* * *
‘Kitty, incoming ambulance.’
Kitty was tidying an exam room when Davina stuck her head in and called for her attention. ‘We’ve got a twenty-nine-year-old woman with abdominal pain and the doctors are all busy. Can you meet them in the bay?’
Kitty tucked a clean sheet onto the exam bed and carried the dirty linen out with her, tossing it into a linen bag on her way outside. She exited the doors as the ambulance pulled into the bay and Joe climbed out, pulling the stretcher with him.
‘Hey,’ he greeted Kitty with his megawatt smile. ‘Kitty, this is Talia. Acute abdominal pain. BP one-forty over ninety. Heart rate one hundred and ten. Temp thirty-nine degrees. No significant medical history but she’s had a positive home pregnancy test. Nausea but no vomiting.’
Talia’s eyes were open. She was perspiring and looked a little grey.
‘Husband is on his way, following behind,’ Joe’s partner added.
‘Doctors?’ Joe mouthed the word silently as they wheeled Talia into the hospital.
Kitty shook her head. ‘Busy,’ she replied, knowing that Joe was thinking they’d need a consult.
Kitty spied Anna coming out of an exam room as they negotiated the corridor. ‘Anna! I need a consult if you’re free,’ Kitty said before Anna could disappear. She let Joe repeat his summary as they transferred Talia to a bed before Kitty and Anna were able to start their assessment.
Kitty started a file and handed it to Anna while she hooked Talia up to the various monitors. Anna recorded Talia’s symptoms, the onset and severity, as well as her activities over the previous twenty-four hours and her menstrual history. By Talia’s account, she figured she was eight weeks pregnant.
‘We’ll need a urine sample if that’s possible, Talia, just to test and confirm the pregnancy. Kitty, can you organise that? I’ll duck out and arrange a pelvic ultrasound.’
Kitty nodded and fetched a bed pan but Anna had gone no further than six steps when Talia cried out in pain. She curled into a ball, clutching her stomach and her heart rate escalated rapidly. She was sweating more profusely and her face was now completely white.
‘Anna!’ Kitty called out.
Talia wasn’t the right demographic for gall stones, which left a burst appendix or a ruptured Fallopian tube as the most likely cause of her pain. That or extremely bad gastro.
Anna came back into the room and took one look at their patient. ‘Get me a gynae consult and prep a theatre,’ she instructed.
Kitty stripped off her gloves and threw them into the bin as Talia was wheeled off to Theatre. She tidied up the exam room again, and after checking in with Davina and finding that the waiting area was empty she took the opportunity to grab a drink and something to eat. Her shift had been busy and she was finding that if she didn’t eat something small on a regular basis the morning sickness would rear its head. It wasn’t so much morning sickness as nausea whenever she got hungry and she was quickly learning not to pass up the chance to refuel when she was able to.
Joe was in the kitchen, grabbing a coffee.
‘Can I make you one?’ he asked.
Kitty shook her head. ‘No, thanks, I’ve gone off coffee.’ Her body was already rejecting anything that could be considered remotely toxic—alcohol, coffee, strong cheeses, raw fish—and craving healthy options like fresh fruit and vegetables. She’d always tried to eat healthily but she was finding it difficult not to now that she was pregnant, as so many foods made her queasy.
‘How did things go with Talia?’ Joe asked as he pulled out a chair for Kitty.
‘Not great,’ Kitty replied. She pulled the lid off a tin of tuna and ate a mouthful before continuing. ‘She’s in Theatre now. Anna thinks it might have been a ruptured Fallopian tube. I guess she was lucky she was here and not at home.’
Joe thought Kitty looked worried. A crease had appeared between her dark brows and he wondered what was bothering her. She didn’t know Talia, and the woman was far from the first ED patient who would have been whisked off to Theatre.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘I’m just thinking about Talia. There she was all excited about this pregnancy... It was her first, did you know that?’
Joe shook his head. There hadn’t been the time or the necessity to go into that detail. It would have been far different if she’d been in labour, but with an unconfirmed pregnancy it was irrelevant to the ambulance crew.
‘One minute she’s all excited about the news,’ Kitty continued, ‘and the next, if Anna’s diagnosis is correct, she won’t be pregnant any more and the best-case scenario is they are able to save her Fallopian tube. Jess and Cam are so excited about my pregnancy, so excited to meet their child, but I can’t stop thinking of all the things that could go wrong.’
So that was the problem. Kitty’s imagination was working overtime as usual. She was always of the opinion that if something could go wrong, it would.
‘I think I might ask Anna if she can do an ultrasound for me,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Just to check things out. It’ll make me feel better.’
‘You have no reason to think anything is wrong. You’ve been feeling queasy, you’ve gone off coffee...’ He didn’t mention her sore breasts. ‘You’ve got all the right signs.’ He knew she had a tendency to worry overly about things and imagine all the things that go awry. ‘Have you had another blood test?’
‘Yes. My hCG levels are still rising.’
‘That’s a good sign, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘When is your scheduled ultrasound?’ he asked. He was trying to be the best friend that she expected. He had been consciously trying to stem any negative emotions. Those feelings weren’t useful to anyone. But ever since Kitty had confirmed her pregnancy and he’d experienced the unexpected sense of jealousy he had questioned why. And he’d finally figured it out.
Children of his own had never been on his agenda—in his mind if he couldn’t commit to a woman he didn’t deserve to father children—but with Kitty’s announcement he’d had to admit that he actually did want to be a father. He didn’t begrudge her the pregnancy, far from it, and it shouldn’t matter that she was going to have a baby. That shouldn’t impact on his ability to be supportive, and he knew he shouldn’t be jealous, but he was finding the reality a little different from the theory. All it did was remind him that someday soon Kitty might be having children of her own, and moving on from their friendship.
But that was his issue and he would deal with it, and in the meantime he would make sure he was supportive. Maybe being a surrogate uncle to Kitty’s children would suffice.
‘Eight days,’ she replied.
‘I think you should wait until the scan, then. Think of how exciting that is going to be. Don’t you want to be able to share that with
