Read Online Midwife in a Million by Fiona McArthur - Free Book Online Page A

get really cold from draughts and thin plastic wrap keeps air off wet skin. When the team arrives, if they want to access an arm or leg they just make a hole in the wrap for that part of the body. Keeps baby insulated.’
    ‘We have all the mod cons in this ambulance.’
    ‘Actually, I brought it with me but feel free to add it to your list when you go back.’
    When you go back! The words were like a bucket of ice over the warmth he’d been feeling as he shared this moment with Kate and Lucy. He shook thethought off but some of the excitement had been diluted by reality.
    ‘It’s coming,’ Lucy said on an exhaled breath and Rory stopped talking. He saw Lucy’s hand clenching on the sheet and he slipped his hand over hers. She grabbed his fingers gratefully and he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner.
    ‘You’re doing a great job, Lucy,’ he whispered in her ear and squeezed her hand back gently.
    Kate was down the business end. ‘Here comes baby, Lucy. Nice and slow.’ There was a pause and then the rest of the head appeared, then, strangely, baby’s face turned as if to look the other way. Rory looked up at Kate with a question.
    ‘Restitution,’ she said quietly. ‘Untwisting of the neck that happens as the head is born. Baby’s head is lining back up with the shoulders.’
    Then, gracefully, one pale shoulder appeared and seemed to take a dive towards the bed and then the other was out and in a rush it was all over as hips and knees and feet all tumbled into Kate’s waiting hands. Kate held up the baby so Lucy could see the sex of her baby.
    They all waited for the first indrawn breath or cry. The little girl lay limp and still like a stunned fish in Kate’s hands, dark blue eyes wide open in a tiny unmoving face—no cry, no breath.
    Kate froze. Time stopped. Her breath jammed and her heart dived sickeningly in her chest to beat one slow beat after another. It was as if she’d fallen, unsuspecting, into a freezing black shaft filled with ghouls. Down and down and down into a bottomless hell. The seconds ticked with aching slowness as the shock battered her. Dead like her baby! Lucy’s baby couldn’t be…
    ‘Kate?’ Rory’s voice shocked her back to the real world and she looked at him and then shook her head to rid it of the panic. The world sped up.
    ‘I’m sorry.’ She sucked in a breath. Lucy’s baby would be fine. It was just blue and stunned. ‘Towel,’ she said to Rory. She even sounded calm as she rubbed the flaccid baby until it began to gasp and flex in protest.
    Oblivious to those seconds of Kate’s frozen moment of horror, Lucy reached down to touch her baby. ‘A little girl.’ Tears ran down Lucy’s face. ‘A shame my mum wasn’t here to see.’ Then she reached for her daughter and Kate passed the towel back to Rory and slipped the little girl up to her mother.
    ‘There you go, Lucy.’ Lucy closed her arms over Missy.
    Kate looked at Rory and their eyes met over the new mother and her baby. She could tell Rory was euphoric at the birth, and the fact that he’d shared it with her. She just needed a hug.
    She didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t been here. How long would she have stayed frozen?
    ‘This is the needle I spoke about to help separatethe placenta, Lucy.’ Kate slid the needle in Lucy’s thigh but Lucy didn’t seem to notice, then Rory watched Kate clamp and cut the cord.
    He wanted to hug Kate. All these things she had to remember. He murmured a saying he’d once heard. ‘The midwife, methodical through the beginning of life.’
    Rory was back in that warm place of sharing; his throat felt tight from emotion and he looked at Kate and then Lucy with wonder, and maybe even a tear in his eye. ‘You are amazing, Lucy. Congratulations on your beautiful daughter.’ He pumped the blood pressure cuff up as he spoke.
    ‘Thank you.’ Lucy smiled up at him shyly. ‘And thanks for holding my hand.’
    ‘My