by Andrews, Amy
a lot of their patients had done terrible things. It wasn’t his job to pick and choose who they operated on and the backgrounds of the people needing treatment didn’t matter — everyone got the same surgical options.
But Peter’s death and the unfairness of it all still weighed on everyone’s minds and Gill knew that Katya’s statement wouldn’t be far from their thoughts as they operated tonight.
The phone rang again and Gill snatched it up before it had
a chance to ring again. ‘Yes?’ He listened for a moment not quite believing what he was hearing. ‘Female with a pneumothorax, needing a Caesar,’ he repeated. ‘She’s 35 weeks and the baby’s in foetal distress.’
The team didn’t move for a second, no doubt all as stunned as he. Gill hadn’t ever performed a C-section in the middle of a war zone before. He couldn’t even look at Harriet.
‘Well, come on, guys,’ he said, a sharp edge to his voice. ‘We have to get this baby out.’
They moved then, spurred by the urgency of Gill’s tone. Harriet was the last one out. ‘A baby, Gill?’ She shook her head, her expression inscrutable. ‘How ironic.’ And then she was gone, too.
Gill shut his eyes momentarily, pressing his forehead to the wall. What a day. The divorce, his grandfather. Nimuk and Peter. And now...a baby!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - 1900 HOURS
It was Harriet’s turn to scrub in. She almost passed. She almost said to Siobhan and Katya that she would circulate again but a stubborn brain cell somewhere refused to let Gill off the hook. He was going to have to look her in the eye as he passed the baby to her and she would meet his gaze with a silent challenge in hers.
It would say, you, too, could have this. You, too, could
create human life and rejoice in it and make a real contribution to this world.
Sure, he already did that but this was so much more personal. This was about fulfilling biological destiny, becoming the person all human beings were born to become.
A parent.
She left Katya and Siobhan setting up as she tied her mask
in place and flicked on the taps. Ripping open a sterile pre-soaped sponge, Harriet began her thorough three-minute surgical
scrub. She started at her fingertips, paying special attention
to her nail beds, and worked her way down the fingers to the
palms and backs of her hands.
Gill joined her and began his scrub at the sink beside her.
She ignored him as much as she could ignore possibly one of the most gorgeous men on the planet, and continued working the sponge down, scrubbing at her wrists and further still until all the way down to her elbows was now sterile.
She held her soapy arms upright in front of her as she put them back under the tap and let water and soap sluice off her arms, running from her fingertips and dripping off her elbows.
Harriet shut off the tap with a push of her elbow and stood
still for a moment, waiting for the elbow dripping to settle. She flapped her arms a little to hasten the process.
As she departed, her arms still upright, Gill said, ‘Did
the paracetamol help?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ It had, actually. The niggle was noticeable when she moved, but had practically all but disappeared otherwise. But she would have said yes even if it
hadn’t been the case. She wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of being right.
Harriet had her gown on and was just finishing gloving when Gill entered the theatre. She moved away from the trolley as he approached and busied herself at the other trolley near the operating table, opening packs and sorting her instruments. She asked for Betadine to be poured into one of the metal bowls and did a swab and instrument count with Siobhan followed by a suction check.
The silence in the theatre was broken as Joan and Helmut wheeled a hysterical woman inside. She was crying and moaning and Theire was talking calmly to her. Goose-bumps broke out beneath the long sleeves of Harriet’s gown at the cries that needed no interpreting.
It was patently obvious as the woman clutched at her abdomen that she was terrified over the welfare of her baby. Harriet felt her own abdomen twinge in sympathy, responding to the young mother’s plight. She couldn’t be much more than twenty and the ugly tube hanging out of one side of her chest would have been more than enough to deal with.
Theire explained as the woman shuffled over onto the
operating table that Joan was going to put her to sleep and when she woke up she would have a beautiful baby. Harriet kept her fingers crossed they didn’t encounter any complications.
Joan injected an anaesthetic agent into her IV and the woman’s cries petered out.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Gill.
Joan intubated the woman and had her hooked up to monitors
and ready to go in five minutes. Harriet passed Gill the drapes one at a time until the woman completely disappeared beneath a sea of green and they had a large, sterile operative field.
Joan nodded at Gill, indicating that everything was good to
begin. ‘Prep,’ he said.
Harriet passed him the bowl of Betadine and a swab on a stick. He dipped the swab into the dark brown liquid and liberally applied it to the woman’s abdomen. Gill opened his mouth to ask for the scalpel and found it in his hand before he could even get the word out.
‘Thank you, Harry,’ he murmured, and there was a brief moment when their gazes met above their masks and he saw a flash of the old Harriet.
The one he’d been happily married to for five years before she’d changed the plot on him. The one who could anticipate his needs in an operating theatre better than anyone else he had worked with. He missed that Harriet.
Ella came on, singing Mack the Knife, and Gill almost smiled at the appropriateness as he made a horizontal incision low, just above the woman’s pubic bone. Blood welled up from the incision and he mopped it up with towels and used diathermy on the bleeding points, the smell of burning flesh permeating his mask.
Quickly, Gill achieved a bloodless field and could see the pink colour of the stretched uterus. Next he made a similar shallow incision into the uterine wall and took the blunt dissection instrument Harriet gave him and slowly opened up the incision further, making it wider and deeper with each separation of the uterine fibres. He stopped when he saw the membranes glistening like a peeled grape.
‘Ready for the suction,’ he said out of habit, but Harriet was already poised with the sucker in hand.
He used the scalpel again to pierce through the two membranes. As the clear, sweet-smelling amniotic fluid spouted
out of the hole, Harriet efficiently sucked it away then Gill used his gloved fingers to tear the membranes open.
‘Come on, little one. Time for the big bad world,’ he said,
supporting the head as he gently eased the baby out through the incision.
Gill felt the team’s collective breath hold as he laid the silent newborn down on the drapes and sucked her nose and mouth with a catheter Harriet had passed him. He was conscious of her clamping and cutting the cord as he cleared the baby’s airways.
The baby girl did not like it one little bit and a lusty wail and flailing fists were the response to the potent stimulus. Gill felt, rather than heard, the collective sigh of
relief as Joan injected the syntocin into the woman’s IV to aid the expulsion of the placenta.
‘What a beautiful noise,’ said Helmut.
Sure, Gill thought as he picked up the wet bawling infant, until you had to wake up to it every night at 2 a.m. But then something happened as he passed the infant down into Harriet’s waiting, green-drape-covered arms. A flash of what it would be
like to pass their newborn to her, still wet from its birth.
The bundle he was holding suddenly felt very precious and
he eased the baby girl ever so gently into his wife’s arms and watched as she stared at the child’s face with utter fascination. H
arriet rocked the baby gently as she wrapped the
little one in the green cloth to keep her warm and her cries quietened.
He watched, fascinated, as the woman and child blinked at each other and then suddenly Harriet was looking up at him with wonder in her eyes and he felt a twinge of something deep inside. She looked so beautiful with that look in her eyes, even through the layers of theatre clothes and her face obscured by a mask.
Katya cleared her throat behind them and broke the intensity of their connection. Harriet handed the baby over to Katya, who also had her arms draped with a sterile towel so that Harriet wouldn’t contaminate herself and Gill pulled his head back in the game.
He wished there was a paediatrician standing by to give the baby the once-over, but this was a war zone. They made do with what they had with Joan assuming the paediatric role as Gill concentrated on the continuing operation.
He performed a controlled cord traction, gently pulling on the thick, rope-like structure to ease the placenta out. It came away and Harriet presented him with a kidney dish. He placed the placenta in the metal container and Harriet turned and passed it to Katya.
‘Large swab,’ he said, as he eased the now deflated
uterus out of the mother’s body.
Harriet passed him the thin but absorbent cloth with the radio-opaque strip down the centre. He spread it out over his open hand, inserted his hand into the uterus via the incision and did a sweep of the inside to ensure no products had been left behind.
Satisfied that all seemed in order, he asked Harriet for a suture so he could close. She passed it to him and he listened to her and Siobhan doing a count as he began his layered closure.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - 2000 HOURS
HARRIET, Katya and Siobhan were cleaning up as Gill accompanied the mother and baby along with Megan back to the medical building. They weren’t HDU candidates and they didn’t require evacuation either so it was back to Kelly and her teams.
The battle was still intense in the distance as Gill and Megan pushed the trolley along the concrete pathway that connected the two buildings. There was no lighting so Gill was thankful for the gentle kiss of the full moon.
‘There’s a bit of a lull at the moment,’ Kelly said, as she
accepted the patient from Gill. ‘I sent Ben a compound scrub of a fractured tib and fib. The leg was pretty messed up. There weren’t too many badly injured in this first lot but, as you can hear...’ she indicated over her shoulder to the noise still raging outside ‘...it’s not over yet. Next batch arriving in about half an hour.’
Gill watched as Kelly took the baby from Megan and made
cooing noises at the little bundle. He rolled his eyes. Funny,
seeing Kelly with the baby didn’t have the same effect as seeing Harriet with her. Now, he could view the baby as a cute but tragic part of war.
But for a little while back in the theatre, with Harriet by his side looking at him with those big brown eyes, he hadn’t been so distant.
‘Biological clock ticking, Kelly?’ he teased.
‘Women’s clocks are always ticking, Guillaume. It’s just that we become more in tune with it. Who wouldn’t want one of these little darlings?’ she said, rubbing her nose against the baby’s forehead. ‘You and Harry thinking of having a baby?’
Gill laughed the question off. He wished he had a dollar for every time they’d been asked since they’d got married when they were going to start a family. Up until two years ago their standard reply had been that they liked their family of two and were too selfish to share, but a lot had changed in a couple of years.
Most people had been horrified by their assertion that babies were not on their agenda, including both sets of their parents and especially Gill’s grandfather. But he and Harriet had remained unswayed, happy to remain childless.
This notion had been reaffirmed many a time when, one by one, their friends had succumbed to their biological urges and had dropped out of sight. Too tired to come to dinner. Too tired to have a coherent conversation. And, even when it had been managed, it was usually one of those frustrating, broken dialogues constantly interrupted by a crying baby or an
insistent toddler.
No, their DINK lifestyle was much cherished. Or so he’d
thought...
As Harriet scrubbed the used instruments at the sink at the back of the theatre, she stared absently at the view out the window. A large milky white moon hung from the relentless blackness of the night sky and blanketed the harsh landscape in its glow, softening the ferocity of the desolate terrain. There was a strange beauty to the austerity and it was easy to forget that bad things were happening here.
She looked at the moonlight coating the ancient soil and felt very small and insignificant. Even in a country as divided as this, life still went on. All around, the cycle of life inched onward with glacial patience. Men and women fell in love, babies were born, wars were fought. The barely perceptible forward motion of life made her feel like a tiny cog in a very big wheel.
She had seen the good and bad of the cycle today. The highs and lows. She thought back to how devastated she’d felt only hours ago, witnessing Nimuk’s precarious hold on life and his mother’s anguish as he’d lost the struggle, and how death and life were intimate partners in a never-ending cycle. Someone died. And someone was born. It was the way of the world and in
this big troubled land the cycle was relentless.
She returned her attention to the job at hand. The instruments had to be thoroughly scrubbed to remove any blood or tissue traces before they went into the steriliser. Katya
and Siobhan were on the other side of the door, prepping for
their next case — wiping surfaces down with a chlorhexedine
solution, getting out gowns and gloves and basic packs — and she
was feeling restless after the C-section so scrubbing metal objects gave her something useful to do with her hands.
Harriet’s heart fluttered madly every time she thought about Gill passing the newborn baby to her. She could have sworn he had been affected by the experience, too, and her heart had leapt at the encouraging step forward.
Too little, too late maybe but, oh, what a buzz!
‘Penny for them.’
Harriet’s hands still momentarily as Gill’s soft voice reached her from somewhere behind and she turned slightly towards him. Did she blurt out what she’d been thinking about just now? Tell him she knew how affected he’d been
during the C-section and how just thinking about it had her
heart hammering like a teenager before her first kiss?
Or did she let it be?
‘Just thinking about nature. The cycle of life,’ she fudged deciding to let it be. ‘One baby dies. Another one is born. Nimuk dies and a little girl is born. Don’t you ever feel small and insignificant? Like we’re all just part of one great master plan? Or is that just last-day blues?’ She gave a self-deprecating smile and turned back to the instruments.
‘You always get reflective on the last day.’
‘Do I?’ she asked, turning back again.
He nodded. ‘You forget, Harry, I know you. We can separate and even divorce but I’ll always be your guy. I’ll always be the man who knows you best.’
Harriet didn’t doubt it for a moment. Maybe when she
remarried and she and her husband had been together for many
years, maybe then she could tell him he was wrong. But until then Gill was, as he had put it, her guy.
He did know her and understand her better than anyone.
‘Then you know that holding that baby affected me. And I’m
pretty sure it affected you, too. Don’t you forget that I, also
know you.’
Gill rubbed his hands through his hair, removing his cap as
he did so. ‘Yes, OK, for a moment I did think about a baby.
About our baby. But...I’m sorry, I wish I could adequately explain why I don
’t feel the urge to procreate — I just don’t.
Kelly was holding the baby before and all I could see was an unfortunate victim of war. The...stuff I felt in theatre when you were holding her just wasn’t there. I didn’t feel anything. I suspect it had more to do with you than the baby. And you know, maybe when I’m fifty, when I’m old and grey, maybe I’ll regret not having children. But I’m fairly at one with the decision now.’
‘Gill...it’ll be too late to do anything about it when you are old and grey.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He nodded. ‘I can live with that.’
Harriet felt two years of disagreements well up between them again. She almost cried in frustration. She’d been through all this and had made a decision, but she could feel herself being sucked into the same old argument again. Trying to convince him he was wrong.
Trying to make him see.
For a brief moment during the C-section she’d thought he’d
finally got it. And somewhere inside him a little light was dawning. But he was still letting his preconceived ideas suffocate the fledgling glimmer of light, and she didn’t have time to hang around and wait for him to get it.
If, indeed, that was even possible.
‘Here you both are,’ said Siobhan, bustling through the
swing door, oblivious to the atmosphere.
Harriet turned back to the sink and began sorting through
the instruments, packing them back inside the stainless-steel
tray and grouping them neatly. Her side was really starting to
ache now.
‘How’s the little one going?’ she asked.
Gill rolled his eyes. ‘Fine.’
‘Katya and I were talking and we decided we should give her
a name.’
Harriet turned at the suggestion. Yes. That’s exactly what
they should do. ‘Oh, yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a great idea.’
Gill looked from one to the other. ‘Ah...I think it’s traditional for the mother to name the child.’
