C.J. Carmichael - Leaving Enchantment

“Come on, honey,” Lydia urged. “This will be the one that does it.”

And it happened. With a grunt of effort, the doctor managed to pull out the anterior shoulder, then the posterior one. The baby was finally out.

Normally Lydia felt relief at this point. But not today. The baby’s face was bluish-purple, his body flaccid and blanched.

His. The baby was a boy. And big. Lydia’s estimate had been correct. He had at least a pound on his sister.

But he wasn’t breathing. Lydia watched the doctor check for a pulse. She could tell by Ochoa’s furrowed brow that he didn’t find one. He clamped and cut the cord, then passed the baby to Dr. Weston. She was the only one who could save this baby now.

Dr. Weston moved quickly and efficiently. She suctioned the baby before beginning to bag him with oxygen.

“Oh, my God. Is my baby okay?” Mary started to weep.

Turning from the resuscitation efforts, Lydia focused on Mary. She smoothed Mary’s damp hair and murmured softly. Gina, she noticed, was patting Steve’s shoulder.

As she repeated meaningless, comforting phrases, an internal dialogue ran through Lydia’s mind, a prayer for the baby lying lifeless under Dr. Weston’s care. Oh, Lord, please let this baby be all right. Please let him be strong and healthy like his sister. Mary and Steve are such good people, excellent parents. Please…

As Lydia prayed, Mary began to bleed. The flow was too heavy. The doctor inserted his hand into the vagina to see if the placenta was separating.

The next second Mary’s eyes rolled back and her body fell limp. She immediately turned blue.

God, no!

“We need oxygen! Fluids!” Dr. Ochoa ordered tersely. “And let’s get a second IV going.”

Lydia stepped back to give the nurses and doctor better access to Mary. The primary nurse began to bag her with one hundred percent oxygen.

“Code blue to room three-twelve stat.”

As the nurse summoned yet more help, Lydia guessed what had happened. Amniotic fluid embolism. She’d seen a few in her career. When the amniotic fluid was sucked into the mother’s circulation, the results were instantaneous and often dire.

This whole delivery was turning into the worst obstetrical nightmare anyone could imagine.

Lydia thought of little Sammy, probably sleeping at just this moment. That little girl needed her mother. They couldn’t lose Mary tonight. They just couldn’t.

While the nurses concentrated on their jobs, Dr. Ochoa delivered a complete placenta. Blood from Mary’s uterus flowed freely onto the doctor’s shoes, splattering onto the tile floor. The second nurse massaged the uterus frantically, but the bleeding continued.

“Pitocin!” the doctor ordered.

Another nurse, having anticipated this need, got the drug flowing through the second IV. At that moment the crash cart and team arrived and Mary was intubated. The team frantically tried other drugs to try to stop the bleeding.

Lydia stood back, watching the scene helplessly. The average pregnant woman carried about six liters of blood. At the rate Mary was hemorrhaging, she’d lose it all in a matter of minutes.

“We’ve lost her pulse! She’s in cardiac arrest!”

The doctor from the code team began chest compressions. Lydia stepped back to the wall, not wanting to get in anyone’s way. Still, her attention remained riveted on her lifeless patient. Mary was too young to die. She had so much to live for.

“Hang on, Mary. Please, please, hang on.” Mary couldn’t hear, not above the noise level in the room, but Lydia spoke anyway, her words like a prayer.

“How’s the baby?” she asked.

Dr. Weston threw her a frustrated look. “Still no respiration or heart rate. He isn’t responding…”

Were they going to lose them both? Oh, God, please no! “Come on, Mary. You can survive this. Your family needs you.”

Family. Steve. Lydia scanned the room anxiously but couldn’t see Mary’s husband. He wasn’t in the room anymore. Nor was Gina.

LYDIA HAD PROMISED Mary she wouldn’t leave her. And she didn’t. The team continued their resuscitation efforts for forty minutes, fifty…an hour. Dr. Weston eventually had to give up on the baby. She squeezed Lydia’s shoulder on her way out of the room. Lydia continued to pray for Mary.

But they couldn’t bring her back.

At just after nine, two hours after arriving at the hospital with the Davidsons, Lydia stepped out of the birthing room into the cold, wide corridor. A pregnant woman waddled by her, frowning at the blood splatters on Lydia’s thick socks and Birkenstock sandals.

“Lydia.” Gina approached from the far end of the corridor. Sorrow filled the air between them like a heavy cloud.

“You’re still here.” Lydia was unable to meet the other woman’s gaze.

“I’ve been with Steve.”

“Where is he?”

Gina pointed in the direction she’d come from. “The doctors are talking to him now.”

Lydia swallowed. She felt as though she should be the one to bear the awful news, but hospital protocol required that the attending physician announce a client’s demise.

“I’ll check on him,” she told Gina. “You go home now. You need to be with your husband and children.”

Gina brushed tears from her eyes. They clearly weren’t the first she’d shed that night. They would be far from the last.

Lydia hugged Gina, then forced herself to continue down the hall. She found Steve in a small waiting room, collapsed in one of a dozen poorly upholstered chairs clustered around a vending machine. Dr. Ochoa and Dr. Weston had just left.

“I’m so sorry, Steve.” Lydia felt a hundred years old.

He said nothing. Lydia wanted to cradle him in her arms, but he wouldn’t even look at her.

Lydia knew there were no words to soften his loss. “Steve, the hospital teams tried their best. They really did.”

He didn’t seem to hear. “I’ve lost both of them.”

The words tore at her heart.

“Yes.”

Finally Steve lifted his head. He stared at her with outrage, and she could hear what he didn’t say. We trusted you. You said everything would be okay.

“No.”

Lydia held out her arms.

“No!” He rose from his chair and turned, not to her, but to the soda machine. Raising his fists, the big, powerful man started to pound, one fist after another. “No! No! No!”

Each word conveyed crushing disbelief. How could she help him? Lydia was willing to do anything. If only she could take his pain and bear it for him.

She waited for his initial rage to subside, for him to be still. “Steve, let me call someone. How about your mother?”

His chest convulsed and he started to sob. “No!” he cried out once more, then bolted from the room like a panicked child. Once in the corridor he ran past the elevator to the stairs.

“Steve, come back! Let me help!” Lydia tried to follow, but in her sandals, she couldn’t keep up. Finally, she skidded to a stop, grasping at the handle of the door to the stairwell. As the door gave, she caught one glimpse of the top of Steve’s head.

And that was the last she saw of him.

HOME LATE FROM THE OFFICE, Nolan McKinnon, editor and owner of the Arroyo County Bulletin, was just about to dig into his second slice of pizza when a police call came over the scanner sitting next to his toaster. Nolan recognized the voice of his good friend, Miguel Eiden.

“We’ve got a 10-45 on Switchback Road. Get an ambulance and backup. Now.”

God. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. Wasn’t it too early for a traffic accident on a Saturday night? Nolan grabbed a notepad and pencil and waited for the details.

“Ten-four, Miguel,” said the dispatcher. “How bad is it?”