LITMIR.BIZ

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“My baby…”

      Dinah eased Gabby back into a flat position on the bed, propped a pillow under her head then ran to the end of the bed to see what she could do for Dr. Ranard. Or for the limp little newborn in his hands.

      “He isn’t crying,” Gabby gasped, fighting to sit back up. Thrashing wildly, she was trying to toss off the sheets covering her. “Neil, he isn’t crying! What’s wrong?”

      “Take care of Gabrielle,” Neil whispered to Dinah. “Don’t let her see…”

      Even before he’d finished speaking, Dinah positioned herself between Neil and the bed, so Gabby couldn’t see Neil’s resuscitation attempts and the next minutes went by in a blur as she tried to calm the grief-stricken mother and help the doctor with the baby.

      “Did he aspirate?” Dinah whispered to Neil, although she didn’t believe so. As a pediatric trauma nurse, her first guess was something cardiac, or related to the lungs, judging from the baby’s listlessness and bluish pallor.

      Not again! Dear God, not again! How could she face another newborn dying? Bryce had a chance to survive, Molly never had. She had to stay focused on that! This was the baby who needed her now. This was Bryce Evans, not Molly Collins.

      “Is he alive?” Gabby screamed. “Neil, you’ve got to tell me, is he alive? I’ve got to get to my baby.” She launched herself up, but Dinah stopped her, applying a firm hand into her shoulder.

      More minutes ticked by, and Bryce still struggled. Outside, the floods were getting worse. The hospital had promised to send a medic with supplies, but each second seemed like an hour—a frantic, futile hour in which they were losing a battle. All the while, Dinah was forced to physically restrain Gabby from flying across the room to Neil. Neil didn’t need that. Neither did the baby, who was not improving. She hated doing that. Hated it more than anyone could imagine, because she knew how it felt. Knew how Gabby felt, needing desperately to get there and being pulled away against her will.

      Then suddenly Bryce quit breathing and Dinah was thrown back to that day when baby Molly had died in her arms. Regret, instant and brutal, assaulted her, causing a feeling of panic to rise up and strangle the breath from her. For a moment she was back there in that hospital room, struggling and crying like Gabby was, begging them not to take Molly away from her.

      “Is that CPR?” Gabby cried, snapping Dinah back into the moment. “Is Neil giving him CPR?”

      More minutes blurred in the battle as Bryce began showing signs of reviving. Bryce had Neil to fight for him, and Neil loved him. That was so obvious. There’d been no one to care for Molly. No one had loved her. Except her. And in the end, that hadn’t been enough.

      Now the melancholia threatened to pull her under.

      

      “You!”

      The voice from the doorway startled Dinah from her thoughts of Molly, and she jumped. “You!” she snapped right back at him. Of all the people who could have come, it would be him, Mr Hit-and-Run himself. And he was standing there, holding out a pediatric oxygen mask.

      Dinah yanked the mask from the man’s hands, and rushed to put it on Bryce. Then the medic opened the oxygen tank valve once the mask was in place.

      “It was a slight tap,” he said. “No damage.”

      “And you didn’t stop to see if you’d damaged my car, or injured me,” Dinah snarled under her breath to keep her problem with this man quiet, as she pulled a pediatric IV needle from the bag of supplies he’d brought and prepared to insert it into the baby’s thread-sized vein. It’s what she did, no one had to tell her. No one had to help her. It’s simply what she was trained to do, and did instinctively.

      As she set about her work, she noticed that Bryce was already pinking up. Not enough to think he was out of danger, but enough to be encouraged.

      “You take care of Gabby,” the medic whispered to Neil. “She needs you right now, and I’ll take care of the baby.”

      Neil handed off the responsibility without hesitation, and the two men exchanged quiet words for a moment. “Thanks, Eric,” Neil finally said, then ran to Gabrielle.

      “You’re a doctor?” Dinah asked.

      “Eric Ramsey, pediatric surgeon, with a secondary in trauma.” He pulled a bag of fluid from his supplies and hooked it to the line once Dinah had inserted the IV catheter. Then he adjusted the drip of fluid into the baby’s veins, and immediately listened to Bryce’s chest.

      The next few minutes they worked side by side in total silence, both doing what they knew needed to be done to stabilize their tiny patient.

      “He’s a fighter,” Eric finally pronounced, turning around to Gabby. “We’ve got him as stabilized as we can, so now I need to get him to the hospital. But I want you to hold him first.”

      She took her baby, and the way she clung to him nearly broke Dinah’s heart. No one had loved little Molly like that…someone should have. She couldn’t bear watching, the memories were too painful and she had to turn away.

      “I was in a hurry…emergency.” Eric stepped up behind her. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have driven off like that.”

      “What?” Dinah asked.

      “The accident. I had an emergency. I’m sorry, but—”

      “But we all do what we have to do, don’t we?” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter what we do to the people around us, as long as it’s good for us. I get it. You don’t need to apologize.”

      “Yes, I do.” Eric took a step back, shook his head. “Look, Neil thinks Bryce’s problem might be TGV.” Transposition of the great vessels, where the two main arteries leaving the heart were reversed. Normally, blood from the heart’s right ventricle was carried by the pulmonary artery to the lungs, and blood from the left ventricle was taken by the aorta to the body. In the case of TGV, it was just the opposite, leaving the oxygenated blood meant to circulate through the body being pumped back into the lungs. “And at this point, I have no reason to disagree because the symptoms fit. Things may turn out differently once we get the baby—”

      “You think it’s TGV, too?” Dinah’s mind raced through the procedures. There would be a first surgery, called a septostomy, to do an immediate, life-saving correction. In that, a hole was literally opened up to allow better flow of the blood. It was a temporary measure to be followed by another surgery to make the permanent repair. She’d treated babies who’d had the surgery, seen good outcomes, seen bad outcomes.

      “You’ll drive.”

      “Where?” she asked.

      “To the hospital. You’ll drive, I’ll take care of the baby.”

      

      The tension in the cab of the truck was so thick Dinah could have sliced through it with a scalpel. They’d been en route five minutes now, taking a back road that skirted the valley. It was muddy and slick, but it wasn’t washed out. And it was on higher ground, which was what made it a safer bet than taking the road down below the house, where the water was at least as high as the bottom of the truck door. Flash-flood warnings were out now, and all the lower roads were being closed. So she and Eric were driving along what amounted to little more than a fire trail, and Dinah was so nervous that her grip on the steering-wheel hurt. All the while, neither she nor Eric had spoken a word to each other since his initial instruction to her on getting to the hospital.

      Yet in his defense, Eric was busy tending to Bryce, holding him in his lap and continually checking his pulse, his respiratory status, being so tender, so caring with him while she was fighting to stay straight and to avoid the bumps and ruts, most of which she couldn’t even see.

      It crossed her mind that he was the doctor Molly should have had. He would have cared more than Charles had, even when hope had died. Charles, the man she’d almost married. How could she have

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