Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(54)
“It’s time?” Betsy’s eyes shimmered, and she smiled a shaky smile and hugged her belly.
“Almost.” Willa patted her hand. “You’ve got work to do.”
“God, I love epidurals. They are the best things ever. Will you tell Mark?”
“Yep. I’ll be back in two shakes, and we’ll get to work.”
oOo
Dr. Diller was not one of Willa’s favorite OB/GYNs—not because he was a jerk to the nurses, but because he was overly controlling, in her opinion, of his patients. Doctors knew better about safe and healthy deliveries than most pregnant women, yes, and the number-one goal of labor and delivery was a healthy outcome, but he had a ‘my word is law’ attitude, and didn’t care at all that having a baby was not just a procedure for the women involved. It was a milestone, an event—this was the only floor in a hospital where being a patient was cause for celebration. Those patients had misty watercolor images of what it should be like.
The reality was rarely misty or watercolor, even when things went exactly right—birth was painful and strenuous and goopy—but the really good OB/GYNs knew how to talk their patients through the cognitive dissonance.
And then there were the women, almost always first-time moms, who were simply terrified of the whole thing. A soft hand and a heedful ear helped them find calm.
Which was why women labored with nurses and barely saw their doctors until it was time to catch the baby.
Betsy was lucky enough to be delivering during the late morning on a Friday—normal working hours. Dr. Diller was in his office on the hospital campus, and he’d been over to see her once already, when they’d decided to do the epidural. When Willa paged him, he said he’d be on the floor in five minutes, and he was.
Betsy and Mark’s little boy was born ninety minutes later. Mark hadn’t fainted, and Willa took credit for that: she’d seen the moment that his skin went waxy and had laid a cold washcloth over the back of his neck and pushed him down onto a chair at his wife’s bedside.
She left the new family cuddled together. The smile on Daddy’s face told Willa that he was ready after all.
oOo
At the nurse’s station, she checked on her other patients and saw that one, a girl in high school, who’d arrived with her obviously deeply unhappy mother just as Willa’s shift started, had been sent home.
Janet sat at the desk. She’d been covering Willa’s patients during Betsy’s delivery.
“302 is discharged, I see. Braxton-Hicks, right?” False labor. The contractions had been wildly irregular and had barely registered on the monitor.
Janet nodded. “I’m worried about that girl. Her mother…”
“Yeah. She had her crying a couple of times. I sent her out when I did my check, just to give the poor girl a break. I hate to see that.”
“Carrying that Bible like it was some kind of weapon. You know, I pray every day. I never prayed harder than I did waiting to find Mike in Oklahoma City.” Her son had been out in the field that day, nowhere near the Murrah building; Janet’s joy in knowing he was safe had been a bright spot on a dark day. “I can understand being upset that your daughter’s life isn’t going in the direction you’d hoped for her. But it’s your kid. You love your kid, no matter what. That woman—when Dr. Ingersoll sent them home, she asked, right out loud like it was normal, if he wouldn’t ‘just cut the thing out and be done with it.’ And she calls herself a Christian. Can you imagine?”
Willa shook her head—in disgust, not disbelief. “Poor thing.” She checked the record for her other patient. “307 is still at three centimeters? With steady contractions?”
“Every three minutes, sixty seconds long. Going nowhere. But fetal heart is strong. I put a call in to Galen to check about some Vitamin P. And she’s complaining of pain. She cried when I last checked her. Galen hasn’t called back yet.”
Dr. Galen had great bedside manner, a homespun kind of sweetness, but she clocked out at six p.m. unless she was already elbow deep in a patient. If one of her patients went into labor in the evening or over the weekend, they were stuck with whatever doctor happened to be on call. Willa had some opinions about that as well. Doctors deserved to have a life of their own, but babies came on their own timetable, and if you chose to be an obstetrician, you chose to follow babies’ schedules.
Not Dr. Galen. Willa had no doubt that she would order a Pitocin drip—which was the actual name for what the nurses called Vitamin P—to hurry this labor along. Willa was fairly sure, without clear proof, that Galen had even performed C-sections just to free up her evening.
She went to check on her patient in room 307.
oOo
There was always a pall that rolled out over the Labor & Delivery floor when a birth went wrong. It didn’t happen often—every day, the floor was awash in flowers and balloons and happy families—but sometimes, the end of a delivery was silence, and it filled every nook and cranny. The happy births around the silence took on a quieter joy. Grandparents waiting for news found fear when families across the waiting room had cause to mourn. Those who could celebrate found sympathy, with a tinge of guilt, for those who couldn’t share their joy. Even the balloons seemed to sag.