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, he wasn’t, but it wasn’t about him. He crossed to sit back in the chair beside Maeve’s head so he could talk to her as she stirred. They didn’t need him staring like a fool and fainting, with his son in his arms. Couldn’t imagine how frightening this would be for her. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart. Just rest. Angus is here.’
Her eyelids flickered and for a brief moment she looked at him before her eyelids fell again. ‘Okay,’ she breathed.
He looked at Angus. ‘Why is she still bleeding?’
‘Might be an extra lobe of placenta she grew that we missed.’ Angus was massaging the uterus through Maeve’s belly like Tara had been doing. ‘Or could just be a lazy uterus. Or could be a tear somewhere. We’ll try the drugs but if it doesn’t settle, because of the amount of loss, we’ll have to take her to Theatre.’
Angus glanced at the nursing supervisor. ‘Call Ben and Andy, clue them in, and have operating staff standing by. We can always send them home.’
Nobody mentioned it was early Boxing Day morning. The supervisor nodded and picked up the phone. ‘And phone Simon,’ Angus said, with a quick glance at Rayne. ‘We’ll need his consent.’
Consent for what? Operating theatres? He could give that consent. No, he couldn’t. He had no legal claim on Maeve or his son. He had nothing except Maeve’s permission to be here. He was no one. Shook himself with contempt. It wasn’t about him.
And what would they do? But he knew. They would do what they needed to do to save her life. And if Maeve could never have children again? He thought of the powerful woman who had majestically navigated the birth process with gusto. Imagined her distress if the chance would never be hers again.
He imagined Maeve dying and reared back from the thought. They would get through it. She had to get through it.
‘She’s started to bleed again,’ Angus said to Tara. ‘Get me the F2 alpha and I’ll inject it into her uterus.’ To the other midwife, he said, ‘Check the catheter isn’t blocked and I’ll compress the uterus with my hands until we can get to the OR.’
The next two hours were the worst in Rayne’s life. Worse than when they’d come for him in Simon’s house and he’d seen Maeve’s distress, worse than when he’d been sentenced to prison, worse than when he’d found out his mother had died.
Maeve went in and for a long time nobody came out. Simon sat beside him in the homey little waiting room that was like no other waiting room he’d ever seen.
It had a big stone water cooler and real glasses to drink from. A kettle and little fridge to put real milk in your tea and a big jar of home-made oatmeal biscuits. And a comfortable lounge that he couldn’t sit on.
He paced. Connor didn’t seem to mind because he slept through it in his bunny rug. Rayne couldn’t put him down. Not because Connor cried but because Rayne couldn’t bear to have empty arms while he waited for Maeve to come through those doors.
‘Do you want me to take Connor?’
‘No!’ He didn’t even think about it. Looked down at his son asleep against his chest. Doing at least something that he knew Maeve would like while he waited. ‘What’s taking them so long?’
‘She’ll go to Recovery when they’ve sorted everything. Then Dad will come through and talk to us. Or maybe Ben or Andy.’
‘Are they good?’
‘Superb.’
‘I feel so useless. I worried about being a good enough father. That’s nothing in the big picture.’
‘It’s not a nothing. But this is bigger. But you’ll be fine. She’ll be fine.’
Rayne heard the thread of doubt in Simon’s voice and stopped. Looked at the man who would become his brother-in-law. Because he would marry
