoke up from his left. "What exactly happened to you, Colonel Austin?"
"The oil line on the Navion broke in the engine compartment. I had just leaned over to see if I could fix anything from the passenger's seat when the line developed a second leak, this time in the cabin. It sprayed hot oil on my face. Hit me square in the eyes." He felt Oscar flinch. "Greg did flush them out as best he could with the first aid kit."
"Do you have any other injuries anywhere else?" the doctor asked.
"No." Steve still felt shaky, even lying down, and the pain was steady and demanding attention.
The nurse on the left picked up a fold of skin on the back of his hand; he could feel her fingers. "He's pretty dehydrated, Doctor."
"We didn't have any water," Steve explained. "The plane crashed, and we had to move rocks and brush out of the way to make a runway while the General fixed the oil line. It took several hours of hard physical work. I'm sure all four of us are."
"Start an IV," the doctor said. "Run it wide open." Steve was hooked up to monitors, and he could hear the too-fast heartbeat himself. "Pulse too fast, pressure a little low. Hopefully he'll respond to just fluids. Of course, there's the pain factor, too. This has to be hurting like hell."
"It is," Steve admitted.
"Go ahead and give him something for it," Oscar stated. "It's all right, Steve."
"Not too much," Steve insisted. "I need to know about the others."
"What happened to the others?" Oscar asked. "How did you wind up flying Senator Hill's plane?"
"Lannon was bitten by a rattlesnake while we were clearing the runway." Steve kept his suspicions on that to himself for the moment at least. Lannon had guided him directly to that snake with amazing accuracy. It could still have been coincidence, but Lannon was an entirely different breed than Hill. He didn't completely trust him. "So we took off again to get him back for help. But something went wrong with General Hill. The plane was 100 miles off course even before the oil line broke, and shortly after we took off again, the General passed out. So I - I took over. Greg was acting as my eyes."
Oscar gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Rudy's off at an international conference, but I'm going to use that phone over there to try to track him down. At least he can talk to Dr. Miller here. I'll be right in the room still, pal. Just try to relax."
"Easy for you to say," Steve muttered.
One of the nurses spoke up from his right. "I'm putting some pain medication into the IV, Colonel. It won't knock you out, but you should feel better soon."
The doctor's hands were on his head. "I'm going to take off this bandage and examine your eyes." Steve heard the scissors snipping through the gauze. Oscar's voice came from the corner of the room, demanding that they retrieve Dr. Wells at once, no matter what he was doing.
The bandage fell away, and Steve tried futilely to see. Nothing. Not a glimmer, not with either eye. The doctor's tone was matter-of-fact. "I'm just going to use this ophthalmoscope here and take a look." He started on the right eye, and Steve could feel his fingers manipulating the lids. He then moved over, and the sure, steady fingers faltered. "This left eye - "
"It's artificial," Steve said. He could feel the shot working; the pain was still present but retreating some now.
"It's - right, okay." The doctor obviously realized with his scope that this was beyond just a routine glass eye, but he stomped down his professional curiosity nicely.
"Rudy!" Oscar's voice raised a little. "It's Oscar. We have a problem back here; Steve was in an accident, and it blinded him. Yes, blinded him. Yes, I mean both. Hang on, I'm going to give the phone to Dr. Miller here from the ER."
The doctor put a cloth back across Steve's eyes to protect them, not that Steve could see it, of course, but he could feel it. "Get some Silvadene ointment and start putting it on the skin burns," Miller ordered as he crossed the room to the phone.
Oscar returned. "Feeling any better?"
"Some," Steve said. He was straining his ears, trying to hear both sides of the phone conversation, which of course was impossible on this non-speaker phone. At least he got the doctor's half of it loud and clear.
Dr. Miller described the accident, then went into professional details. "He has several second-degree burns on his face. The eyes apparently took a direct hit from the hot oil. The right one is severely inflamed; it's hard to see the pupil at all. There was an effort made to flush them out with the first aid kit at the scene. The left eye - yes, I noticed. The eye itself looks - I'd almost say slightly melted in a few places when I check it with the ophthalmoscope. Basically sound, but whatever that is, I don't think it's supposed to look like this. The tissues surrounding the left eye socket are badly inflamed same as the right." There was a long pause. "Okay, I can do that." Another long pause. "I agree; there's no way he could undergo any sort of work on that side until the general inflammation and burns have settled down." Another pause. "All right, Dr. Wells. I will. Mr. Goldman, he wants to talk to you again."
Oscar left to recross the room, and a moment later, the doctor came back. "I'm going to raise the head of the bed." He did so. "Next, I'm going to flush out your eyes, both of them, extensively. This will be much more thorough than the first time with the first aid kit. Then I'll add some medication into the last few minutes of the eye wash to get that all around the tissues on both sides. It should start to help settle them down. Then we'll have some drops and also I'll use artificial tears for the right one, and then we'll rebandage them." He removed the cloth across Steve's eyes. "Hold still, Colonel. This isn't going to be terribly comfortable, but I doubt much is at the moment anyway."
The prediction was accurate. The whole process took about 20 minutes, and by the end of it, Steve was surprised that both of his eyes, the real one as well as the bionic, hadn't washed completely down the drain. Finally, with the treatment complete and eyedrops added, a new bandage was put on.
"Your vitals are looking better," Dr. Miller said. "I'll keep you on IV fluids tonight. I think we can move you over to a standard room for the moment, Colonel."
"What did Rudy say?" Steve asked. He felt absolutely wrung out. The pain was a little better, but he felt like his last vestiges of strength had disappeared. If the gurney weren't holding him up, he'd fall straight to the floor, he was sure.
Oscar's voice was reassuring. "For the moment, you're going to stay here. There's really nothing Rudy could do until you've healed up a bit. So we'll keep you at the base hospital, but I'll stay here, too, to manage things."
"Will I see again?" Steve asked. He knew that Rudy could replace the left eye completely if needed; actually, Rudy could replace the right one, too, if it came to that. But he hated giving up any more of his real parts. He was as attached to his right eye as he was to his left arm. He didn't want to lose it.
"Probably." That was Dr. Miller. "We'll have to see, but I think your right eye should heal given some time. The eye has an amazing ability to heal itself. I can't speak for the left, but I think there's a good chance you're going to be all right in several days otherwise."
Steve sagged against the sheets. "And now," Oscar said, "when you move him to a room, go ahead and give him a larger dose on the painkillers. You need a good night's sleep, pal."
"Yeah." Steve didn't have the strength to protest. The gurney was wheeled out of the little room and down a few halls, and then he was moved over to an official hospital bed. Even blind, he would have recognized that. How many days, weeks, months had he spent in hospital beds the last few years? Someday he would count up the tally, but right now, he was just too tired.
He was already almost asleep anyway when the nurse came back with the shot. Finally released from this eternal day, he fell into dreams - sighted dreams - of flying.