Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) by Mike Shepherd

shape,” she said. “We expect that he will live, but he will need extensiveadditional care to recover from his injuries, and his recovery may not be to his former levels.”
    “How badly is he hurt?” Vicky demanded.
    “We’ve handled most of the minor cuts and burns from the RPG attack,” the doctor said. “It’s his back and leg that are the real problems.”
    “Back and leg,” Vicky repeated.
    “His back was broken. The break is in the lower part of the back. He has control of his hands and arms.”
    “But his legs?” Vicky asked. She could not make herself ask about his other valued attributes below his belt. His ability to give and take such pleasure. His driving force pounding between her legs.
    “We have managed to stabilize the break and are doing all we can to see that there is no further damage that will lengthen his recovery or make that recovery less than full.”
    Vicky weighed all the dodges in that statement. Thank God the woman hadn’t retreated behind medical jargon and technical mumbo jumbo. His lower back was broken. Not some medically exact statement like a T-2 or L-50 break that told a layman exactly nothing. Vicky knew what she’d been told and could feel the full impact of those words in her gut.
    “And his leg?” Vicky finally asked.
    “His femur was shattered in several places. We are stabilizing it, but first we had to stop the bleeding. We’ve succeeded. We can begin trying to piece the bone together, but the break is complex and very near the groin. If I had all the equipment I had five years ago, it would not be a problem, but now, with so much of our modern gear off-line for lack of spare parts or consumables, we will have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
    “What are you getting at?”
    “Trying to repair the bone is a chancy process with possible extreme damage to flesh and arteries. He could die. It might be safest to amputate the leg.”
    Vicky took that blow in the gut. She’d heard Sailors from backcountry planets talk about a mule kick in the stomach; now she felt one full up.
    Vicky found herself retreating to her chair. She sat in it sideways, trying to force her brain to think.
    Gerrit might lose his leg. Would he rather lose his life or his leg?
    Again Vicky saw Admiral Gort sprawled out, facedown on the deck, his blood and brains spreading out from the bullet he’d taken that had been aimed at her.
    Would the Navy officer rather have lost a leg, the use of his lower quarter, and returned to his wife? Or would he rather be facedown in gore rather than live the rest of his life as half a man?
    Would the angry widow have preferred that human fraction to the body in the flag-draped coffin?
    Now Vicky realized why the doctor had asked for her relationship to this man. Did a few wonderful hours passed in passionate embrace qualify her to make this call? A crippled life or quick clean death.
    “He’s Navy, isn’t he?” the Ranger captain asked. “Could he get better care up on the station?”
    “Yes,” Vicky demanded, whirling in her seat to face the doctor.
    “Possibly. Assuming we could stabilize all his issues and the lift up to orbit didn’t kill him or wreck everything we’d done for him.”
    “Computer, get me Admiral von Mittleburg.”
    “It’s awful early in the morning,” the doctor said.
    “Mittleburg here,” her computer announced.
    “Admiral, Commander Schlieffen has been seriously hurt in defense of my life.”
    “How bad?”
    “Doctor, can you release the official report?”
    “To a doctor.”
    “If you can’t pass it through me, transmit it direct to the duty team at the station sick bay,” the admiral said crisply.
    Three computers swapped addresses and authorizations, and the commander’s medical records were beamed up to the doctor on duty.
    “That’s a bad one,” a new voice observed on net. “What do you plan to do?”
    “We think we can stabilize his back so that a year or two of treatment and rehabilitation should