“I’m a doctor, yes, ma’am.”
She was gasping between the contractions, which were only seconds apart. Things were going to happen very soon.
I rolled up my sleeves, quickly washed my hands, and found a pack of disposable sterile gloves in my bag. It had been a long time since I had delivered a baby.
“Easy now, take slow breaths. Easy, easy…”
As I said, it had been a while, but I couldn’t forget. My reflexes have grown slower, my eyesight not as keen, but I still knew. I saw the cervix one-hundred-percent dilated. I saw the baby’s head.
Thank God it was a vertex (head) presentation.
I reached in using two fingers of my left hand to guide the baby’s head down and to the left, as my right hand eased first one shoulder and then the next through that life portal. My efforts were rewarded with a loud, red-faced squall.
It was a boy.
I had set two hemostats (clamps) on paper towels, and now I used them to clamp off the umbilical cord. Once more my bag brought forth what I needed—scissors—and I cut the cord between the clamps. Then I applied gentle pressure to the young woman’s abdomen, and the placenta—that amazing organ joining the baby to its mother that is the baby’s lifeline—eased out of the uterus.
I wrapped the newborn in an extra sheet and held it. I looked at the woman, now forever Mama, Mommy—Mother!
“What’s your son’s name?”
She was tired.
“We haven’t decided yet.”
She looked at me.
“Is the ambulance outside?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how did you…”
“I was in the room next door.”
I handed the baby to her, and she held it against her breast as I sat, exhausted.
“What’s your name?”
She smiled at me.
“Galen. Robert Galen. And yours?”
“Tammy Santos. We we’re heading south to Florida for work, and then my water broke. How did you get here?”
I told her of my trip to Florida for my friend’s funeral and eulogy. I told her how he and I had once roamed the farmland that had defined this area so many years ago. And I told her of my visit to his family plot.
“What was his name?”
She was getting sleepy now, but I told her.
The ambulance siren startled us both.
The door flew open, and a crew of EMTs rushed in, followed by a haggard young man calling out, “Tammy, Tammy, are you all right?”
One of the techs looked at me and saw my bag on the side table.
“You a doc, old timer?”
“Yeah, young fella—and I’m not so old yet. Better check the baby’s blood sugar. Get him warmed up and him and his mama to the hospital. Oh, I saved the placenta. Be sure to give it to the hospital, too. His time of birth was 6:50 a.m.
“How’s that sound to you, youngster?”
“You still got it, Doc!”
“Damn straight!”
He wrapped up mother and child and wheeled them outside. It was dawn.
Outside, I saw a row of small sparrows lined up and huddling together on the power line, as the ambulance door opened and the techs gently lifted Tammy and her new son inside.
One of them suddenly looked and exclaimed, “Will ya looka that! Ain’t never seen one a’them ’roun’ heah.”
Across the highway, sitting on the top branch of a large pine tree, was a golden eagle.
As the other tech was about to close the back door of the ambulance, Tammy called out, “We’re going to name him David.”
The ambulance drove off, heading east into the sunrise. The little sparrows followed it.
The eagle took off from the pine tree, circled above my head, and flew in the opposite direction.
I waved at it.
That day, an eagle flew west.
***
In the aviation world, pilots honor the passing of their friends with the valedictory, “An eagle flew west.”
Blue skies, forever, Country Boy.
R.A. Comunale is a semi-retired physician in family practice and a specialist in aviation medicine who lives and works out of his home office in McLean, Virginia. He enjoys writing, gardening, electronics, pounding on a piano, and yelling at his dimwitted cat. He describes himself as an eccentric and iconoclast.
The cat is seeking palimony.
Dr. Galen's Little Black Bag Page 19
