The attending’s face is pale, sweat beading his forehead.
“Nec fasc,” he says quietly.
We stare at the old woman’s leg, raw redness creeping up the flesh, and know that she’s running out of time.
She’d come in only a few hours ago with her daughter, complaining of pain in her leg. She had a low-grade fever, and was just generally uncomfortable. The raw spot on her calf was an angry color, and I didn’t like the look of it. Sending out the order for a CT scan, I took out a pen and drew a blue line around the irregular circle.
We’ve just seen the results on the CT scan — air pockets under the skin, one classic effect of the flesh-eating bacteria, and the crimson area on her leg is much wider than it was an hour ago. Infection is creeping upward, underneath her skin, past the mark I drew not long ago, and it needs to be stopped.
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