Meredith Webber - Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit - Bachelor of the Baby Ward / Fairytale on the Children's Ward

‘She’s got the baby,’ he reminded her, and Kate looked up at him.

‘You mean…?’

‘You’ve already achieved one miracle this morning,’ Angus told her, ‘so why not go for two. Go back in there and ask her if she’d like to go with him as he’s wheeled to Theatre. We can get a wheelchair and she could touch him, hold his hand. Although if she doesn’t want to bond with him in case he doesn’t live—’

‘She thinks she doesn’t want to bond with him.’ Kate interrupted his objection, excited now by the idea. ‘But maybe she’s changed her mind about that, as well.’

She’d sounded positive about it, but deep inside she had her doubts, even wondered if it was wise to push Mrs Stamford this little bit more. But Angus seemed to think it was a good idea and he was looking far happier now than he had been earlier, so the least Kate could do was try.

She returned to the room where Mrs Stamford was lying back against the pillows, her eyes closed and only a little more colour in her face than when Kate had first seen her.

‘We’ll be taking him to Theatre very soon, and I wondered if we arranged a wheelchair for you and a wardsman to push it, you’d like to come up to the PICU and go as far as the theatre with him.’

Mrs Stamford’s eyelids lifted and dark brown eyes stared fiercely at Kate.

‘What are you? Some kind of avenging angel, determined to push me further and further?’

‘I just wondered,’ Kate said lamely, ‘seeing as you’re here on your own until your husband arrives and he, the baby, is on his own, as well. Maybe you could support each other.’

Oh, boy! Wrong thing to say! Mrs Stamford was in tears again, flooding tears and great gulping sobs.

Kate held her again, and it was only because she was holding her, she heard the whispered instructions.

‘Get the bloody wheelchair, but I want a nurse not a wardsman wheeling me. Men don’t understand.’

Uh-oh! Was it Mr Stamford, not Mrs Stamford, who’d found it hard to accept a less-than-perfect child? Had she consulted him—phoned him—before she signed the permission-to-operate paper?

And while Kate could have argued that some men were far more understanding and supportive than some women, she held her tongue. She gave Mrs Stamford a final hug and darted off, not wanting to give the woman time to change her mind. She arranged the transportation, then raced back up to the floor above, knowing she had to be there to intubate Baby Stamford and prepare him for his lifesaving op.

‘So tiny, the veins.’

She didn’t have to glance up to know it was Angus hovering beside her in the treatment room as she put a peripheral line into the baby’s foot, already having secured one in his jugular and administered the first mild sedative.

‘So tiny we need to work out better ways of doing this—smaller, more flexible catheters. You’d think it would be easy but I’ve been working with technicians from one of the manufacturing companies for over a year now, and we’re no further advanced. Too fine and they block, or twist or kink—it’s so frustrating!’

Angus studied the back of her head—a coloured scarf now hiding the bright hair—as she concentrated fully on her task.

She’d been working with techies to improve catheters? Kate Armstrong was full of surprises, not least of which had been the way she’d talked Mrs Stamford out of her indignation and allowed the woman’s natural maternal instincts to come out.

The redhead’s body brushed against his as she straightened up and his body went into immediate response mode. Not good where Kate Armstrong was concerned. She wanted kids—well, grandkids, which meant, as she’d pointed out, having kids first.

She was not for him!

Even though the ‘grandmother’ thing intrigued him! Not to mention whatever lay behind it…

Was it because of the familiar noises in the operating theatre, the sizzle of the bovie as it cut and cauterised tiny vessels, the bleeps of the monitors as they kept Kate up-to-date on Baby Stamford’s condition, the subdued chatter of the staff, the music playing in the background, that Angus felt so at home? Although this was not only his first operation at Jimmie’s but the first time he’d worked with any of the team.

Oliver Rankin was assisting. He was quiet, neat and efficient, although Angus rather thought he was casting glances in Kate’s direction a little too often. Clare Jackson was operating the bypass machine, waiting for the order to use it to take over the work of Baby Stamford’s tiny heart. Clare Jackson might not want children, Angus thought, standing back so Oliver could lift the pericardium away from Baby Stamford’s heart.

The thought startled him, and he shut it down immediately, dismayed to find himself, for the first time in years, thinking of something other than the operation while in Theatre. He prided himself on his total concentration on the job, and although he often joined in the general chat and jokes, his mind never strayed far from the tiny patient on the table.

She was far better looking, beautiful, in fact—Clare Jackson—so why was he, too, glancing up at Kate from time to time.

Because she’s the anaesthetist, of course, and she’s the one who knows how the baby’s doing, down there, all but hidden with the cage to protect his head and wrappings covering all his little body except his chest.

‘Blood gases fine,’ the woman he was trying to block from his mind said. ‘Heartbeats 130 a minute.’

With the little heart fully exposed, Angus inserted cannulas into the aorta and an atrial vein; Oliver attached the tubes that would put Baby Stamford on bypass—the tubes connecting to the machine which would oxygenate his blood and pump it through his body.

‘Pressure’s up,’ Kate said, reassuring everyone, although Clare was now controlling what happened to the baby’s blood pressure.

‘Check blood gases and start cooling him.’ Angus gave the order, one hundred percent of his attention back on his patient, the information coming in from Kate and Clare clicking computerlike into his brain, his mind whirling as he worked, total concentration on what he was doing but thinking ahead, always anticipating any problem, at the same time.

‘Why do we cool them?’ the circulating nurse asked, her voice suggesting she’d often wondered but for some reason had never wanted to ask.

‘It cuts down the risk of organ damage when the flow of blood to the brain and other major organs stops—when we stop the heart to do the repair.’

Oliver explained, while Angus inserted a tiny tube into the aorta, where it was rising out of the heart. Through this he’d put the poison that would stop the heart beating and, once that went in, it was a matter of timing every second of the operation.

Kate watched him at work, waiting patiently until all the blood drained from Baby Stamford’s heart, then switching the coronary arteries so neatly and quickly she didn’t realise they were done until he stood and stretched.

Once straightened, he looked across at her, and she nodded and held up a thumb, but there’d been something in his dark eyes that had suggested he was looking at her , not at the anaesthetist. Ridiculous, of course, but she shivered in spite of herself, then turned all of her attention back to the patient on the table and the machines that told her what was happening.

Less than an hour later the baby’s heart was beating on its own, the little hole in his heart repaired, the arteries switched so they would now do the jobs they were intended to do. And though Angus had left a pacemaker in Baby Stamford’s chest to keep his heart rate stable, and various drainage tubes and measuring devices were still attached to him, he was doing well.