Lou rested the damaged hand palm down on a clean towel, gently adjusting the thumb into an anatomically correct position.

“Okay, Joey … listen to me now.… Everything is going to be just fine.… I’m going to help.…”

“Help me,” Joey answered back meekly. “Please help me.”

“Someone give me a scissors, please.”

Lou pulled one of the towels from the pile and cut off a long three-inch strip. Next, he wrapped the strip twice around the middle of Joey’s forearm and tied it off. The bleeding began to slow. To add torque, Lou slipped a wooden cook spoon under the strip and turned it until the bleeding began to slow even more. He made note of the time, 12:50. There may have been as much as two hours of wiggle room to keep the tourniquet on before there was tissue damage, but he had no desire to cut things that close.

“Here you go, Lou,” he heard Dennis say.

Lou’s heavy black leather bag materialized on the floor beside his knee. A number of states had enacted Good Samaritan laws to protect doctors who offered help in an emergency from being sued. But many of those laws were vaguely constructed, and some had even been challenged in court. As a result, there were docs who went out of their way to avoid involvement in trauma or medical emergencies—an aspect of his profession Lou had never been proud of. Instead, he had chosen to make himself better prepared. He carried a well-equipped medical bag in his trunk, and at one point, had actually participated on a committee that helped the airlines to design a sensible and useful emergency first-aid kit that could be placed on planes.

“You still with me, Joey?”

“Yes … I’m with you, sir.”

The physical evidence of shock had already begun to recede, and some strength had returned to the youth’s voice. Bleeding had been reduced to an ooze.

“I need that icy dishwashing soap now,” Lou called out.

Given that the ambulance would be there soon, there was little in Lou’s emergency bag that would be of major help. But there was gauze and a great splint—thumb-sized, three-quarters of an inch wide, pliable aluminum, backed with foam rubber. And just as important, there was a pair of shears that could shape it. Years had passed since he had put the splints and shears into his kit. Who knew?

He irrigated the wound, carefully wrapped the laceration, measured off a piece of splint well more than twice the length of the thumb and twisted it into a U that held the fracture in an anatomically perfect position, with three inches of aluminum extending across the wrist and onto the hand, front and back. Then, again from the kit, he snapped open a chemical ice pack and set it on the bandage. By the time the cold was gone, Joey would be undergoing treatment. Lou finished the job with heavy cotton batting up to the tourniquet and two ACE bandages.