LITMIR.BIZ

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ticked by. A minute.

      Lydia empathized with Dr. Ochoa as he tried desperately to angle the baby’s head down to the floor. But this baby simply would not move. Ochoa was sweating now, trying various maneuvers in increasingly desperate attempts to release one of the baby’s shoulders. If he had to, Lydia knew he would break the clavicle. They were running out of time.

      “What are you doing?” Mary could barely utter the words through her exhaustion.

      “Trying to get the baby out.” Lydia glanced at her watch, calculating the time that had already passed.

      Come on! Come on!

      “But we didn’t—” Another contraction knocked the words out of Mary’s mouth. She bore down and Lydia prayed.

      “Come on, baby!” His face was turning blue. They had to get him out, his heart rate was continuing to drop. Eighty. Now sixty. Blue skin deepened to purple, and Lydia fought to keep calm.

      “What’s happening?” Steve searched faces anxiously. He and Gina were standing too far back for him to actually see the action.

      More personnel flooded into the room. Among them, Lydia recognized Dr. Joanna Weston, an excellent local pediatrician. No one bothered with the pleasantries of a greeting. All eyes focused on Dr. Ochoa and the baby he was trying desperately to bring into the world.

      “Try a lateral push.” The doctor continued to work at delivering the shoulder, while one of the new nurses applied pressure across Mary’s abdomen hoping to dislodge that stubborn shoulder.

      “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

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