“Don’t touch me! Get away!” he screamed, staggering. Kathleen caught a whiff of his breath then and knew that he had been drinking. She noted that his right arm hung limp and that the right shoulder was much lower than the left. He had grasped it at the elbow to provide support.
“You can’t raise your arm above your shoulder, can you?” she demanded. “Your collar bone must be fractured.”
“So what?” the trucker demanded savagely. He leaned weakly against the truck, ignoring her efforts to be of help.
Meanwhile, Judy, Beverly and Betty had devoted their attention to the truck driver, who appeared in more serious condition than the disagreeable passenger.
Carefully, they stretched him out flat on the cab seat.
“He may be only stunned,” Judy said anxiously. “The first thing is to get the blood stopped. No artery has been cut fortunately.”
The blood came from two facial cuts and a wrist which had been slashed by flying glass. Judy removed a tiny splinter of glass from the latter wound, treated the cut with antiseptic, placed a compress over the opening and bandaged it tightly.
That job done, the girls bandaged the driver’s face, noting with relief that he seemed to be recovering from shock. Now and then he moaned in pain as they worked deftly and efficiently, but for the most part he eyed them silently.
Kathleen, on the other hand, was having a most trying time with her patient, who refused to cooperate. He would not lie down or let her examine his neck.
“I can’t do anything with him,” she whispered to Judy. “I’m sure he has a fractured collar bone. But what to do about it? He’s acting like a maniac.”