Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw

Author:Charlotte Grimshaw [Grimshaw, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Fiction
ISBN: 0224088939
Google: 7icrAQAAIAAJ
Amazon: B004R1R574
Goodreads: 6471277
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 2008-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

Simon was on call during a weekend when a lot of the staff were down with flu. There was an air of crisis, of heroic making do. Everyone was tired; everyone had been rostered on for too long.

At nine in the evening a woman was wheeled in. She was ten days overdue, and the labour wasn’t progressing.

He walked into the room and picked up the chart. He read it and then looked at her. She was twenty-one. She had a round, handsome face, glossy black hair and green eyes. The eyes were striking — too pale for the dark face. She grimaced with pain, showing a couple of missing teeth.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Mereana.’

There was a hefty woman in a beige uniform at the side of the bed.

The patient needed her blood pressure taken. He went to do it himself, since they were short-staffed. He said, ‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’

He pointed. ‘Take it off,’ he said.

The woman in the uniform looked where he was pointing. She said, ‘Oh yeah. Sorry. I forgot. I had to go out for a minute …’

Anger and tiredness made him shaky. He said, ‘Look at her. Look at her.’

His pager went. He looked at it and swore. He said, ‘She’s in labour. How far do you think she’s going to get if she tries to run away. Even you could catch her.’

The woman smirked. ‘Sorry. My mistake.’

Simon and the patient stared at each other. She panted and suddenly screwed up her eyes.

‘It’s a contraction,’ he said, feeling her stomach. ‘You’re doing fine.’

The big woman picked up the plastic handcuff that attached the patient’s wrist to the metal edge of the bed. She took it off, giving Simon a hard, ironic smile.

Simon said, ‘Mereana. Your baby’s in the posterior position. That means it’s going to take a bit longer to push out. I’m going to give you something to bring it on. I think you should have an epidural. For pain relief.

She agreed to all this, rubbing her wrist. He saw the mark from the plastic cuff.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he told her, and squeezed her foot through the sheet.

He left her to the midwife and went to get hold of the anaesthetist. He got the patient set up and went to another woman down the hall. He went between the two for a while, then drove home. The drive took him less than five minutes. Later in the night, when he was writing in his journal with Elke beside him, they called him back.

The patient, Mereana was sweating, crying and distressed. She had progressed quickly, and they had allowed the anaesthetic to wear off so she could push. The drugs were making her shake, and she was vomiting.

The prison guard was standing by the bed holding a stack of paper cups. The midwife was peering between the patient’s legs.

‘Mereana?’

The patient cried and moaned. The midwife looked sideways at Simon, communicating silently. He bent down beside her.

‘Is she all right?’ the guard asked.

The midwife handed her a cup full of vomit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.