Chapter 7 - The Emergency Bay
The sound of screeching sirens tore through the heavy silence of the rain-soaked streets.
Inside the back of Medic Unit 4, Paramedic Sarah Jenkins slammed two high-flow IV lines into my arms while her partner drove the unit ninety miles an hour toward Carolinas Medical Center.
"Pressure is crashing! 60 over 40!" Sarah shouted over the roar of the engine. "Fetal heart rates are dropping below sixty beats per minute! We have double bradycardia!"
I was floating in a hazy space between life and death. I could hear the sharp, rhythmic beeps of the cardiac monitor, the smell of rubbing alcohol and fresh blood, the cold pressure of an oxygen mask pressed tightly against my face.
"Stay with me, mama!" Sarah yelled, squeezing my hand tightly. "Stay with me! We're two minutes out!"
I am staying, I thought, my mind fighting against the heavy, suffocating weight dragging me down into the abyss. I am staying for Arthur and Eleanor.
The ambulance slammed to a halt in the trauma bay of the Level 1 Trauma Center.
The rear doors flew open, revealing a team of eight surgeons, nurses, and obstetricians waiting in the pouring rain with a silver gurney.
"Thirty-two-year-old female, twenty-eight weeks twin gestation, severe blunt force trauma from a twenty-foot stair fall!" Sarah shouted as they rolled my gurney out. "Placental abruption suspect! Internal hemorrhage! Last known fetal heart rates were in the fifties!"
Leading the trauma team was Dr. Marcus Vance—no relation to Victoria Vance—the chief of maternal-fetal surgery at CMC.
"Get her to OR 4 immediately!" Dr. Vance ordered, his voice sharp and commanding as he sprinted alongside my rolling bed through the double automatic doors. "Prep for emergency crash C-section and general anesthesia! Call the NICU team! I want two neonatal resuscitation units in the room right now!"
Grant’s black Mercedes pulled into the ambulance bay seconds later, tires spraying rainwater across the pavement.
Grant burst out of the vehicle, running toward the sliding glass doors, his suit jacket open, his face covered in theatrical tears. "Claire! Claire! That's my wife! Those are my babies!"
Two hospital security guards immediately stepped in front of him, blocking the entrance to the surgical wing.
"Sir, you can't go in there!" the head guard ordered, placing both hands flat against Grant’s chest. "She's going directly into an emergency operating room!"
"I am her husband!" Grant screamed, putting on a magnificent show for the nurses and paramedics in the hallway. "I am the father of those children! You have to let me in!"
Behind him, Victoria stood near the car, clutching her broken umbrella, her eyes wide with frantic, terrified energy as she watched the doors to OR 4 slam shut.
Inside the surgical suite, the bright, blinding halogen lamps snapped on above me.
"Pressure is 50 over 30! She's going into hemorrhagic shock!" the anesthesiologist called out. "Push two units of O-negative blood! Put her under!"
A rubber mask was pressed over my face. The sweet, chemical smell of anesthesia gas filled my lungs.
May you like
As the world dissolved into total blackness, I felt the cold bite of a scalpel cutting across my lower abdomen.
And then, nothing.
