Souvenir. Therese Fowler

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       ELEVEN

      Sunday morning wasn’t going well. Forty-one-year-old Cristina Lang’s labor had slowed to a crawl after fifteen trying hours, and Meg watched the fetal monitor with narrowed eyes, her mouth a grim line on her pale face. The baby’s heart rate had been fluctuating for the last hour, and was now in a steady downward trend. In a voice low enough that only Susan, the labor nurse, could hear, Meg said, ‘You’re right: I don’t think we have any choice. Get her prepped.’

      To the sweat-covered mother-to-be she said, ‘Cristina, you’ve worked awfully hard, but I think we’re going to have to take over. Your cervix doesn’t want to finish dilating, and I’m not sure why yet, but your little guy’s getting stressed. We don’t want to see him suffer any long-term effects, okay?’

      Cristina’s husband Martin, a stocky man whose landscape company did Meg’s yard maintenance and many of her neighbors’, looked alarmed. ‘Take over? You mean she can’t have a natural birth?’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Meg told him. ‘It was worth trying, but her failure to progress and the slowing fetal heart rate suggest that the baby’s having trouble.’ She turned to Cristina. ‘Sometimes even the most prepared moms have to go with plan B. Susan is going to get you all set up, and I’ll see you in the OR in just a few minutes.’

      Cristina reached for Meg’s hand. ‘He’s okay? My baby, he’s going to be all right?’

      ‘He should be fine, as long as we get him out soon. Try not to worry.’

      ‘Okay,’ the woman nodded, and Meg read the relief in her eyes. ‘Okay, good.’

      Meg squeezed her hand, then gave Martin’s shoulder a pat as she moved past him and out of the room to head to the OR. Her mind was focused on the task ahead as she walked down the hallway and around the corner. When she stumbled just before reaching the door to the OR suite, she recovered her balance quickly and went on to get herself ready to deliver the baby.

      She ran the hottest water she could stand and scrubbed all along the ridges of her nails and the creases in her hands. Having to use a scalpel to finish Cristina’s job was regrettable but necessary, and she looked forward to the moment when she would lift the slippery infant out and hand him over to the nurse, a fresh miracle hot and pulsing with the force of all life. The regular opportunity to witness a child’s first shocked breath was why she chose obstetrics; nothing was more wondrous, more startling or fantastic. Every healthy child was a symbol of possibility. All these new tiny people she helped enter the world reminded her that her own life was not terribly significant – and made it easier for her to forget her own disappointments.

      Keith, the portly scrub nurse whose own wife was due to deliver their first any day, pushed open the door. ‘We’re just about set. You ready, Doc?’ he asked.

      She turned off the water with her elbows. ‘Be right there.’

      He nodded and stepped back into the operating suite. Meg glanced through the window as she dried off, considering the baby’s position, previous scar tissue on Cristina’s uterus, how much time had passed since she’d made the decision to operate. Emergency C-sections were her least favorite part of her occupation, the riskiest of all procedures just by their nature. The mothers required general anesthesia, the babies were always in distress – these surgeries felt like crapshoots despite her expertise, despite her absolute dedication to her patients. She only ever had to do them when what was supposed to be predictable and routine became a cascading flow of everything opposite.

      She backed into the suite, keeping her hands sterile, and stood still while a tech assisted her with gown and gloves. Her right arm, the one that was giving her trouble, felt a little stiff, sluggish as she held it out for the glove. As soon as the tech stepped away, Meg lifted both arms above her head and stretched.

      ‘Need a nap?’ asked Clay Williams, the new surgeon who would be assisting. ‘Susan said you all have been at it all night with this one.’

      ‘We have,’ Meg agreed as she approached the table, where he stood facing her from the far side. ‘But I think I’ll wait on the nap until after we finish.’

      ‘Well, I s’pose that is the better protocol,’ Clay joked, his mouth hidden behind the light green mask but his smile apparent in his eyes – as was a kind of interested regard that surprised her. Was he flirting? He added, ‘You pros know best.’

      He had to be several years her junior, and they’d worked together only a few times, socialized at a couple of conferences, chatted before or after staff meetings now and then; even so, she had the distinct feeling he was attracted to her. Her response was friendly but circumspect: ‘I tried that napping-during-surgery approach and, well, somehow the results weren’t up to American Medical Association standards.’

      ‘Bah, rules are made to be broken,’ Clay said – alluding to marital rules, perhaps? Or was she just imagining that sparkle of interest, that suggestive tone?

      The anesthetist, a serious, middle-aged man named Leo, spoke up then, bringing Meg’s attention back to the job at hand. ‘She’s all set.’

      Meg looked closely at her now-unconscious patient, at the draping around Cristina’s iodine-orange belly, at the tray of instruments nearby, checking that everything was in place. ‘What was the last fetal bpm?’ she asked, referring to the baby’s heart rate.

      ‘Eighty-one, right before we unhooked her.’

      Very low, but not absolutely critical. Meg nodded at the assembled team of nurses, technicians, and a pair of neonatologists, and said, ‘Okay then, let’s make a birthday.’

      At first, everything seemed to be fine. She reached for the scalpel, grasped it with no trouble, aligned the blade with Cristina’s skin just above the pubic bone. Then it was as if all the strength simply leached out of her arm. The scalpel dropped from her fingers, tumbled onto the edge of the operating table and down to the floor, landing with a clatter. Meg looked up, embarrassed and concerned. There was a baby in distress here; her arm could not refuse to cooperate.

      ‘Butterfingers,’ she joked, sweat breaking out on her forehead, dampening her armpits and her palms, inside her gloves.

      ‘Mmm, a candy bar does sound good, but I think another scalpel’s the better choice,’ Clay said.

      ‘Right, a scalpel,’ Meg nodded, trying to play along. She looked down at her hand. It rested, yet, on Cristina’s belly, on the mound of a baby who was almost certainly fading fast. It took all her concentration to lift her arm and pull it in, close to her chest.

      ‘Here you go,’ the tech said, holding out СКАЧАТЬ