He was cold, oh so very, very cold and shivering. But no matter how many blankets he rolled himself up into he just couldn't get warm. Thinking was hard, like his brain had been replaced by so much cotton wool, and he couldn't seem to string together thoughts beyond the immediate and now. But even those concepts seemed to slip through his fingers as he woke from what he now vaguely realised was a dream but had seemed so very hauntingly real at the time.
A hand touched his face, warm and comforting, and he leaned into that warmth.
"He's burning up." Someone said far above him. "Go tell Grandma."
Burning up? That didn't sound right, he was freezing!
"What's his temperature?" Someone else asked. "Grandma's raiding the drug cupboard now."
"38.7 Celsius."
That wasn't good. He vaguely recalled that 36.5-37 degrees Celcius was the biological happy place, as his trainer had put it. 38 meant doctor, 39/40 hospital, 42 dead.
"C'mon Fish, let's get these blankets off." The first person told him, his voice low and firm. "You're running a fever and we need to start cooling you down."
Gordon moaned as his warm cocoon was stripped away, followed by his sweat soaked pyjamas, and he huddled up again.
"Scott, look at his foot!" The second person exclaimed.
Virgil, his brain finally supplied, that voice belonged to Virgil. Virgil sounded worried. And he was talking to Scott, so Scott had to be the first person. That made sense.
"Gordon, I'm having a look at your foot, don't kick me." That was The Commander talking now, not Scott, knowing how sensitive Gordon's feet were and the power he could bring to bear.
He could feel one hand firmly holding his left ankle and a second one prodding at him. One spot in particular on his heel flared with pain at the touch and he tried to pull away, but the grip was too strong. "Tracking." The word was pronounced with dismay. "Grandma, it's septicaemia, he's got a wound on the heel of his left foot, track marks are just at his ankle."
"Timestamp it and bring him down to the infirmary." Grandma ordered crisply. "I'll meet you there."
"F.A.B." Scott replied. "Gordon, you've got blood poisoning. We're taking you to the infirmary."
He could feel the ticklish sensation of someone drawing on his foot but the word 'infirmary' was what drew the noise of protest from him. He didn't like that place. Too bright, smelled weird and he always felt cold in the crisp white surroundings, no matter how high they cranked the heating.
He must have verbalised at least some of that because Virgil had his frowning voice as he spoke. "I know you don't like it, but you're sick and that's where the gear is so you're going. Clear?"
It must have been Virgil picking him up as he was lifted up and his head landed against fabric that smelled faintly of paint and exhaust fumes. Virgil was warm though, that was nice. And Virgil was gentle and comfortable. Scott was gentle too but way too lumpy, all bony shoulders. Being carried like this by Scott wasn't as comfortable. John was worse- he had powerful arms, got anxious and out of that anxiety he tended to squeeze a bit whenever he carried a sibling. Gordon knew that from experience. Though he wasn't sure what that meant about his own medical history- that he had preferences for which carry technique and by what sibling.
Okay, he'd definitely said some of that out loud because Virgil chuckled despite the situation.
Light shifted against his closed eyelids and he knew they were in the hallway. He listened to Virgil's boots thudding on the carpeted floor and Scott's sneakers just behind them, then the light changed and they were in the little lift that connected the villa to the hanger levels and the infirmary.
He could smell it as soon as they were in the infirmary. A large room carved out of the basalt of the volcano, it always seemed to smell of hospital, rock and damp to him.
"Does anyone know how he hurt his foot?" Grandma asked as Virgil carried him into the room and laid him on a bed.
I hadn't even realised I'd done something, Gordon wanted to say, but he wasn't sure if that was what came out.
"He was limping yesterday but I thought it was just the neuro pain." Scott spoke up.
Oh yeah. Yesterday had been an ouch-wear day. That explained why he wasn't really feeling any pain, he was still riding the tail end of half a pharmacy's worth of nerve blockers and pain relief.
"Gordon, I'm going to put an IV in, okay?" Scott continued.
Well I'm not really in a position to object, am I? he felt like snarking in reply, but that wouldn't be fair to Scotty who was really good at finding his tiny, deeply buried veins and without having to use the special light that had been developed years ago for people just like him. He listened to all the steps- gloves on, opening the packaging for the cannula, saline flush and tegaderm, finally the swipe of the alcohol wipe at his elbow and the tight band of the elastic tourniquet going on. A little tap tap with the back of the fingers to bring up the vein on the top of his elbow, then the classic 'sharp scratch' warning that they'd all picked up even though it really wasn't a sharp scratch. In went the needle and he hissed despite himself, that felt big, then on with the tegaderm, off with the tourniquet and a cool sensation as the IV was flushed with saline.
"Sorry Gordo." Scott apologised. "I had to put in a 14 gage, you're getting kef."
Ceftriaxone? Now how on earth had his brain automatically supplied the name of an antibiotic when it couldn't figure out the names of his siblings? That was a good question.
"Gordon dear, I think you have something in your foot." That was Grandma. "I'm going to give you a local and clean out this wound and Virgil's going to give you some liquid paracetamol to help with your fever, okay?"
"How much?" Virgil asked her.
"1.5 grams, every four hours on the dot until that fever comes down." Grandma instructed.
Gordon was so glad she'd specified liquid paracetamol. He really didn't feel like trying to down the chalky horse pills they'd gotten from the supplier. If he didn't get the timing just right they'd get stuck on the back of his tongue and they tasted horrible.
The noises distracted him for a bit- the high pitched sloshes as Scott shook the little glass bottle of powdered kef to mix it with saline, the heavier gluggy sounds as Virgil shook up the big bottle of liquid paracetamol, the various packaging noises as Grandma prepared to look at his foot in greater detail.
"Gordon, can you look at me?" That was Virgil. "I've got the paracetamol for you."
Gordon managed to crack one eye open, the other was gummed shut, and saw Virgil holding a little cup of pink syrup. He reached out to take it, Virgil steadying him, and gulped down the sweet, fake strawberry flavoured medicine. "Good work Gordon, I'll clean your eyes in a minute. You feel up to drinking anything?" Virgil asked.
"No." Gordon croaked.
"Okay, I'll get you a saline IV in a minute." Virgil stepped out of sight for a moment and came back with a damp washcloth. "Close your eyes?"
Gordon did so and felt the warm, damp cloth gently swipe over his eyes, coaxing away the gunk. It was a great distraction from Scott's warning of "Kef going in" and the slight burning sensation of the antibiotic.
Down by his feet, Grandma had finally finished her preparations. "Virgil, can you give me an assist here?" She asked. "Gordon, I'm going to have a look at your foot now, okay? Scott, look after Gordon."
'Look after' in this setting was Tracy-speak for 'distract' and Scott immediately started up a one sided conversation about some of the upgrades that Brains was working on for Four while combing his fingers through Gordon's hair, providing sound and sensation for him to focus on that wasn't wasn't the sound and sensation of Grandma and Virgil working away.
He could feel his foot being placed on a sterile sheet of plastic, the decidedly ouchy feeling of the local anaesthetic going in, then the pressure of medical tools going to work.
"I've got it." Virgil announced after a few minutes. "Looks like someone tracked some coral up from the beach and you stepped on it, Gordo. It's just a shard, only a couple of millimeters."
"Take it to the lab and get it analysed, after that pull some vials of blood for the auto-analyser as well." Grandma instructed. They all knew the dangers of all the different bacteria that thrived in tropical waters and how coral provided the perfect habitat for it. "I'll clean up the wound, it's not too big, I'll just put a dressing over it for now, and the tracking hasn't moved. I think we got this in time."
A/N: I've noticed a lot of writers will talk about gangrene when it comes to infected wounds, but septicaemia or blood poisoning is just as scary but far more insidious. It usually starts out as a small wound, quite often around the cuticles, there's the usual signs of infection- pain, hot to touch, fever, pus- and then this dark or red line starts tracking up from the wound towards the core. If it gets to the core, the infection is going everywhere. Septicaemia needs big bore antibiotics pronto. (Don't Google photos of it if you're squeamish and are eating)
Whenever there's tracking, or you want to keep tabs on swelling and redness from things like a sting or a bite or cellulitis, a really useful thing is to draw a line around the perimeter and write down the time. That lets you see if it's moving and how fast.
Someone in the grips of a high fever can experience rigors- they start shivering and feel cold, even though they are feverishly hot. The brain gets its wires crossed sometimes. Rigors isn't necessarily bad on its own, it's in combination with other symptoms that it's an indication of bad. By the way, someone showing major signs of infection and a dropping temperature is really bad.
Another point I touched on here was how someone's medical history can complicate how they're presenting. In this example Gordon wasn't in pain because he was already on a lot of pain relief with a long half-life, or the amount of time it takes for the body to use up half of it. Another example would be someone with a history of long term, poorly managed diabetes. Because it destroys nerve endings, someone with that history may not feel pain or discomfort when they're having a heart attack. One patient I had only knew they were in trouble because their heart rate on their smart watch was jumping all over the place and when we got the monitor on them they were having a major heart attack. They felt no pain at all because of the damage from diabetes.
As a side note on that, women don't tend to feel pain in a heart attack, they might feel discomfort or uncomfortable anywhere in the chest or upper abdomen. The most recent theory on why that is that I've heard about is that it's because women have higher organ pain thresholds because women are pre-wired for the pain of childbirth. Do have a look at the symptoms.
Paracetamol, or acetaminophen as Americans know it, is used a lot as a fever-reducer. Please follow the instructions on the box regarding dosages and timing, I made an educated guess on Gordon's body weight for his dosage.