and dashed in after me. Just in time for the start-up of the next contraction. Good timing. The fetal heart rate plummeted and wouldn’t recover. She needed to get this baby out faster than it was coming. It seemed to hover right at four-plus station. The heart rate stayed low. The husband peeked up from his knees, moaned, and dropped his head back down. The heart rate stayed low. I opened a forceps tray for Paula and she worked in a controlled frenzy to shoehorn them around the baby’s head. The heart rate stayed low.
While I threw an oxygen mask on the mom and Paula worked to free the baby, I moved to the panel above the headboard of the bed. I hit the “Code Pink” button that alarmed in the NICU. The heart rate stayed low. The alarm called for a back-up team to help with an infant in distress. They’d be good to have around if this heart rate didn’t recover soon.
Paula worked a while longer and the baby finally broke loose. The head was delivered. The heart rate stayed low. The cord coiled several times around the baby’s neck. Paula wriggled some hemostats onto the cord to clamp it off and cut it. Then she towed out the rest of the kid. He was floppy. With one hand she held the baby while she whipped the other around to unwind the umbilical cord. Then she handed him off to me.
I bustled him to the warmer next to a mask blowing oxygen. I suctioned his nose and vigorously rubbed his back with a blanket, hoping the stimulation was enough to get him to take a breath. I listened to his chest with my stethoscope. He began to move around a little and made some weak attempts at respiration.
His first Apgar was only two at one minute, but his heart rate was on the way up. Then the NICU people burst in to save the day. I gladly let them take over.
Sheila finally poked her head in. The rush of people into the room must have alerted her to the fact that things were happening which she didn’t know about and better find out. She was in charge , after all.
“What’d ya do, Kate? Drop a baby?” she said too loudly.
I grabbed her sleeve before she could duck out. “Come in here. I need to go check my other patients. You stay.” I left without getting her permission.
The day deteriorated from there. When I went to check my lady in the bathroom, her furious doctor yelled at me, right in the face, like an angry umpire. I hadn’t started the Pitocin yet. He’d wanted it started at seven a.m. sharp . Probably had a tee time to get to.
Sheila continued to help. She had no choice, now that she’d been swept into the raging current. Her face was flushed like a strawberry. Sometime in the chaos, she too threw her jacket off when her hair began to wilt and her foundation to drip. Whenever she got the chance and our frantic paths crossed, she made sure she snarled her Apple-Berry-Blossom lip in my direction.
***
I didn’t get lunch break and I stayed an hour after my shift trying to catch up and chart what had happened during the day. I couldn’t input my notes into the hospital computer because it was an obsolete system that was offline more than it was on. Instead, I wrote on a paper chart the old fashioned way. The oldest doctors never had wanted the computer charting system anyway. And they had to be kept happy or the hospital would lose their business. Scuttlebutt was we were going paperless, but most of us thought it wouldn’t happen until the entire old regime died out or retired. When I finally wrapped up my charting, I collected my things and headed out.
At home, I turned the shower on full blast to pull the warm water up the pipes from the basement, and I peeled off my clothes. I discovered I’d picked up Sheila’s scrub jacket instead of my own. The pocket was full of her junk—lip gloss, comb, Altoids, nail file, a crushed pack with two Marlboros left in it. I think I had some Tums in mine. And a tissue. Maybe I’d blown my nose in it. One could hope. And the pictures of Baby Girl Trent. I
While I threw an oxygen mask on the mom and Paula worked to free the baby, I moved to the panel above the headboard of the bed. I hit the “Code Pink” button that alarmed in the NICU. The heart rate stayed low. The alarm called for a back-up team to help with an infant in distress. They’d be good to have around if this heart rate didn’t recover soon.
Paula worked a while longer and the baby finally broke loose. The head was delivered. The heart rate stayed low. The cord coiled several times around the baby’s neck. Paula wriggled some hemostats onto the cord to clamp it off and cut it. Then she towed out the rest of the kid. He was floppy. With one hand she held the baby while she whipped the other around to unwind the umbilical cord. Then she handed him off to me.
I bustled him to the warmer next to a mask blowing oxygen. I suctioned his nose and vigorously rubbed his back with a blanket, hoping the stimulation was enough to get him to take a breath. I listened to his chest with my stethoscope. He began to move around a little and made some weak attempts at respiration.
His first Apgar was only two at one minute, but his heart rate was on the way up. Then the NICU people burst in to save the day. I gladly let them take over.
Sheila finally poked her head in. The rush of people into the room must have alerted her to the fact that things were happening which she didn’t know about and better find out. She was in charge , after all.
“What’d ya do, Kate? Drop a baby?” she said too loudly.
I grabbed her sleeve before she could duck out. “Come in here. I need to go check my other patients. You stay.” I left without getting her permission.
The day deteriorated from there. When I went to check my lady in the bathroom, her furious doctor yelled at me, right in the face, like an angry umpire. I hadn’t started the Pitocin yet. He’d wanted it started at seven a.m. sharp . Probably had a tee time to get to.
Sheila continued to help. She had no choice, now that she’d been swept into the raging current. Her face was flushed like a strawberry. Sometime in the chaos, she too threw her jacket off when her hair began to wilt and her foundation to drip. Whenever she got the chance and our frantic paths crossed, she made sure she snarled her Apple-Berry-Blossom lip in my direction.
***
I didn’t get lunch break and I stayed an hour after my shift trying to catch up and chart what had happened during the day. I couldn’t input my notes into the hospital computer because it was an obsolete system that was offline more than it was on. Instead, I wrote on a paper chart the old fashioned way. The oldest doctors never had wanted the computer charting system anyway. And they had to be kept happy or the hospital would lose their business. Scuttlebutt was we were going paperless, but most of us thought it wouldn’t happen until the entire old regime died out or retired. When I finally wrapped up my charting, I collected my things and headed out.
At home, I turned the shower on full blast to pull the warm water up the pipes from the basement, and I peeled off my clothes. I discovered I’d picked up Sheila’s scrub jacket instead of my own. The pocket was full of her junk—lip gloss, comb, Altoids, nail file, a crushed pack with two Marlboros left in it. I think I had some Tums in mine. And a tissue. Maybe I’d blown my nose in it. One could hope. And the pictures of Baby Girl Trent. I
Similar Books
