Margie groaned again. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Grabbing a basin, she held it under her patient’s mouth as she heaved. Nothing came up, though.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Darcie started to reach for a paper towel, only to have Lucas arrive, chart in hand. He took one look at the scene and anticipated what she was doing. Ripping a couple of towels from the dispenser, he glanced at her in question. “What’ve you got?”
“This is Margie Terrington from Southbank. She’s cramping. Pain in the joints. Nausea.”
“Contractions?”
“I’m not sure. I’m just getting ready to hook her up to the monitor.”
He tilted his head. “Theories?”
“None.” She laid a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Are you up to telling Lucas what you told me?”
Even as she asked it, Margie’s face tightened up in a pained grimace, and she gave a couple of sustained breaths, dragging air in through her nose and letting it out through her mouth. A second or two later she nodded. “Like I told you, I took a shower this morning. Then I started getting these weird sensations in my side.”
“What kind of weird?”
“Like a pulled muscle or something.” She stiffened once again. She gritted out, “But now my whole stomach hurts.”
“Where’s the father?” Lucas asked.
“He’s at work. I—I didn’t want to worry him if it’s nothing.”
Lucas frowned. “I think he should be here.” He glanced at Darcie. “Can you get her hooked up while I ring him?”
If anything, Margie looked even more frightened. “Am I going to lose this baby too?”
Darcie’s heart ached for the woman, even as her brain still whirled, trying to figure out what was going on. “Let us do the worrying, love, can you do that?”
“I think so.” She wrote her husband’s phone number on a sheet of paper and handed it to Lucas.
While he was gone, Darcie got Margie into a hospital gown and snapped on a pair of gloves. Then she wrapped the monitor around her patient’s abdomen. Wow, she was really perspiring. So much so that it had already soaked through the robe on her right side.
And her abdominal muscles were tight to the touch. “Are you having a contraction right now?”
Margie moaned. “I don’t know.”
She started up the machine and the first thing she heard was the quick woompa-woompa-woompa-woompa of the baby’s heart. Thank God. Even as that thought hit, a hundred more swept past it. A heartbeat didn’t mean Margie’s baby wasn’t in distress, just that he was alive.
She stared at the line below the heart rate that should be showing the marked rise and fall of the uterus as it contracted and released. It was a steady line.
Placing her hand on Margie’s abdomen again, she noted the strange tightness she’d felt before. But it seemed more like surface muscles to Darcie. Not the deep, purposeful contraction of a woman’s uterus.
Lucas came back and glanced at the monitor. “Your husband’s on his way.”
“Thank you.” Another moan, and her hands went back to her stomach.
Lucas sat next to the bed and held the patient’s hand, helping guide her through the deep breathing.
“She’s not contracting.” Darcie’s eyes were locked on the monitor where a series of little squiggles indicated that something was happening, but it was more like a series of muscle fasciculations than the steady rise and fall she would expect to see. Could she have flu, like Margie suspected?
“When did you start sweating like this?”
Lucas’s voice drew her attention back. He eased Margie’s robe to the side and stared at the area where moisture was already beading up despite just having been exposed to the chilly air of the ward. Strange. Although Margie was perspiring everywhere—Darcie gave a quick glance at her face and chest above the gown—there was a marked difference between her moist upper lip and her right side, where a rivulet of liquid peaked and then ran down the woman’s swollen belly.
“I don’t know. An hour after my shower? Right about the time I started to hurt.”
He peered at her closer. “You said you took a shower. Did you feel anything before or after it? A sting…or a prick maybe?”
A prick? Darcie stared at him, trying to figure out where he was going with this.
“No.”
“Where did the pain start exactly?”
Margie pressed her fingers right over the area that was wet from perspiration.
He muttered something under his breath then glanced up at Darcie. “I need to make a quick phone call.”
“What?” Outrage gathered in her chest and built into a froth that threatened to explode. Surely he was not going to make a personal call right now.
As if he saw something in her face, he reached out and encircled her wrist. “I want her husband to check on something at the house before he comes here,” he said in a low voice.
The anger flooding her system disappeared in a whoosh as she stared back at him.
Margie’s panicked voice broke between them. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I don’t think you’re in labor.”
“Then what?”
“I think you may have been bitten by a redback,” Lucas said.
“A what?” Margie asked.
“It’s one of our most famous residents,” he said. “It’s a spider. A nasty one at that.”
A redback! Darcie had heard of them but had never encountered one, and since she wasn’t from Australia, it had never dawned on her that Margie could have been envenomed by something. Her patient was also from England. She’d probably never thought of that possibility either.
She glanced at Lucas. “Are they that common?”
“Quite.” He patted Margie’s hand. “If that’s the case we have antivenin we can give you, which should help.”
“If it is a bite, will it hurt the baby?” She gritted her teeth and pulled in another deep breath.
“I think we’ve caught it at an early stage.” His gaze went back to the monitor, which Darcie noted still held steady. “I want to have your husband check the towel and your bathroom.”
The patient’s eyes widened. “I used the walk-in shower in the guest bathroom this
