The Surgeon's Baby Secret by Amber McKenzie

Author:Amber McKenzie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

ERIN WALKED THROUGH the emergency department with her normal sense of unease heightened. She hadn’t had time to check who the attending emergency physician was. She was still counting the days until she was done at Boston General and holding her breath that her secret would remain hidden from Ryan.

As the chief resident, Erin ran her own clinic, filled with patients she took primary responsibility for. Tara, an infertility patient, had called that morning with all the classic symptoms of hyperstimulation syndrome, a condition in which as a result of fertility treatments, overstimulated ovaries caused excess fluid all over the body. Normally she would see all her patients in clinic, well away from Ryan in the emergency department, but Tara had sounded sick on the phone and Erin was worried she was going to need to be more closely monitored.

That morning she had chosen a fitted, knee-length yellow dress with a boat neck, which she had paired with her favorite string of black beads and black slingback low-rise heels. It was perfect for clinic, but she looked and felt out of place in the emergency department.

“Has Tara Compton arrived yet?” she asked the main unit clerk.

“Yes, Dr. Madden, she’s in treatment room four.”

Erin’s assessment had been right. If Tara’s symptoms had been mild she would have been placed in one of the lesser acuity rooms. She shook her head. She shouldn’t have triggered her ovaries and done the retrieval. She had known throughout Tara’s treatment cycle that this was a risk. Her ovaries had responded too well to the medication she’d received and had swelled beyond normal size. But Tara had begged her. Her husband had severe infertility problems and in vitro fertilization had been their only hope of pregnancy. They had saved for five years and this cycle was their only shot at a family. So Erin had persisted and performed the egg retrieval earlier in the week, doing everything she could to lower the risk, but it hadn’t been enough.

She walked into the room and struggled to keep her feelings inside. Tara looked very unwell, sitting upright in bed and leaning forward as she struggled to catch her breath. Her abdomen was visibly swollen, so much so that she already looked six months pregnant. Erin glanced at the monitor screen displaying her patient’s vitals. Tara’s blood pressure was low and her respiratory and heart rates were both above normal.

“Hi, Tara,” she greeted her, trying to keep any sense of alarm from her voice.

“Dr. Madden, I don’t feel well.” Erin noticed that she sounded breathless trying to complete the simple sentence.

“I know,” Erin empathized. She already knew Tara and her history well, so she directed her attention to the immediate problem. “When did this start?”

“Yesterday.”

“What is bothering you most?”

“I can’t seem to catch my breath and my stomach is hard and swollen.”

Erin listened to her chest, noting the decreased breath sound at her lung bases. She tapped her fingers on the base of the lung fields, noting the fullness.

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