It Shouldn't Happen to a Midwife! (11 page)

There was every chance that was what I might just do. Being one finger down and trussed up like a mobile greenhouse I approached the delivery table. At least Denise wasn't complaining that Oliver had been co-opted, even if his fountain pen was blotching ink all over the previously pristine charts. All other attention was being trained on the baby's exit strategy, where a brief sighting had encouraged a small crowd into a spectator sport.

Oliver's girlfriend was there too – she must have been a medical student clocking up her witnessing stats. Conscientiously, Oliver concentrated on his readings, looking sufficiently pale and heroic enough to be a main player. I hoped she was impressed.

‘There it is. We can see it but we need to see more, so come on now, you can do it this time. Push!' Sister Flynn was a decibel short of shouting whilst Denise groaned, cursed and writhed.

‘You're not pushing properly. Come on! You can do better than this.'

‘Oh shut up and do it yourself. So help me, William can have the next one. Where is he?' Denise shook her head as if trying to free herself from a barbed wire pillow. ‘I'm being split in half. Somebody do something please!' The cry was heart rending. She grabbed the Entonox and took a deep draught before Sister Flynn snatched it away, saying, ‘That's making you woozy. Now, use your energy to
push!'
She really should enrol for a charm school. Maybe she and Oliver could cut a deal and get it half price.

‘Nurse! Get your hand ready to cover that baby's head. Smartly now.'

This was probably the time for the discovery of digital deficiency but the miraculous new appearance of a gowned and masked individual diverted all attention elsewhere.

Sister Flynn hissed, ‘No! Not you! Get to the top of the table.'

Had it not been for the twitching eyes and sweating forehead the figure making a fast relocation could have been just another doctor.

‘William! I thought you'd never get here.' Denise's welcome was marginally better though he was soon told off for smoothing her brow, patting her head, telling her to push and being responsible for her being stretched on this bed of misery. Lisa fetched him a seat, though he was so visibly trembling he looked as if he might fall off.

‘Yez are all telling me to push but I can't any longer. Yez'll have to do something to help. I can't do all the work.' Denise's voice was beginning to get faint, her hair was wet with sweat and lay in ropey coils over her shoulders, her hands flailed the air and she was so pale she'd have made a corpse look healthy.

Hang in there, Denise, I thought, you've come so far and in so many ways and taken me with you.

We seemed to have reached stalemate but at least I'd my floating rubber finger firmly tucked out of sight. Though it wasn't likely to be hidden much longer it was rapidly becoming the least of my worries. The small bit of head showing was slippery and time was running out. Denise was plainly exhausted. Dr O'Reilly was beginning to look round, wondering where the forceps pack was. There was mounting tension under the spotlight, with the baby apparently stuck and the foetal heart registering distress.

Around a circle of clinical light, an ominous silence descended whilst William looked as if he might faint and Denise as if she already had. Oliver started to chew his pen then recorded a trajectory so blotched it looked like an exclamation mark. His girlfriend, coming out in sympathy, bit her lip.

Time was of the essence. I thought about Denise and how really tough she was, but she was getting too tired to continue and that baby needed out
now.

‘Right! That's it.' Eyes trained on the spotlight, Dr O'Reilly moved to take over.

This was my last chance. I stood my ground, squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘Hey, Denise, girl. Come on. It's full throttle time. Go!'

Sister Flynn looked up, startled. Maybe she'd noticed the two fingers and read a different message.

‘I'm conducting this labour and I'm in charge,' she whispered, the groove between her eyebrows deepening, ‘and just you let Dr O'Reilly in now! I've never seen the like.' She narrowed her eyes but still I didn't, couldn't, wouldn't budge. She upped her tone. ‘I'm ordering you to shift. Move. Right away! D'ye hear?'

Outside, Belfast might be roaring and grumbling and inside there was about to be a war but I didn't care. I'd gone deaf, dazzled and delighted because a head had made its debut.

I continued, ‘You've done it! Wonderful! Now! Idling time, foot off and think of …' Now what would appeal to the farmer in this wife? My mind raced, then, ‘Chickens! Chook chook, Denise! That's it! Great! Now clocking time nearly over, just another wee burst for the shoulders.'

I spread the fingers of my left hand. At least, and even though it felt like a flipper, I'd got this one properly gloved. I hooked it under an emerging arm then, with both hands, helped out the little baby.

‘It's a boy!'

As if on cue, sunshine glanced in the window, making the room less clinical. Denise's yell was enough to drown out the baby's but by the time the cord was cut and he was lifted, handed over and checked that he'd more fingers than the deliverer, he'd begun to successfully register. Unfortunately, so had Sister Flynn.

‘I've just noticed your fingers,' she croaked. ‘Tell me I'm seeing things, or have we a lunatic at large?'

‘They're very big gloves,' I tried for the confident manner of a coper. ‘It wasn't a problem.'

She shook her head as if ridding it of flies. ‘It'll be card tricks next. You and I'll need to have a talk after all this, but in the meantime,' she turned her attention to Denise who was tracing a bawling infant's cheek and looking at him with a dazed expression, ‘isn't that a grand wee son you have there?'

Denise promptly handed him to William as if she were a stolen goods fence.

‘Don't drop that child!' snapped Sister Flynn, getting back into her stride and making William start. He held the baby more firmly but already the sister was looking for Lisa. ‘Staff!' Doing wonders for paternal confidence, she continued, ‘Go and rescue that baby will you.' Then picking up a syringe she jabbed it into Denise's arm. ‘This should stop any bleeding but we need to get that placenta out now. Nurse Macpherson, get back here and see this labour through properly . Had you in all your glory forgotten about the third stage?'

Given the preceding drama, the after-birth sliding out into a kidney dish was something of an anticlimax. Meanwhile, Denise was getting her brain and body back, allowing her to operate normally once again.

‘And I'll have that baby back now,' she said in a tone that meant business. ‘I need a word with the wee love, even if he's given me such a hard time.'

Oliver, meanwhile, had stopped asking for more graph paper and started to chart something less meteoric whilst his girlfriend looked on as if he were drawing a masterpiece.

‘Full throttle indeed!' chuckled Dr O'Reilly, stretching his neck and shaking his head. ‘Must be a new gynaecological term. Still it seemed to do the trick. Wait till I tell my colleagues, and where did you say you trained, Nurse? I'd say you've the makings of a grand wee midwife there and, Sister,' he waved a spade-like hand under her nose, ‘maybe you should look out gloves to fit smaller people.' He drifted off before Sister Flynn could tell him her theatre was the best equipped in Northern Ireland and that there were small gloves if people would only look.

Then, as if control might just be returning and within her reach, she looked at the contents of the kidney dish. ‘That's good. A fine, healthy-looking placenta.' She put it aside almost tenderly. ‘I'll take it to the sluice and look at it properly there. Of course, Nurse Macpherson,' her tone was withering, ‘even though placentas can tell you a lot, you won't need to look at it since you're such an expert.'

‘Och no, there's still one or two things I've to learn.' I thought this was rather daring but lacked the bottle to ask about the placenta's ultimate fate. There was a rumour that she dug them into her garden where the roses were apparently spectacular. By the same token, a bottle of enema soap might be handy for their green fly. A burnt pan, however, wasn't much use to anybody and would only put Sister Flynn into orbit if she found it.

One thing was plain. That pan needed shifting as quickly as Denise and her husband were now demanding to get out of labour ward.

In the small cubicle, home to so much of Denise's drama, a battalion of cleaners, strong in turban headscarved uniforms and Popeye arms, had moved in. They were scrubbing and hosing the place down as if to rid it of any lingering spirit.

I thought of asking if they'd any handy tips for dealing with incinerated articles but they were far too busy running to a Flynn schedule to stop. They'd shoved Denise's locker outside the kitchen and, stuck for any better idea, I pulled the pan out of its hiding place, stuffed it in a bag and shoved it into the locker just as Sister Flynn came round the corner.

‘The porters must have forgotten to take the locker to the postnatal ward,' I said, hoping to sound less flustered than I felt, ‘so I'll just take it up there before I go off duty.'

‘Alright. That'd be good.' She sounded absentminded as she twitched her nose. ‘It smells like a dead cat around here. It's probably a pair of oulde knickers I bet she hasn't washed since coming here. But I suppose her locker's her business.' She shook her head and sighed. ‘You'd think a girl would have more pride about her wouldn't you?'

Before Denise's reputation could sink further, I grabbed my cloak, tore out of the labour ward and propelled the locker at a spanking rate, making its wheels bounce as I reached post-natal, where splashes of colour from floral bouquets at every corner made it a brighter world than the one I'd just left.

Here, patients converged in amiable groups, talking about their labours like athletes recovering from a major event. Even now, competition lingered as they outdid each other in tales of labour in all its merry facets, whilst their trophies lay in contented comas in cots beside their beds.

The less happy babies were in the nursery. It led off from the ward and William was standing outside it. With his nose pressed against the window he was gazing in at babies registering protest with such red faces and waving fists they made the room look like a shop stewards' convention. The locker wheels creaked and groaned as I trundled towards him but this new father didn't seem to notice.

‘Where's your wife?' I asked, parking transport downwind.

‘In that side ward,' William said, unable to take eyes away from the glass but thumb indicating a room opposite. ‘They've given her a sedative. Thought she deserved it after all that hard work with her blood pressure and all.'

‘Right. I'm just putting her locker back,' I said and went into a room so full of Denise's flowers their scent gave a competitive edge to the pan which I was now stuffing under my cloak. I thought Denise would be amused by its presence but I didn't want to disturb my star athlete, so I left the locker and tip-toed out.

‘Congratulations, William,' I said but he just nodded. He too was in a different world – probably planning a pram on as grand a scale as his tractor.

Back along the corridor and heading for the Home, I met Father O'Patrick, who looked at me shifty-eyed. Maybe the pan bulge made him think this was a patient going in the wrong direction but he scurried away as if he didn't want to see anybody. This was a sentiment I shared completely as, top speed, I arrived at the pantry of our floor without meeting anyone else.

There was enough cleaning material here to scour Ulster so I set to, filling the sink with sufficient water and detergent to get a soap kitchen going and finding that water-play still held appeal with the pot bobbing about cheerfully, as if appreciating restoration.

‘Brian and I are going to the Medical Ball.' Cynthia leant against the doorway. Her appearance was unexpected and could have been unwelcome had she not been so excited she didn't seem aware of either the pan or the suds.

‘That's nice,' I said, sinking the pan. I was as amazed at the amount of bubbles enema soap could generate as at Cynthia's news that Dr Welch was such a fast operator.

‘Yes, we're really excited.' She sighed happily, rubbing her London Hospital badge in such an absentminded way I nearly offered to show her how to clean it properly. ‘So I'm going to go down town tomorrow after work to see if I can buy an evening gown. Something in gold I think.'

‘Sounds your style.'

Ignoring sarcasm, she pressed on. ‘I'm sick of the antenatal clinic and women just wanting to speak about their pregnancies, and I just know they won't want to hear anything about me, far less about a ball. It's next week so maybe and with a bit of luck we'll get a shift by then.'

I swished the water in triumph whilst keeping the pan down. This was my finest hour and not to be rushed. At length and as if careless I said, ‘And by that time, I'll maybe have had a few more deliveries. I got my first one today.' I turned looking forward to seeing her reaction but she was gone and I was speaking to myself.

Lisa came into the ward kitchen the next morning just as I was returning the pan, bright as a new sixpence, back to its cupboard. She wasn't singing and seemed worried.

‘You wouldn't know anything about Denise's ring would you? Apparently it's gone missing.'

‘She wasn't wearing it here,' I said. ‘It's such a knuckle duster I'd have noticed it. Did she say where she thought it might be?'

Lisa spoke carefully. ‘She's sure she put it in her locker but if she did it's not there now.' She gave a tuneless hum and clicked her teeth. ‘The thing is, Jane, Sister Flynn said she saw you fiddling with the locker yesterday and you looked really flustered when she spoke to you about it.'