Read Online Emergency: Wife Lost and Found by Carol Marinelli - Free Book Online Page A

told, this could happen to her. Would happen to her, the registrar said gently but firmly, reiterating that from everything they could see on the ultrasound, rupture was imminent.
    A consent form was there in front of her.
    Just that morning she and James had been good-naturedly arguing about whether to find out the sex. Lorna wanted to know so she could make lots of lists and choose names and colours. James preferred to wait, to enjoy the surprise of whatever they were given.
    Now they were asking Lorna to sign a death warrant.
    ‘We’ll try and preserve the tube,’ the registrar explained again, ‘but till we get in and have a look…’
    ‘No.’ Lorna said it again in the hope someone would listen. She could see James was losing his patience, his jaw tense. He got up to pace the room as a nurse came in and slipped off Lorna’s clothes and taped over her ring even though she was refusing the procedure.
    ‘We’ll just take off your nail varnish.’ Lorna could smell the acetone and it made her gag. She wished James would do something—he was a doctor, for crying out loud.
    ‘Even the examination we just performed could have exacerbated things,’ the registrar explained. ‘It’s low in your Fallopian tube and it’s too large for drug treatment. If we let you go home and it ruptures, James is right, we could lose you both.’
    ‘There’s nothing you can do?’ Lorna begged. ‘I saw a show once, this woman in India.’
    ‘Lorna.’ James interrupted her pleadings. ‘The pregnancy can’t continue.’
    There was no way out—her ectopic pregnancy was at imminent risk of rupture. The pregnancy could not continue and there wasn’t a single thing Lorna could do to change the facts.
    She could still remember signing the consent form—laparoscopy for ectopic pregnancy, removal of POC and salpingectomy.
    ‘POC?’
    If it had been any day before this one, Lorna would have soon worked it out, except she felt as if her brain had been left on ice and was drifting into winter.
    ‘Product of conception,’ the registrar translated. ‘And we’ll do everything we can to preserve the Fallopian tube, but if we have to, we need your permission to perform a salpingectomy, which is the removal of the tube.’
    Lorna started to vomit then, though not as she had that morning. Giddy nausea swept over her and she could see James’s look of alarm as the registrar turned up the drip and paged her boss.
    ‘Just sign the form, Lorna.’
    Why couldn’t he sign it? She could remember looking at him and thinking it. If it was so bloody easy, why couldn’t it be him that signed? Except nothing about this was easy, so instead Lorna took the offered pen and signed the form. Then, dizzy, she lay back as she was rushed straight to Theatre.
    ‘Hey!’ He was standing at the door and though he gave her a smile, Lorna could tell it was a guarded one. He’dbrought two vast take-away cups of coffee and what she assumed was her phone charger in a plastic bag. ‘Sorry I didn’t get in yesterday.’
    ‘That’s fine.’ Lorna smiled. ‘I was hardly going anywhere.’
    He handed her the package and Lorna opened it, wincing as she turned to her bedside table to get her phone. James did it for her, plugging in the charger and making small talk, but awkwardly.
    ‘Thanks for the coffee.’ Lorna took a grateful sip. ‘I’m starting to look forward to it, the hospital stuff is disgusting.’
    ‘Tell me about it!’ He sat down and she was glad that he did. Clearly she was getting better because she was at times bored. As a courtesy probably, because she was a doctor, she had her own little side room, but being so far from home, there were no visitors to look forward to and there was way too much time to think. Still, Lorna consoled herself, at least now she had her phone.
    ‘I saw the mob in the corridor. Have they got to you yet?’
    ‘Yes, they just finished. I’m doing very well apparently. I might even get home on