Sarah and the Single Dad

by Deanne Anders

  Sarah felt her heart squeeze for a moment. She knew only too well how it felt when you realize that the horrendous things that happen to other people have happened to you.

  “How about we move the rocking chair over to the crib and I’ll help you hold Breanna?”

  * * *

  Sarah left the room after sharing her number and the number of another mother who lived in the Houston area whose child had been born with the same congenital defect as Breanna and who was happy to help with other families. Maggie had promised she would call one of them if she needed to talk, but Sarah would check back with her before she left for the day. It was hard for some people to reach out to others as she well knew.

  Speaking with Breanna’s nurse, she shared that she had helped Maggie get Breanna from the crib and the two of them were doing fine though the nurse would need to check on them shortly.

  Sarah turned to see David talking to another nurse, before he waved at her and headed her way.

  “What’s up?” she asked as he joined her on the way out of the unit.

  “I saw you come out of little Breanna’s room. Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Breanna’s doing great. It’s her mother that’s a mess right now. Her husband, John, had to leave to return to work and she’s all alone. Add to that the fears of any new mother and it’s just a lot. She’s really worried about losing the bonding time that most mothers get with their baby. I think we just need to work harder to get her involved with Breanna’s care.”

  The overhead speaker squawked then a monotone voice started to speak. “Code blue, PCIC room ten.”

  As the speaker repeated the information, the two of them ran back down the hall.

  “It’s Lindsey,” she said to David as they pushed past the rest of the staff. As the charge nurse assigned jobs, she rushed over to the nurse performing compressions on the small chest.

  “What happened?” David asked as he moved behind the bed with the respiratory tech and prepared to intubate.

  “She suddenly desated down to the sixties. By the time I got in here she was in PEA,” the nurse said as one of the patient techs took over the compressions.

  “Have you given her any meds?” David asked as he expertly inserted the endotracheal tube with a skill that she would have expected from an older, more experienced doctor.

  “Giving epinephrine now,” said Mel as she pushed the medication into an IV line.

  David moved back and the respiratory tech quickly hooked up the Ambu bag to the ET tube and started squeezing the bag that would force the air into her lungs. Sarah watched as Lindsey’s chest began to rise up and down. Checking the monitors she could see that the oxygen saturation was rising.

  “It’s time for a rhythm check,” the charge nurse called out. The room turned silent as they all turned to look at the monitor.

  “See if we have a pulse with that,” David said as he checked the carotid and Sarah checked the femoral. She held her breath.

  Please let them get this sweet girl back.

  Then she felt the weak beat under her fingers that told her that Lindsey was back with them again.

  “We have a pulse,” David announced to the room. It was as if the room itself let out a deep sigh, then the world returned to normal with everyone talking at once.

  Sarah moved with David to check the monitor.

  “She’s still not oxygenating well,” David said.

  “She was doing so much better before this respiratory infection. Her heart’s just not strong enough to handle the extra work,” Sarah said as she started looking through her phone for Lindsey’s mother’s number.

  “Dr. Benton is in the OR. I’m going to call into the room and talk to him. She’s a perfect candidate for ECMO,” David said as she looked over to where Lindsey lay.

  Gone was the laughing little girl who had excitedly shown her the pretty unicorn. Now hooked to even more monitors and drips to keep her sedated she lay still and quiet. Too quiet. Lindsey had always been a fighter, but now it was up to Sarah and the staff to fight for her.

  “You go talk to Dr. Benton. I’m going to call her mother,” she said.

  “She should’ve been here. Doesn’t she realize how sick her child is? We’ll need her to consent to take Lindsey into the OR.”

  “She’s probably at work. I have the number. I’ll get her here even if I have to go get her myself,” Sarah said as she started going through the contacts on her phone.

  “If she can’t do any better than this, how is she going to do when her daughter gets a transplant?” David said angrily before he walked out of the room.

  As Sarah began to go through the numbers she had listed for Lindsey’s mother, she wondered why David, who was usually so patient with his patients’ parents, seemed to have none for the single mom. Sarah knew that David was just concerned about Lindsey, but he had to understand that Hannah, like Breanna’s father, had to go to work to make a living to support both herself and her daughter. Although Sarah had to admit that it seemed that Hannah had been spending less time than usual with Lindsey. There was definitely something going on with Hannah and she planned to find out what it was before things went any further. If the mother needed their help she wanted to know. No one should have to go it alone in a situation like this. Only David himself had once done just that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SARAH STAYED IN the waiting room with Hannah while Dr. Benton and David took Lindsey back to the operating room to insert the needed catheters to start the child on the ECMO system that would help her heart and lungs rest while she recovered from the respiratory infection that was making her already failing heart work harder than it could.

  The doctors had explained to Hannah that Lindsey had stopped breathing, causing her heart to quit pumping, and that even though they had gotten her heart beating again they couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t arrest again and that this was the best hope she had to recover.

  Now they both waited together, a young mother who was barely holding it together and Sarah who had let her heart become involved with another child who she could lose. Sarah cared for all the children that she took care of in the hospital, but Lindsey was special. The girl had a passion for life and had fought her way through every trial her failing heart had given her. Sarah had shared her love of horses with Lindsey and hadn’t been surprised to find that the girl had quickly made friends of all the horses in the stable, which reminded her of another child, a little dark-haired boy who was quickly becoming a favorite around the stable and finding a way into her heart.

  For years she had protected her heart from the pain of losing another child she loved and now she sat here knowing that she was dangerously close to knowing that pain again. Only neither child belonged to her. She had to remember that. Right now what she needed to be doing was helping Lindsey’s mother as much as possible.

  “Hannah, is there anyone you want me to call?” she asked. As far as Sarah could remember there had never been anyone except for Hannah visiting Lindsey.

  “No, thank you,” Hannah said as she pulled at the cuffs of her sleeves.

  “Are you cold? I can get you a warm blanket. These waiting rooms are always too cold,” Sarah offered, then looked back over at the young woman who stared at the entrance to the waiting room as if in a trance. Reaching for Hannah’s hand she squeezed it.

  “It’s okay, Hannah. You’re not alone,” Sarah said as they sat there with their hands joined as they waited for news of Lindsey’s condition.

  Moments later David and a very tired-looking Dr. Benton came into the waiting room.

  “She made it through,” Dr. Benton said, taking a seat next to Hannah.

  Sarah stood and left as Dr. Benton explained the plan they had for Lindsey’s care to her mother.

  “I know that this was the best thing for Lindsey right now, but do you think her heart
will be strong enough after she gets over this respiratory issue to come off the machine?” she asked David.

  David rubbed the back of his neck, something that she was beginning to notice he did often when he was worried which didn’t make her feel any better about Lindsey’s chances.

  “To be honest, I don’t know. We discussed it before we spoke with Hannah and we all agreed that it was the only choice we had right now. If her lungs get better she’ll have a much better chance. Dr. Benton’s going to see about getting her moved up on the transplant list as soon as she starts turning around. Till then, we let her rest and we hit her with everything we have to wipe out this infection,” said David as he rubbed the back of his neck again. “I wish I knew something else to do, but for now we just have to wait.”

  It seemed to Sarah that Lindsey had been waiting most of her life for a chance to live a normal existence, instead of one that was spent having one medical procedure after another, being in and out of the hospital, and never getting to be the little girl that she deserved a chance to be. Sarah knew life didn’t always work the way it was planned. Her own life was proof of that, but she had to believe that Lindsey would someday have the life that she deserved. She just needed to hang in there until a heart could be found for her. Until then all they could do was wait.

  * * *

  Sarah watched as David once again tangled the reins as he tried to apply the bridle. She held back a laugh when Fancy turned and gave him one of her haughty looks that plainly said she wasn’t impressed. David had arrived with a new air of confidence until Sarah had told him that he would be tacking his own horse that day. It might have been that distraction that had made him agree for Jack to take Davey up to the house to see one of the smaller ponies; though it hadn’t been enough for him to not insist that they come back as soon as they finished. She had expected her father-in-law to balk at that instruction, but Jack seemed to understand that David wasn’t trying to be rude. He just felt the need to watch over his son a little more than the normal parent.

  “It looked so easy in the book. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” he said as he let go of the tangled reins and moved away from the horse.

  Jumping down from the gate she had been sitting on, Sarah reached out and took the bridle from him and once more showed him how to make sure that it didn’t tangle with the other straps. Taking pity on all three of them, she finished putting on the bridle. With the bit safely in Fancy’s mouth, she handed the reins to David and mounted Sugar.

  “Come on, let’s go have some fun,” Sarah said as she made a clicking sound with her tongue and started across to where she’d opened the gate to a large pasture. After a minute of a very one-sided conversation, Fancy decided she’d let David follow behind Sarah.

  “Remember feet all the way in the stirrup, turned in like you’re hugging Fancy with your legs,” she said as she rode up to him then reached over and placed her hands on his lower back and abdomen.

  “Shoulders back and back straight,” she said as felt his abdomen tighten under her hand. She ran her other hand up his back to his shoulders.

  “There. That’s perfect,” she said, then cleared her throat as she moved her hands away from him. Why did this have to be so awkward? She was just trying to teach him the correct way to sit. There was no reason for it to feel so intimate every time they touched. She whipped Sugar around so that he couldn’t see her face and waited for him and Fancy to catch up with her.

  For a minute there was only silence between the two of them.

  “This is beautiful,” he said as they reached the end of the pasture then turned around to face the stretch of green they had just ridden across and the white stables beyond that. “You must love living here.”

  There had been a time when the answer to that would have come easily. She had grown up not far south of Houston on a much smaller farm where her father and brother raised cattle, so she’d felt right at home after she had married Kolton and they’d moved to the farm to live with Jack. It had been a busy time in their life with Kolton starting his first job after he had graduated with an architect degree and her starting her first job as a nurse. They’d both come home exhausted but excited about their new lives together. They’d been married a year when Jack had given them the land to build their own home, declaring that the house was just too small for the three of them though they both had known Jack was trying to push them out the door so that they could start a family.

  After Kolton and Cody were gone she’d known that she could never live in the house that had been so full of promises. She’d planned to move back to the city until Jack had invited her to move back in with him. She couldn’t have said no to the man who she had come to love as a second father who was hurting as much as she was.

  “It is beautiful,” she said, thinking of the house that lay just over the next hill.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think,” David said as he began rubbing a hand down Fancy’s neck. “You lived here with your husband and son?”

  “Yes,” she said as she climbed down and looked back away from the pasture to where the woods hid the home the three of them had shared. “We made a life here together. It was all we ever wanted. Kolton was just as horse crazy as I am and we couldn’t think of a better place to raise our family. But that part of my life is gone now.”

  * * *

  David dismounted, being careful to hold Fancy’s reins as Sarah had taught him so that he could still control her. He could tell that Sarah needed to talk to someone about the loss she’d suffered. She was still holding so much pain inside of her that it couldn’t be good for her.

  “I don’t talk about my ex-wife or my divorce either. Not that I’m comparing the two. But sometimes I do wish I could talk about it. It’s like by keeping it inside I don’t have to deal with it, but I know that’s not healthy,” he said as they both started walking across the field.

  “You can talk to me,” Sarah said as she looked over at him, “if you want to, that is.”

  Surprisingly, he found that he did want to talk to her. If anyone would understand the stress a new baby—a sick new baby—could put on a marriage, she could. She dealt with not only the young patients they saw, but also their parents.

  “When Davey was born with a heart defect we didn’t know what to expect. By the time he was two he’d had four surgeries. He went on the transplant waiting list after the last one.”

  “A lot of marriages have trouble when they have a chronically sick child. You know that,” said Sarah. “Did your wife have any medical experience?”

  The only thing Lisa had experience with had been manipulating men, though he hadn’t known that until it was too late. The woman had made a fool of him long before Davey had been born. He could have forgiven her that, but he would never forgive her for running out on their son when he had needed them the most. A part of him had known from the beginning Lisa didn’t have it in her to accept what life with Davey would mean, but he had hoped that for the sake of his son that she would be able to change.

  “No. Lisa blamed a lot of her problems with dealing with Davey on the fact that he was always sick. She even blamed the time he spent in the hospital for the reason she hadn’t bonded with him.” He remembered the anger he had felt at that remark.

  “She finally decided that she didn’t have the time for a sick child like Davey in her life and then she was gone. Davey seldom mentions his mother, but then why would he when he hasn’t seen her since his second birthday when she had arrived expecting a birthday party to only find Davey back in the hospital.” And instead of staying with their son till he was well enough to leave the hospital she’d laid a fancy wrapped present on the bed and left.

  “Are you afraid that she’ll come back one day and want to be part of Davey’s life?” Sarah asked.

  She unexpectedly reached for his hand then squeezed it. When she began to pull it away, he held it ti
ghter. He had started this conversation to help Sarah be able to talk to him, to help her deal with the pain that he suspected was holding her back from moving on with her life, but here she was helping him instead. Holding her warm hand in his seemed to ease the pain and anger that he felt whenever he talked about his ex-wife.

  “A part of me is afraid she’ll come back and another part of me is afraid that she won’t. Davey deserves to have a mother in his life.” Right now all he knew was having a father, but someday that little boy would ask him why his mother wasn’t there and he didn’t know what he’d say to him.

  * * *

  As they neared the paddock, David was surprised to see his son sitting on top of a squat pony being led by Jack. He dropped Sarah’s hand before they got closer. It wouldn’t do for either Jack or Davey to get the wrong idea about their relationship.

  “Daddy, look at me,” Davey said as they got closer. “Look Miss Sarah, I’m riding just like my daddy.”

  “I see,” Sarah said as they both stopped.

  “The boy’s a natural and Humphrey needed some exercise. I hope you don’t mind,” Jack said.

  David started to assure the older man that he didn’t have a problem with Davey on the pony when he realized that Jack hadn’t been talking to him. It was Sarah that he’d wanted to make sure was okay that Davey was riding. Did her father-in-law think that Sarah didn’t trust him with Davey? But that didn’t make any sense at all.

  “It’s fine, Jack. Humphrey is perfect for Davey right now,” she said, then turned away and went inside the building.

  Then it hit him. Humphrey must have been her son’s horse. How old had the child been? The pony was a good fit for Davey partly because he was much smaller than most of the children his age. Had her son been younger? There were so many questions he had and none of them were his business he reminded himself.