Just before noon Dr. Douglas came in to see the three women in their hospital room.  He looked at Penny’s chart and checked her over.  “Looks good for now.  We’re giving you as much medication as we can to keep down the pain.  I know it hurts but I assure you, it will get better.  Till it does we need to help you with the medications.  I think what we are giving you now may not seem like enough but if we give you too much we risk getting you hooked or having it wear off and not do you any good.  I’ll be back to talk to you more about this when you are feeling better but as you know we were not able to save your leg.  There was a section about eight inches long, starting above the knee and extending to just below it that was devastated.  It looked like it was beaten to a pulp.  We looked at reattachment but it was not feasible.  We even considered giving you a short leg but there wasn’t enough left to do that.  We also considered putting lower part of the leg on backwards with your ankle as a knee.  That too was not possible because of the damage.  None of the options were workable.  We had to work with what was left.” 

“We’ll be scheduling you for therapy, first to get you on crutches to get you mobile.  The worst thing is for you to remain in bed.  There are a lot of things that can go wrong if you do.  Pneumonia and blood clots are the ones that we fear most.  It will be tough at first for you to get up, it will hurt some, but getting you up is essential.   Any questions?”

“How long will I have to be in the hospital?”

“Whoa there.  We’ll get to that one when we see how you are doing in three or four days.”

“What does my leg look like?”

“We don’t want to take the cast off today.  You might swell enough that we can’t get it back on and that would be more uncomfortable and delay your recovery.  Probably tomorrow we will take it off for a few minutes to change the dressing.  When we do you can get a look at it if you like.”