A Nurse in Crisis

by Lilian Darcy

  Rebecca’s pregnancy had begun to show, but she was tall enough that there was plenty of room in there, so her bump was neat and taut and unobtrusive. She had just started to wear a repertoire of deliciously flattering maternity outfits, cleverly designed so that many people wouldn’t have realised she was pregnant at all.

  Aimee had never before experienced the shameful torment of being jealous of someone’s good fortune, and she battled against feeling it now, but not always with success.

  Rebecca was positively breezing, floating, dancing through her pregnancy, and it wasn’t fair that the case should be so different for Sarah, who’d scarcely got rid of her unrelenting and violent morning sickness, and hadn’t shaken off her fatigue at all, before the sensation of bloating and discomfort had taken hold. Now there remained this horrible cloud over the baby’s health.

  ‘Want some tea?’ Deirdre offered, just as Rebecca herself came through the front door. She was singing.

  ‘Yes, please,’ Aimee answered quickly.

  ‘Morning, all!’ Rebecca carolled blithely, and Aimee had to struggle to give a cheery greeting in reply.

  She heard from Jason about an hour later, when the practice was humming along with its morning routine.

  ‘The amniotic fluid index was sky high. They did the drain. Just over three litres,’ he reported, ‘but she’s having some strong contractions.’ He sounded strained and exhausted. ‘The drugs don’t seem to be helping, and they’re getting concerned that they won’t be able to stop it.’

  ‘Is that OK?’ Aimee asked uselessly. ‘I mean, what have they said? Is it Dr Gaines?’

  ‘He’s been in and out. There’s nurses. I’m losing track. Sarah’s handling it OK. Just going by her state, I’d say it’s going to happen.’

  ‘OK. OK,’ Aimee breathed. The word, repeated by both of them, was nonsense. Nothing was OK!

  This is my daughter. I’ve done it myself. I’ve given birth three times. What was it like? I can’t remember any more. And I never had this cloud…

  ‘I need to get back to her,’ Jason said. ‘She reckons it hurts worse when I’m not there.’

  ‘Oh, it does! I remember that!’

  Aimee had been in the first generation of mothers to have their husbands present during labour and delivery, and suddenly the memories returned. Alan’s hand in hers. His words of encouragement. He’d been ill at ease, not sure about his role. He hadn’t always said the right thing, but his presence had helped enormously all the same, and she knew that Jason would do a wonderful job with Sarah.

  ‘Go, then, Jason,’ she told him. ‘Give her all my love.’

  ‘You still won’t leave, will you?’ Marshall said softly to her when he found her hiding in the treatment room between patients an hour later, her hands fluttering and her breathing shallow.

  ‘No,’ she answered, ‘but I’m going to phone the hospital.’

  She felt his arm fall lightly onto her shoulder. It had just begun to warm her through the fabric of her blue-green linen blouse when he let its weight rest there fully. He’d been giving her time, she knew, to shrug her way out of the contact if she didn’t want it.

  But, oh, she did! She wanted it so badly!

  It had been weeks since he had touched her deliberately, and even the handful of times when it had happened by accident had obviously been occasions he’d tried to avoid by keeping his distance. A couple of times her skirt had brushed his trousers in the corridor. She’d felt his shoulder nudge her side as he’d sat at the front desk, scanning some notes, while she reached past him for a file. Once they’d bumped into each other in a doorway, and his hands had shot out in a reflexive gesture to steady them both by holding her upper arms.

  Now she let herself lean into him, amazed at how familiar and right he still felt, despite all the awkwardness she’d thrown up between them. Standing behind her, he enclosed her in his arms, her head pressed back against his chest and his forearms beneath her breasts, her back and thighs warmed by the full length of him, and it wasn’t until she felt his lips press the top of her head that she knew how unfair this was to both of them, and that she had to end it.

  ‘I must make the phone call,’ she gasped, and twisted out of his arms.

  ‘Tell me the news,’ he urged her stiffly. ‘You know…how much I care, Aimee.’

  She nodded, unconsciously closing her eyes, and wilfully misunderstood his words. ‘The whole practice cares,’ she answered him. ‘And that helps.’

  Phoning the hospital, she was transferred twice before she reached the right person and heard, ‘Still not sure what’s happening. Strong, irregular contractions. They may settle down.’

  It was reassuring enough to allow her to get on with her work, and she didn’t hear any more until nearly three o’clock, when Jason rang again to gabble, ‘It’s not stopping. It’s happening. Only a minute between contractions now, and she’s seven centimetres dilated. I can’t think.’

  ‘I’ll come straight to the hospital after work,’ she promised urgently, but he’d already put down the phone.

  ‘Aimee, why don’t you go now?’ Rebecca said gently, having overheard the promise and understanding the urgency in Aimee’s tone.

  ‘If just one more person says that to me, just one more time!’ she threatened darkly in reply, her voice high and strident. Then she bit her lip.

  Damn! Damn! Damn! Rebecca was really trying to be nice. I could hear the care in her voice, and I blew it!

  ‘I’m sorry, Rebecca, I really am. That was completely uncalled for.’

  ‘Hey…’ The younger woman touched her arm, and Aimee was astonished to see tears in her eyes. ‘Please, don’t apologise! We all know what’s going on. You must be a mess, and I think it’s incredible that you’re here at all, and carrying on in your usual calm, efficient and pleasant way.’

  ‘Oh, Rebecca…’

  Rebecca sniffed and had to pull a tissue from the box on the front desk. ‘Hormones!’ she said. ‘Sorry. I’m thinking about that tiny girl!’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll just take Mrs Morgan’s blood, and then head off,’ Aimee conceded, moved by Rebecca’s empathy when things were so awkward between them.

  ‘Do that,’ Rebecca agreed. ‘And phone someone…Dad, I guess,’ she suggested uncertaintly, ‘when there’s some news.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Aimee nodded.

  She took the blood and prepared it for sending out to the pathology lab in a state of shaky determination to stay focused, then left at a quarter past three and reached Southshore Hospital several minutes later.

  A nurse at the entrance to the labour and delivery ward reported, ‘She’s very, very close. There’ll be some news soon.’

  Fifteen minutes after that, Jason appeared to report with a mixture of exultation and tears, ‘She’s born. She’s beautiful. Little. She weighs two kilos. What’s that? About four and a half pounds? We’re calling her Bonnie Louise. They’ve taken her away to check her.’

  He disappeared again, and Aimee allowed a passing nurse to persuade her in the direction of a cup of tea, though she drank only a sip of it. Then Jason was back.

  ‘They’ve confirmed the diagnosis,’ he said. ‘Oesophageal atresia and a trackeo-oesophageal fistula.’

  This had been an expected part of the condition—an opening between the lower pouch of the incomplete oesophagus and the windpipe leading to the lungs—but Aimee had been praying for better news. She knew how dangerous it could be, and wondered how much detail Jason and Sarah had been given. Stomach acid could flood upwards past the weak valve at the base of the oesophagus, through the hole and into the lungs, where it could critically damage the delicate new lung tissue.

  ‘They’re going to operate within the next few hours,’ Jason finished.

  It was the news they’d been expecting for two months, but that didn’t make the reality of it any easier. Permitted to see the baby briefly before her journey down to the paediatric unit, Aimee was appalled at how small Bonnie Louise seemed. How
could she possibly survive such dramatic, invasive surgery?

  Aimee had never liked surgery. She had memories—they seemed ominous now—of her stint in Theatres during her training over thirty years ago. Short-tempered surgeons, formidable nurses, rigid protocols and the drama of cutting and blood, monitors, respirators and tension stretched like high-voltage wires throughout the room.

  Some things, she knew, had changed in thirty years. Tiny Bonnie’s chances of survival and long-term health were vastly improved, and that was the most important difference. But the essential drama was the same. The baby was tiny, the surgery was her only chance of survival and every variable was critical.

  Aimee had to battle to keep her mood high when she was allowed in to see Sarah, who was still in a state of postpartum triumph.

  ‘She’s gorgeous! And she had a great cry, Mum! Really strong! They say that’s good. And I did it without drugs. I didn’t want anything that might depress her system. Have you seen her yet?’

  ‘Yes, she’s beautiful.’

  ‘And strong, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, strong, yes.’ In spirit, maybe. Perhaps Sarah was perceiving this with a mother’s instinct. Aimee hoped so.

  The next few hours were a blur, filled with random scenes that would stay in her memory for ever. There was the maze of clean, bright hospital corridors. There was Sarah, transferred to a single room and starting to come down from her postpartum high as she focused on what lay ahead.

  Aimee blessed the nursing staff for their sensitivity in allowing her daughter a room to herself when a good percentage of the rooms here were doubles. The last thing Sarah needed was the sight of another woman happily enjoying her healthy, normal baby.

  Sarah was tired, still bleeding quite heavily, impatient for a shower. She’d wanted to see Bonnie once more before the surgery, but Dr Gaines had persuaded her that it would be better to wait and concentrate on her own recovery.

  ‘She’ll need you to be strong and rested later on.’

  Then there was Jason, trying to be the strong one, trying to remember every word the doctors told him and every movement the nurses made over baby Bonnie, trying to ask all the right questions so he could report it all back to Sarah. Aimee ached for him as she’d have ached if he’d been her own son.

  His parents were overseas at the moment, sorting out Jason’s elderly grandfather’s living circumstances in Scotland, and he must have felt their absence as they were a nice couple and he was close to them.

  There were the faces of the staff, unfamiliar, uniform in their concern and helpfulness, trying their very best.

  And, finally, there was Bonnie. Aimee was able to see her twice more before she disappeared into surgery at seven. Each time they were mere glimpses, and each time Bonnie seemed more distanced by the frightening technology of modern medicine.

  Already prepared for her journey to the operating theatre, she was in a special warmer with its own heating and was almost lost amongst the wires of three monitors, one on her hand and two on her chest. Also, there was the gold disc of a heat sensor on her stomach, a drip in her arm and a suction tube in her mouth.

  Aimee stood helplessly by as Jason listened to explanations from the anaesthesia registrar, James Butler, and the surgeon, Denny Rutherford. There were X-rays to look at, suggesting that there was a second blockage at the exit from the stomach, but this wouldn’t be known for certain until later on.

  Jason nodded at Dr Rutherford’s explanation, but Aimee could tell he was just going through the motions. You had to be an expert to really see the problem on those grainy grey and white and blue-black films.

  When Bonnie was wheeled away, Jason said at once, ‘I’m going back to Sarah.’

  Aimee decided aloud, ‘I’ll go home, I think, Jase. She won’t be out of surgery for at least two hours, will she?’

  ‘That’s what they’ve said.’

  ‘I’ll come back then. Don’t forget to eat, love.’

  Her heart was heavy with empathy and she wanted to stay, but knew that he and Sarah needed some time alone more than they needed her hovering about.

  Leaving the hospital in body, however, it didn’t mean that she was leaving it in spirit. Her final glimpse of Bonnie haunted her and she felt exhausted and balanced on a knife-edge of fear. Her nursing experience was a curse, not a blessing, today. She’d seen ill newborns before, and had suffered through their pain, but this was her own grandchild, Sarah’s first baby…

  She drove for some minutes without consciously thinking about what she was doing. Driving was one of those things that came to be automatic after so many years of it, and she knew her way around Sydney like the native Sydneysider she was.

  Then, ahead of her, a small yellow car darted out of a parking space at the side of the road and she slammed on her brakes. She came to a jarring halt less than a metre before contact, but the yellow car simply roared off without so much as a wave of apology from its driver.

  Shakily, Aimee pushed on the accelerator once more, rather shocked by the incident, despite its harmless outcome. That had been her own fault as much as the other driver’s. She’d better pay more attention to the road.

  The road…

  Now she suddenly felt sick as she took in her surroundings properly for the first time. This wasn’t the route from Southshore Hospital to Summer Hill. This was Marshall’s street, a short cut she’d often taken from Anzac Parade through to Woollahra, skirting the edge of Centennial Park.

  But she didn’t live in Woollahra any more.

  After a cursory glance in her rear-view mirror, she pulled into a parking space, too upset to go on. She’d come miles out of her way, it was almost dark and she’d done this stupid thing! What on earth did that say about her state of mind, and about her feelings towards her new home? She shouldn’t be driving in this state.

  Needing to walk and to breathe deeply for a few minutes in order to settle herself, Aimee got out of the car and crossed to the park, aware of Marshall’s house so close by. It was only a hundred metres or so ahead, just around a bend. It would be so good to see him, but that wasn’t what either of them needed. Not when she was feeling like this.

  But fate didn’t seem to care about what was good for either of them today. Aimee saw him just a minute later, evidently returning from his evening jog through the park and heading for the pedestrian entrance just metres from where she stood as she tried to bring her breathing and her emotions back under control.

  He didn’t see her at first, and she debated the possibility of running away from the encounter, turning tail across the street and hiding in her car until he’d safely reached his house. She decided against it at the same moment that he caught sight of her, and had just enough time to calm herself a little before he slowed to a stop in front of her, his breathing heavy and his expression eager and concerned.

  Before he could reach the wrong conclusion, she jumped in, ‘I’m so silly, Marsh. I came the wrong way. Pure habit. Like a horse at a bad riding school, or something.’ She tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a hysterical hiccup. ‘Then when I realised, I got so jittery about it I had to stop. What an utterly foolish thing to do!’

  Again she laughed, a high-pitched trill to her own ears.

  Marshall was frowning, his hands on his hips and his head thrown slightly back as he attempted to slow his breathing.

  ‘No, I’m the fool,’ he said slowly, between heaving breaths. ‘For a moment I thought you’d actually come because you needed to, because you couldn’t help it. You needed someone to talk to about Sarah and the baby, and I was the person it had to be. But I should have known better. Lord knows, it’d be too much to expect that you’d actually get over whatever fear it is that’s stopping you from accepting what we could have together. Clearly, in your case it’s not a self-limiting illness, and if there’s a cure, I don’t have it!’

  He turned from her, leaning his hands on his knees, still cooling off from what must have been an extended run tonight
.

  Aimee struggled for a moment before trying to speak. ‘Marshall, I—’

  ‘No, don’t say anything.’ He wheeled around again. ‘I’m sorry. That was unforgivable. All of it.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t. No, of course it wasn’t, Marsh!’ she repeated insistently.

  They stood there, looking helplessly at each other. It was getting darker by the minute and she couldn’t see his face nearly as well as she wanted to. He’d been angry a moment ago. Was he still?

  The connection between them was so strong it was all she could do not to touch him. She felt as if she were suddenly blind, and the only way she could communicate or understand was the way a blind person would have, through touch. If she touched him, held him, felt his arms around her and the movement of his breathing, his mouth closing over hers, then she’d—

  What? Nothing was in doubt, was it? She knew how she felt about him, and how much more she could feel if she let herself. She knew she’d hurt him, too, which told her how he felt towards her.

  Who was it who had once said that you only hurt those you loved? Or had it been those who loved you? She couldn’t remember. Maybe she’d made it up!

  And anyway, the issue of what they each felt wasn’t in question. It was the complexity of their lives—hers, in particular—that lay between them.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aimee,’ he said again. ‘I’ve no right to bring any of this up now, and in such a way. Let’s agree that you acted somewhat irrationally, and that you had every right to! Please, come in for a while, and tell me about Sarah and the baby.’

  ‘Can I?’ she asked him starkly. ‘I—I think I need to. If you mean it…’

  ‘Oh, believe me, I mean it!’ Marshall said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘HAVE you eaten yet?’ Marshall asked Aimee once they were inside.

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I told Jason to, but then I…’ She laughed, and shook her head. ‘I wasn’t hungry at all before, but now I am. I haven’t eaten all day.’