Read Online A Life Everlasting by Sarah Gray - Free Book Online Page B

that.” She handed me a little pink plastic tub.
    Chaplain Phil Brooks stayed behind with Thomas. He told me later that he lifted Thomas out of the bassinet and held him in his arms.
    â€œWe talked for thirty minutes or so. I welcomed him to the world. Believe it or not, I was actually very centered and felt guided by the Spirit at that time.”
    Concerned that Thomas’s condition might get worse,Kelly and Phil then took Thomas to the nursery, where volunteer photographers Jay and Clarice Gibson, from the nonprofit photography organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS), were waiting. The mission of NILMDTS is to take free professional photographs of babies with fatal diagnoses immediately following birth as a remembrance for the parents. Thomas got his picture taken with my mom, dad, and brothers.
    Meanwhile, back in the OR, I started to feel really sick—like I was drunk, but in a bad way; the room was spinning. I vomited.
    â€œLooks like last night’s dinner,” the anesthesiologist said. He gave me an injection of something in my shoulder.
    â€œGive her Pitocin!” Dr. Khoury said. Pitocin is a synthetic form of oxytocin, the hormone that bonds mothers to babies and also induces contractions. They gave it to me to make my uterus contract to stop the bleeding from the incision.
    â€œI already did,” said the anesthesiologist.
    â€œPut another one in.”
    I heard someone say, “Get a bag of blood.” Then two bags. Then three bags.
    Someone above me barked, “Code hemorrhage!”
    â€œWhere is the blood?” Dr. Khoury kept saying. “Did you call for it?”
    â€œYes, I called. It’s on its way. I’ll call again.”
    â€œI need it now!”
    â€œI’ll go get it,” she said and left.
    I imagined that Thomas had already died at this point. I imagined that Callum had brain damage since he didn’t seem to be breathing. Was I going to bleed to death right there on the table, too?
    I was growing weaker by the minute. I felt bad for Ross thatall three of us might die in one day, or maybe I was going to leave Ross to raise a brain-damaged child on his own. I wondered how he would afford the mortgage; then I remembered my life-insurance policy and felt a little better. But since I handled our finances, I realized that Ross probably didn’t even know the password to pay the bills online. I should have written down the passwords; so many passwords. Deathbed regrets for the new millennium.
    I wasn’t upset about dying. I thought that whatever came next would be better than this world, which was starting to feel like a festival of miseries.
    â€œThe blood is here.”
    I could sense relief among the people standing around me. I started to feel stronger, like I was waking up. Like I was alive. I later learned that I received three units of packed red blood cells, two units of fresh frozen plasma, one unit of cryoprecipitate, and one unit of platelets. (Cryoprecipitate is a concentrated form of plasma that helps with coagulation; it was originally developed for hemophiliacs but it’s now used often during surgeries when a patient is hemorrhaging. One unit of this comes from five donors.) In total, I received blood donations from ten generous strangers.
    The anesthesiologist said most C-sections don’t take this long, but I was close to having an emergency hysterectomy. My uterus didn’t contract when it should have to stop the bleeding after surgery. One reason might have been the fact that I had been taking Procardia, an anticontraction medication, for six weeks to prevent early labor.
    â€œShe lost a lot of blood,” I heard Dr. Khoury say. “Okay. I’m going to go talk to the family.”
    Then I was done. I heard someone count: “One . . . two . . . three!” And they lifted me off the bed and onto a stretcher.
    â€œWow, that was just like on ER ,” I said, still woozy with anesthesia.