Abruption (3 page)

“What’s wrong?” I pushed the damp hair away from her face. “Talk to me. You look pale.” Her hand immediately went to the base of her bump and she began to rub. Shit. “Let’s sit down. This was too much.” I cursed myself for letting her convince me otherwise after the fifth song in a row.

“I’m hot and probably a little dehydrated,” she shouted over the piercing music. “I’m gonna use the restroom. Can you get me another water?”

“Let’s just go, this was too much.”

“Nah. I’m fine. Meet you at the table.” She pecked my lips and disappeared into the crowd. From behind, you couldn’t even tell she was pregnant; nonetheless, she was twenty-four weeks.

With two ice waters in hand, I parked at our empty table. Becky must have finally coerced the birthday boy onto the dance floor. Moving his hips in more than one direction was definitely out of Sam’s comfort zone, but he’d do anything for his wife. He was two years behind me in residency and a good egg. At least that’s what all the ladies back at the hospital called him. Stupid term if you asked me, but it fit.

“Guy.” Britt’s voice snuck up from behind, cracking. “I think we need to go.”

Alarm bells echoed in my head. “What happened?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing, but I’m spotting a little.” She whispered the word
spotting
as if it were something to be inconvenienced by and embarrassed about rather than something potentially serious. I decided to table that lecture for when we got home and I made sure she was off her feet and relaxing. There would be no more dancing.

“Come on, let’s get you home.” I leaned over to grab her purse off the table and saw her clutch her bump a little tighter. When she pinched her eyes closed and leaned into me, my fight-or-flight response kicked into overdrive. “Forget that, we’re going straight to L&D.”

“It’s not
pain
pain, just uncomfortable, a little tight. And it just started, so it’s probably just those Braxton Hicks contractions. I’ve gotten them before. Let’s not ruin Sam’s birthday.”

I placed my hand on her bump. “It feels like a rock.” I dragged a hand through my hair and over my face, silently going through the differential diagnosis for bleeding and contracting in the second trimester. A six-week rotation during my third year of med school left me far from an expert in obstetrics. Anyone who watched a few episodes of a cable baby show knew as much as I did, at this point. The one thing I did know was this was not
nothing
.

The crisp night air met us as we stepped from the stuffy lounge. “Feels so much better out here.”

I wasn’t buying it. Luckily there was an empty cab across the street. Philly in the middle of winter consisted of piles of filthy snow lining the edge of the sidewalks, with patches of black ice ready to mock you when you landed on your ass.

“Hold on to me.” I picked her up and my leg span cleared the ice. “You’re done with the heels, babe.”

When I deposited her into the cab, she cringed again, trying to hide it this time by bitching nonsense. “A, I grew up on the East Coast, I’ve worn heels in this weather a billion times, and B, we both know you can have a little bleeding without it being a big deal. I’ve probably been doing too much. I need to get off my feet, take it easy for a few days.” She was completely calm and rational.

Me, not so much.

“Yeah, you can do that once you’re scanned.” I turned toward the cab driver and instructed, “Philadelphia Hospital on Pine.” It wasn’t up for discussion.

Lucky for me she didn’t fight, and fortunately for us she was right. Baby looked good and with a few days off her feet the bleeding resolved.

Britt decided to stop working though, and I absolutely agreed. Money was tight. A resident’s salary wasn’t anything to write home about, but I’d make it work. I debated asking her to curb her designer handbag fetish and sample the lunch menu somewhere other than Center City’s five-star finest, but I held my tongue and sucked it up. She continued to indulge.
Happy wife, happy life.
And more importantly, healthy baby. There was plenty of time to pay it back after fellowship. Besides, she had the whole motherly instinct and all, not to mention she was a nurse.

She reassured me often that she felt fine, that her OB said she was fine and that the baby was fine. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

With bleeding episodes two, three, and four, I was over her “everything is fine” attitude.

She blew off our “you don’t fuck around with a chronic abruption” conversation with an eye roll and rebutted with the “I’m a trained nurse and would never do anything to harm our baby” lecture. Her arguments didn’t make me feel any better. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when a text interrupted my morning rounds stating I needed to get my ass to labor and delivery because I was going to be a father four weeks early.

“It’s a girl!”

The tiny garbled cry stopped time, and my heart skipped enough beats I was sure an arrhythmia was imminent. The NICU nurse jammed the suction bulb down her tiny throat while another rubbed her skin. She pinked right before my eyes and her tiny whimper turned to a full-blown scream. I never knew that sound could instantaneously equate to pure love. They placed her slimy, wiggly body on the scale: four pounds one ounce. Nineteen inches.

Shit, she was small.

She was perfect.

“Dr. Hunter, we’re going to bring her to the NICU for observation, warm her up, check her glucose and make sure her breathing stays strong.”

I stared, frozen in a trance-like state at the nurse holding my cleanly swaddled peanut. I knew she was speaking to me, and I heard what she said, but somehow I couldn’t get a handle on what was happening around me. I was someone’s father. I was
her
dad.

Pure happiness coursed through my veins, yet I was suffocated by an inexplicable anxiety.

“Dr. Hunter, you okay? Why don’t you have a seat by your wife? Your baby girl is responding well. Some time in the NICU is very routine for preemies born under distress. But her five-minute Apgar was eight, which is a great sign. And despite being a little squirt, she looks pretty cooked.” The nurses’ chatter and my baby’s cries filled in around the storm.

Preemies born under distress.

“Guy.” Quinn’s voice finally snapped me out of the whirlwind. “Brittany’s stable. Go be with the baby. I’ve got fifteen more minutes or so here.”

I watched as she threw stitch after stitch into Brittany’s open abdomen. I knew the seriousness of the situation. Hell, there wasn’t even enough time for spinal anesthesia. Brittany was under general with a tube down her throat right now. I was a surgeon, for fuck’s sake, yet I felt helpless. Talk about a new perspective. I was no longer the confident doctor with all the answers, instead I’d slipped into the same frightened shell that I’d witnessed my patients’ spouses deteriorate into and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. I got a glimpse of the other side, the civilian side. And it sucked.

My eyes trained on the monitor confirming Britt’s stability and then on the thick crimson liquid dripping into her arm. “This could’ve been bad. Thank you,” I mumbled to Britt’s OB, releasing the breath I had been holding.

At Britt’s appointment this morning she was bleeding yet again, and Quinn made the call for an emergent C-section. A fifth bleed and a non-reassuring fetal heart tracing sealed the deal.

“They’re both lucky, just focus on that.”

“Yeah.” I nodded in Quinn’s direction then touched my lips to Brittany’s clammy forehead. “Stay strong, wife. I love you, babe. Gonna go see our baby girl.”

We were a family. I was a father.

I blinked and the last three months blurred into a hazy memory. Much like these last thirteen years. But busting my ass was all going to pay off today. The last stop on a long road of acceptance letters, or in this case, an email, was minutes away. Unlike college and medical school acceptances that trickled in over weeks to months, residency and fellowship acceptances boiled down to a solitary day.

Match Day.

Verbal intentions were often exchanged, but the ultimate decision was based on a computer system matching your ranks to hospital program’s ranks. Most laypersons wouldn’t believe the process; it was as convoluted as it sounded. But everyone in medicine knew exactly when Match Day was.

Life’s next stop was a stroke of the screen away. I picked up my iPhone and refreshed my mail for the hundredth time. Finally. Sitting at the top in bold.

Welcome to Stanford

Yes. We needed this. Working practically every waking hour was killing me. Moonlighting wasn’t allowed in my residency program due to all the strict medical education regulations. So on top of the fourteen-hour days at the hospital, I had to get creative to cover the cost of Britt not working and our baby nurse. Yes, I said baby nurse.

Initially it made sense. Britt was recovering from her C-section and we were both on the inexperienced side when it came to newborns, or kids in general, for that matter. Maxine was so small and her five-day stint in the NICU had spooked us (or me) more than I cared to admit. But all in all, Quinn was right. We were lucky. RDS, or respiratory distress, was relatively common, especially with premature C-section babies. A few days with a little oxygen and our peanut was raring to get home.

Ingrid was supposed to be a two-week investment to make our transition as a family easier, not the twelve weeks and counting that I was pretty confident I never agreed to. By the way, I was in the wrong business with the amount baby nurses charged. Not to mention my peanut, the little time I actually got to spend with her, was an angel baby and slept through anything.
Biased? Oh, yeah
.

But I refused to debate “why we need Ingrid” with Britt again. Been there and done that at week three when she was still feeling a little “postpartum.” Besides, it was going to be a non-issue. It was already June and we’d be relocating in two months. My best bet was to ride it out. Stanford had a great daycare and there were great nursing opportunities for Brittany. What was a little more debt at this point? My girls were worth it.

When I got home, I relieved Ingrid and enjoyed a little one-on-one couch snuggle time with my peanut. Brittany sauntered in an hour and a half later dropping her purse and a few shopping bags by the door.

“Hey, you’re home early. I was just at the hospital actually—had my postpartum visit.”

That was news to me.

“You mean the appointment you were supposed to have six weeks ago?” I joked, but it came out harsher than I intended. The move couldn’t come soon enough. I was barely recognizing myself lately. She ignored me, picked up her bags and headed to our bedroom. “Sorry babe, I was just kidding. You should have told me, I would’ve gone with you.” I tucked my tail between my legs and followed behind her. I wasn’t the guy who snapped at his wife over something stupid—hell, I never imagined being the kind of guy to snap at his wife, period. Sleep deprivation was evil.

Britt shed her cashmere sweater, leaving behind a sheer, long-sleeve, white T-shirt, then proceeded to neatly fold the garment and pile it on top of six matching ones in her closet before she re-engaged. Luckily, her ticked face was gone, replaced with a playful smirk. Hands on her hips—a position that, incidentally, thrust her breasts out slightly—she said, “Not exactly the view I wanted you to have of my vagina. Besides, it was a five-minute visit. She said I’m
all
good.”