the table now. She pushed herself to her feet. ‘I’m not going to let that happen. Not to me and especially not to this baby. My baby.’ She turned away with the obvious intention of leaving.
‘Hey…my baby, too…kind of.’ Max was on his feet. He had to stop her going. If she left, he’d have no way of helping her and he’d taken on a responsibility back then when he’d claimed paternity. OK, it had been pretence and he could give it up now but oddly it seemed to be getting stronger.
Ellie got halfway across the room as she made a direct line for her small overnight bag that still sat near the door. But then she stopped abruptly. She put her arms around herself again and then, to Max’s horror, she doubled over with an agonised cry of pain. It was then that he saw the dark stain on the legs of her jeans.
Had her waters broken?
He was by her side in an instant. Holding her. Helping her to lie down, right where she was. He was touching her and when he took his hand away, he saw the unmistakable smears of blood on his fingers.
‘Don’t move, Ellie,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’m just going to call for an ambulance.’
THE wail of the ambulance siren still echoed in his head as Max followed the stretcher carrying Ellie into the emergency department of Dunedin’s Queen Mary hospital.
The sound had been the consistent background to a blur of activity that he had orchestrated from the moment Ellie had collapsed on his floor. He had been the one to place the large-bore IV cannula to allow vital fluids to be administered to counteract the blood loss. He had inserted a second line when it had become apparent that her blood pressure was already alarmingly low and her level of consciousness was rapidly dropping. It was Max who kept an eye on the ECG monitor to see what effect the blood loss might have on her heart rhythm and increased the level of oxygen being given as the reading of circulating levels slowly deteriorated.
This was far worse than any complication he might have imagined her encountering on an international flight. She would have been in trouble if this had happened only hours ago on a short domestic hop. Or out on the street before she had knocked so unexpectedly on his door.
She was in trouble anyway.
So was the baby.
Not that he could afford to worry about the infant just yet. He knew that the mother’s condition was the priority. He had dealt with such cases in his department more than once. Ruptured ectopic pregnancies. Uterine ruptures. Trauma. But this wasn’t some unknown woman who’d been rushed into his department by an ambulance with its siren wailing urgently.
This was Ellie and he’d promised her she was safe now.
‘Antepartum haemorrhage,’ he told the startled-looking triage nurse as the stretcher burst through the electronic doors into a brightly lit department.
‘Max! What on earth are you doing here?’
He ignored more than one head turning in his direction. Maybe this wasn’t the way he usually arrived at work and he rarely turned up wearing his bike-riding leathers but it was no excuse for unprofessional behaviour from his colleagues.
‘Is Trauma One free?’
‘Yes. We got the radio message. Someone from O and G is on the way down.’ The nurse followed the rapidly moving stretcher. So did the receptionist, who was clutching a clipboard.
‘We haven’t got a name,’ the clerk said anxiously.
‘Ellie,’ Max snapped. They were through another set of double doors now, in the best-equipped area in the department to deal with a critical case. The paramedics stopped the stretcher right beside the bed with its clean, white sheet. Staff were waiting, having been primed to expect them, and they were wearing their aprons and gloves, ready to begin a resuscitation protocol. They all knew their first tasks. The portable monitoring equipment from the ambulance would have to be switched over to the built-in equivalents. A junior nurse held a pair of shears, ready to cut away Ellie’s clothing. A trolley was positioned near the head of the bed, an airway roll already opened in case intubation was necessary.
It was no surprise to see who was ready to control both the airway of this patient and the running of this emergency scenario. Jet was wearing theatre scrubs now and had a stethoscope slung around his neck. There was nothing unprofessional about his immediate reaction to seeing who had come in with this patient. He didn’t even blink.
‘On my count,’ he said smoothly. ‘One, two…three.’
There was a pool of blood on the stretcher as they lifted Ellie across to the bed. She groaned and her eyes flickered open.
‘It’s OK,’ Max said, leaning closer. ‘We’re in the hospital now, Ellie. Jet’s here and he’s going to look after you. We’re all going to look after you.’
Her eyes drifted shut again.
‘GCS is dropping.’ Max tried to sound clinical. Detached. It didn’t work.
Jet was holding Ellie’s head, making sure her airway was open. He was watching the rapid rise and fall of her chest and his gaze went to the monitor as the oxygen saturation probe on her finger began relaying the information he wanted.
He frowned and flicked the briefest glance at Max. ‘What the hell happened?’ he murmured.
‘Massive haemorrhage. Seemed to come from nowhere as soon as she stood up. Severe abdominal pain as well.’
The clerk was still in the room, hovering behind the nursing staff who were changing ECG leads, hanging the bags of fluid and getting a blood-pressure cuff secured.
‘What’s Ellie’s last name?’ she asked. ‘How old is she?’
A registrar had his hands on her swollen abdomen. ‘It’s rigid,’ he announced. ‘Is she in labour? What’s the gestation?’
‘Thirty-six weeks and two days,’ Max said.
Ellie was almost naked now. Totally vulnerable. Exposed to an expanding team of medical personnel. Someone from the obstetric department had arrived, closely followed by a technician pushing a portable ultrasound machine. Jet was holding a mask over Ellie’s face and frowning as he watched the numbers changing on the overhead monitor.
‘Ellie…’ He had his mouth right beside his ear and was speaking loudly. ‘Can you hear me? Open your eyes.’
She wouldn’t want to, Max thought. This would have to be absolutely terrifying.
‘Are there any relatives who could give me her details?’ the clerk persisted. ‘Did her husband come in with her? Or…her partner?’ The woman knew she was failing in her task but she made yet another effort. ‘The father of the baby?’
That flicked a switch in Max’s head and its effect was magnified by how vulnerable Ellie was. How much trouble she was in right now. He had tried to protect her and somehow he had stepped into a new nightmare and was still by her side. Was she aware of what was happening? Still terrified? Did she know
