The Quiet Wards by Lucilla Andrews

Author:Lucilla Andrews [Andrews, Lucilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Romance, Jean Fullerton, midwife, Nadine Dorries, nurses, 1950s, Donna Douglas, Maggie Hope, hospital, Nightingales series, nursing, maternity, Casualty, doctors
Publisher: Corazon Books (Doctors and Nurses)
Published: 2017-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

MY MIND DECIDES FOR ITSELF

It was very hot in the theatre that evening; far more hot than was usual because the heat had been raised intentionally to counteract the shock of birth for the child who had yet to be born. Sister Mary’s forehead was purple, as if her mask was too tight; and the men, standing directly under the great light that illuminated the table, breathed as if they had been running hard.

It was very quiet; so quiet that the faint sizzling that came from the anaesthetic machine seemed deafening, the muffled clink of instruments being replaced on Sister’s covered trolley was a clatter, and the throbbing of the air-plant in the roof sounded ominous. Then even those sounds seemed to stop and the three young men round the table drew back slightly and stiffened like a well-trained chorus. The fourth, Tom, was holding the silver retractors in position. John lifted the baby and held him high over the table. The baby’s skin looked very white against the brown of his gloves. The baby had black hair.

‘Come on, chum,’ said John, ‘try breathing.’

The baby hung lifeless. John slipped his hands up and held both the feet in one hand, then slapped the fat, perfect little back.

‘Come on, chum,’ he said again, ‘say something.’ He squeezed the minute chest wall, ‘Sister, I may need ‒’ but he did not need anything. The baby suddenly disapproved of his manhandling and let out a pathetic little wail. A faint sigh echoed round the theatre, as if we too had all been holding our breath.

John wrapped the baby in a clean towel and handed him to the staff midwife. ‘He’s all yours, Nurse.’

She took the baby and laid him in his cot. She tilted the foot of the cot, so that the baby was nearly standing on his head; he went on crying for a few minutes, and then there was silence. I had a free moment, so I crossed over to look at him. The staff midwife jerked her thumb upward. The baby was lying with one hand pressed like a starfish over his mouth. He looked very bored, and very normal.

When it was all over, and the mother had been wheeled away, John peeled off his gloves. ‘Is that girl’s husband around, Sister?’

She said he was waiting in Mary.

He said he was glad. ‘I’d like a word with him. I think it’s time someone told him the facts of life. I wonder what he would have done with his wife today if he had been somewhere where there was no general hospital on tap?’

Sister sorted her instruments. ‘I understand they consider childbirth a natural occurrence, and did not bother about the possibility of complications.’

John stretched his fingers. The O.H.P. whose case this was said, ‘I had a chat with him, sir, but I don’t know that he took in any of what I was saying.’

‘He didn’t, eh?’ John took off his cap and gown and dropped them on the table.

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