The conversation in the operating theatre suddenly quietened and in unison the gowned medics seemed to close ranks around Naomi. John sat down and took her hand. His mouth had gone dry. He was trembling. ‘Starting now,’ he said to her.
He could hear the clatter of instruments. Saw figures leaning over the table, eyes above the masks all serious in concentration. He craned his neck around the screen and watched Mr Holbein drawing a scalpel across the base of the huge bump that took up the whole of Naomi’s abdomen. Squeamishly, he looked away.
‘What can you see?’ Naomi asked.
Then suddenly the obstetrician popped his head around the screen.
‘Would you like to see the babies delivered?’ he asked, cheerily.
John looked at Naomi, bolstered by the confident tone of Holbein’s voice. ‘How do you feel about that, darling?’
‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Would you like to?’
‘I – I would, yes,’ he said.
‘I would too.’
Moments later, the anaesthetist undid the clips and let the green sheet down.
‘You can hold up her head to give her a better view,’ Holbein said to John.
Gently, John obeyed. They could see a lumpy ocean of green sheets and the surgeons’ gowned arms.
It seemed just moments later that Phoebe Anna Klaesson, tiny, coated in the slimy curds of yellow cream of the vernix and blood, eyes open, crying, trailing her umbilical cord from her belly and gripped firmly in a rubber-gloved hand, was pulled clear of the warmth and bustle of her mother’s womb. She was lifted up into the comparative freezing cold and eerie silence of the operating theatre.
As John watched, totally mesmerized, she was turning, right in front of his eyes, from bluey pink to bright pink.
That crying. That sweet sound of life, their baby, their creation! He felt joy and fear at the same time. Memories of Halley’s birth swirled in his head. All the pride and hope he had had. Please be all right, Phoebe. You will be. Oh God, yes, you will be!
The obstetrician held Phoebe up, while another gowned figure fixed the cord with two clamps, and a third figure cut it between them.
Holding the cord with the baby, Mr Holbein placed them into the green sterile sheet the midwife was holding out. Then, wrapping the sheet around Phoebe, he brought her close to Naomi.
‘Your daughter looks lovely!’
Phoebe cried lustily.
‘Listen to that!’ Holbein said. ‘That’s a healthy cry.’
John’s eyes were sodden with tears. ‘Well done, darling,’ he whispered to Naomi. But she was staring at her daughter with such exhausted rapture she didn’t even hear him.
The obstetrician handed Phoebe to the midwife, who in turn took her over to the paediatrician, who was standing by the resuscitation trolleys, two small mobile tables each with a large flat overhead lamp. ‘And now the next child,’ he said.
As the surgeon moved back down to the abdomen, he said, ‘The second baby is further back and higher up – this is not going to be quite so easy. It’s a breech presentation with the head tucked up in a corner of the womb.’
Still supporting Naomi’s head, John’s anxiety returned. He watched the obstetrician concentrating. The man was moving his hands around inside Naomi, but John could see from his face something was wrong. Sweat was glistening on the man’s brow.
The atmosphere in the room seemed to change. Every pair of eyes now looked tense. The surgeon was still moving his hands. He said something to the scrub nurse, too quietly for John to hear.
A bead of sweat fell from the obstetrician’s head onto the lens of his glasses.
Suddenly the anaesthetist said to John, ‘We’re having a little difficulty here. I think, Mr Klaesson, you should leave us now.’
Holbein nodded. ‘Yes, that’s sensible.’
‘What’s going on?’ John said, glancing anxiously at Naomi, who seemed to have lost what little colour she had in her face.
The obstetrician said, ‘This is really difficult and the baby’s heart rate from cord pulsation has gone right down. It would be better if you went out into a waiting room.’
‘I’d prefer to stay,’ John said.
The anaesthetist and obstetrician exchanged glances. John looked anxiously at Mr Holbein. Was the baby dying?
The anaesthetist pinned back the screen, blocking Naomi and John’s view. John kissed her. ‘Don’t worry, darling, it’ll be OK.’
She squeezed his hand. Then he stood up. Des Holbein came up to Naomi again. ‘I’m sorry, Naomi, I’ve been trying to restrict the incision to what we call the bikini line, but I’m going to have to cut you vertically now.’
She gave a faint nod.
‘The epidural block isn’t high enough,’ the anaesthetist said. Then his assistant suddenly called out, in alarm, ‘Sixty!’
There was an air of panic in the room.
‘I can’t wait,’ the surgeon said.
The anaesthetist raised his voice almost to a shout, ‘I have to get her asleep! Give me a minute!’
John looked at both men in horror as the obstetrician imperiously said, ‘Goddammit man, the baby is already hypoxic!’
The anaesthetist was struggling with a needle in a vial.
‘I’m going to have to start if we want to save the baby!’ Holbein shouted, with desperation in his voice.
‘Wait, for God’s sake, let me get her intubated and paralysed.’
The obstetrician, dripping with sweat, lifted the green sheets, and folded them back, exposing all of her tummy. ‘How long will it take you?’
‘A couple of minutes.’
‘We don’t have a couple of minutes.’ He walked back up to Naomi. ‘I’m afraid if you want to save the baby this is going to hurt a little. Are you OK with that?’
‘Don’t hurt Naomi,’ John said. ‘Please – it’s – much more important-’
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Do what you have to do to save the baby, please, I’ll be OK.’
‘I don’t want you to hurt her,’ John said.
‘I really do think it would be better if you went outside,’ the surgeon said.
The anaesthetist spritzed the needle, then swabbed Naomi’s arm and injected her.
John stared in horror as, seconds later, transfixed, he watched the surgeon insert the scalpel upside down into her abdomen, and with one steady upward sweep, trailed by a ribbon of bright red blood, he cut from just above where her pubic hairline had ended, right up to her umbilicus.
Naomi screamed in pain, her fingernails cutting into the palm of John’s hand. She screamed again, then again. John stood, stunned, open-jawed, helpless, feeling blood draining away inside him, his head swimming. He took a deep breath.
The anaesthetist snapped a line onto the cannula in Naomi’s wrist, and instantly she began calming down. Seconds later, she appeared to have stopped breathing altogether, with her eyes wide open, staring glassily.
Instantly the anaesthetist took the airline from his assistant and tried to intubate her. But he was having problems getting the clear plastic tube down her throat. ‘Can’t get it in,’ he said. Perspiring heavily, he pulled it out, tried again, then pulled it out again, with all the elegance of a fisherman trying to get a hook out of the gullet of a pike.
John fainted.
37
It felt like he had a meat cleaver embedded in his head. John was aware he was lying down and that something cold was pressing against his right eye. He opened his left eye and all he could see for a moment was a blur. The light hurt and he closed it again.
A cheery female voice said, ‘How are you feeling?’
He opened his eye again and focused. A face. A young woman he vaguely recognized. She had wavy blonde hair and was pretty. The junior midwife; her name was Lisa, he remembered, suddenly.