Emma by Fiona McArthur

Author:Fiona McArthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648718192
Publisher: Fiona McArthur

Chapter Eighteen

Gianni

Gianni watched Emma’s face, having missed her with an aching need that grated with a rawness he hadn’t expected. Now he could see her he felt more settled. Then he saw her frown and glance at him. He hoped Montana’s call was not going to take her away from him now that he had finally managed to capture her company.

‘I’ll come straight away,’ she said before hanging up the phone, and Gianni frowned. There must be something wrong.

‘Montana needs a quick hand. Will you come with me? A post-partum haemorrhage with a birthing mum.’

‘Yes, of course I will come,’ he said, but he was speaking to Emma’s back and he hurried to catch her as she strode swiftly across the grass to the rear of the hospital where the little birthing centre was situated.

When they arrived, Montana and the nurse with her had helped the new mother from the bath and returned her to bed.

Gianni glanced at the pool of red. It would be hard to tell the extent of a bleed in the bath, but from the little he’d seen of this unit, Montana would be no careless attendant and would have moved swiftly at any deviation from normal.

‘This is Elise and Trent,’ Montana said as the nurse pressed a warm blanket around the mother’s upper body.

Trent sat with his shirt off and his new baby skin to skin against his chest. A blanket lay across his shoulders as he looked on helplessly. Montana massaged the woman’s belly to encourage the uterus to contract and took the second warm blanket Emma handed her. They spread it over Elise’s legs.

The woman appeared pale and shocked, and Gianni swiftly inserted the second intravenous cannula that Montana indicated and took the bloods for the clotting factors and cross-matching she wanted.

Post-partum haemorrhage, most often due to the failure of the uterine muscle to clamp down on the richly blood-vesselled bed inside the uterus, could bleed at an alarming rate. The husband certainly looked alarmed, and Gianni could well imagine thoughts that would run through a man’s brain as his wife bled so dramatically in front of him.

Christos, he knew that feeling, he thought as he worked. He had watched his own wife die from snakebite miles from any help. Gianni had watched Maria’s life slip away, but there was little risk of that here with what was available, so he nodded with empathy to the man as he completed his task. ‘All will be well.’

Emma loaded and hung the medicated flask with the drug most often used to help the muscles of the uterus contract and gave a further drug as a separate injection. Montana continued to rub Elise’s uterus though the skin of her belly and gradually the flow slowed to a trickle and finally stopped completely.

Gianni and Emma’s eyes met with relief and Emma slid the blood-pressure cuff over Elise’s arm while Montana assessed the woman’s pulse as she spoke to Gianni. ‘It started slow, so wasn’t too bad before we got out of the bath, but it flowed once we made it to the bed.

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