LITMIR.BIZ

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Sunshine from Rayne?’

      Just then Connor found the nipple, poked out his tongue, opened his mouth wide and swooped. On! And didn’t let go. Maeve gasped and smiled. ‘That feels really weird.’

      Rayne sat back in wonder. Tara leaned in from passing by and nodded. ‘Good work, young man.’

      ‘Connor.’

      ‘Nice name. Welcome, Connor.’ And she smiled at them both.

      ‘Connor Sunshine.’

      ‘Really?’ She grinned at Maeve, who glared briefly at Rayne before looking back at her son. ‘Awesome.’ Then Tara had a brief feel of Maeve’s belly, to check her uterus was contracting, gave it a little rub, then went back to sorting the room and writing the notes.

      ‘You should’ve seen your face.’

      But Maeve had moved on. Was gazing down at her son, whose jaw was working peacefully, his hands each side of his mouth, fingers digging into her breast every now and then. And all the while his big dark eyes stared up into her face. A swell of love came out of nowhere. Like a rush of heat. Her baby. She would protect this tiny scrap of humanity with her last breath.

      ‘He’s incredible,’ she whispered, and all joking disappeared as they both watched him.

      The next fifteen minutes were very peaceful. They didn’t talk much, mostly just stared, bemused at the new person who had entered their lives and would change them as people for ever.

      Until Maeve felt the first wave of dizziness and realised the wetness beneath her was spreading and she was beginning to feel faint.

      Rayne watched the downy jaw go up and down on Maeve’s breast and marvelled at the dark eyes watching his mother. He could feel his heart thawing and it wasn’t comfortable. Maeve had had his baby.

      He thought about the last twenty-four hours. Driving to Lyrebird Lake, not knowing if she would see him. Or knowing if that powerful current between them from the night so long ago had been real or instigated by the events that he’d known would follow.

      Then seeing her this morning, pregnant, catching her as she’d fallen, daring to calculate on the slightest chance it could possibly be his child when Maeve should never have conceived. His fierce exultation that had drowned out his shock.

      The swell of emotion was almost a physical pain in his chest as he went over the last tumultuous few hours of labour and finally the birth. Now here he was. A father with his son. A helpless newborn with him as a father. At least Connor had a father.

      ‘Take him, Rayne.’

      ‘He’s still drinking.’ Rayne was glued to the spectacle but something in her voice arrested him.

      ‘Started bleeding,’ she said faintly. ‘Get Tara.’ Her eyes rolled back, and she fainted like she had when he’d first seen her, only this time he caught his son.

      Rayne’s heart rate doubled. ‘Tara!’ Hell. He scooped Connor off his mother’s chest as Maeve’s arms fell slack, wrapped him in the bunny rug that had covered them both under the big blanket and hugged him to his chest as he leaned over Maeve.

      Connor bellowed his displeasure at being lifted off his mother and automatically he patted his bottom through the rug.

      Tara scooted back to the bed from her little writing table in the corner, lifted the sheet and sucked in a breath at the spreading stain on the sheets that just then flowed down the sides of the bed. ‘Hit that red button over there for help and grab the IV trolley. We’ll need to insert cannulas.’ He saw her slide her hand over Maeve’s soft belly, cup the top of her uterus through the abdominal wall and begin to rub strongly in a circular motion as he forced himself to turn away and do what needed to be done.

      Once he’d pushed the emergency bell, he strode into the treatment room he’d cased earlier and grabbed the IV trolley and pushed it back towards the bed, not as fast as he’d have liked because it was awkward with his son tucked like a little football against his chest. Connor had stopped crying and when Rayne glanced down at him his dark eyes were wide and staring.

      Put the cannulas in. That he could do. He glanced around for somewhere to put Connor. Saw the little crib and tucked him in quickly. Connor started to cry.

      ‘Sorry, mate.’ He could find and secure veins on tiny infants so he should be able to do it on someone bigger. Someone he couldn’t afford to lose.

      ‘What size cannulas do you want?’

      ‘Sixteen gauge. Two.’

      Right. Found the size, the tourniquet, the antiseptic. Saw the tubes for blood tests. ‘Which bloods?’

      Another midwife hurried in after him and Tara glanced up and spoke to her. ‘Get Angus back here first, then lower the bedhead so she’s tipped down, give her oxygen, then draw me up a repeat ten units of syntocinon. Obs we’ll get when we get a chance.’

      Tara hadn’t taken her hand off the uterus and the flow had slowed to a trickle but the loss from just those few minutes of a relaxed uterus had astounded Rayne with its ferocity. At least two litres had pooled in the bed.

      She turned to him. ‘Purple times two, one orange and one blue. Coags, full blood count, four units cross-match.’

      ‘Angus is on his way,’ the other midwife said, as she lowered the bed and slipped the oxygen mask onto Maeve’s white face. ‘Just some oxygen, Maeve.’ The girl spoke loudly and as he withdrew the blood for the tests he realised Maeve might be able to hear.

      ‘Hang in there, Maeve. Don’t be scared. We’ll get it sorted.’ Incredibly his voice sounded confident and calm. Not how he was feeling on the inside. He wondered if Tara was as calm as she seemed.

      Angus hurried in. Took over from Tara down the business end, checking swiftly to see if there was any damage they’d missed, but the sheer volume and speed of the loss indicated a uterus that wasn’t clamping down on those powerful arteries that had sustained the pregnancy. Tara began assembling IV lines and drugs. She gave one bag of plain fluids to him and he connected and secured it. Rayne turned the flow rate to full-bore volume replacement until they could get blood.

      An orderly arrived and the nursing supervisor who carried the emergency record started writing down times and drugs as she listened to Tara who spoke as she sorted the emergency kit.

      The second midwife was writing Maeve’s name on the blood-test tubes. When she was finished she wrote out a request form and sent the samples on their way. Then she hooked Maeve up to the monitor and they all glanced across at the rapid heartbeats shooting across the screen in frantic blips. Her blood pressure wasn’t too bad yet but he knew birthing women could sustain that until it fell in a sudden plunge. His neck prickled in the first premonition of disaster.

      Angus looked up at the second orderly. ‘Bring back two units of O-neg blood. We’ll give those until we can cross-match.’

      ‘I’m O-neg if you need more.’ Blood. She needed blood, Rayne thought, and wondered how often this happened for them all to be so smooth at the procedures. He glanced at Maeve’s face as she moaned and began to stir with the increase in blood flowing to her brain from the head-down position change.

      He wanted to go to her but Tara handed him the second flask loaded with the drugs to contract the uterus. ‘Run it at two hundred and fifty mils an hour,’ she murmured, and he nodded, connected it and set the rate. Then stood back out of the way. The whole scene was surreal. One moment he had been soaking in magic and the next terror had been gripping his throat as Maeve’s life force had been seeping away.

      ‘Given ergot yet?’ Angus was calm.

      ‘No. But it’s coming.’ Tara was drawing up more drugs. Rayne’s legs felt weak and he glanced across at Connor roaring in his cot. He picked him up and the little boy immediately settled. He hugged his son to him.

      ‘You okay?’ Angus looked at him.

      No,

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