Page 35 of Prognosis So Done

Joan nodded at Gill, indicating that everything was good to

begin. ‘Prep,’ he said.

Harriet passed him the bowl of Betadine and a swab on a stick. He dipped the swab into the dark brown liquid and liberally applied it to the woman’s abdomen. Gill opened his mouth to ask for the scalpel and found it in his hand before he could even get the word out.

‘Thank you, Harry,’ he murmured, and there was a brief moment when their gazes met above their masks and he saw a flash of the old Harriet.

The one he’d been happily married to for five years before she’d changed the plot on him. The one who could anticipate his needs in an operating theatre better than anyone else he had worked with. He missed that Harriet.

Ella came on, singing Mack the Knife, and Gill almost smiled at the appropriateness as he made a horizontal incision low, just above the woman’s pubic bone. Blood welled up from the incision and he mopped it up with towels and used diathermy on the bleeding points, the smell of burning flesh permeating his mask.

Quickly, Gill achieved a bloodless field and could see the pink colour of the stretched uterus. Next he made a similar shallow incision into the uterine wall and took the blunt dissection instrument Harriet gave him and slowly opened up the incision further, making it wider and deeper with each separation of the uterine fibres. He stopped when he saw the membranes glistening like a peeled grape.

‘Ready for the suction,’ he said out of habit, but Harriet was already poised with the sucker in hand.

He used the scalpel again to pierce through the two membranes. As the clear, sweet-smelling amniotic fluid spouted

out of the hole, Harriet efficiently sucked it away then Gill used his gloved fingers to tear the membranes open.

‘Come on, little one. Time for the big bad world,’ he said,

supporting the head as he gently eased the baby out through the incision.

Gill felt the team’s collective breath hold as he laid the silent newborn down on the drapes and sucked her nose and mouth with a catheter Harriet had passed him. He was conscious of her clamping and cutting the cord as he cleared the baby’s airways.

The baby girl did not like it one little bit and a lusty wail and flailing fists were the response to the potent stimulus. Gill felt, rather than heard, the collective sigh of

relief as Joan injected the syntocin into the woman’s IV to aid the expulsion of the placenta.

‘What a beautiful noise,’ said Helmut.

Sure, Gill thought as he picked up the wet bawling infant, until you had to wake up to it every night at 2 a.m. But then something happened as he passed the infant down into Harriet’s waiting, green-drape-covered arms. A flash of what it would be

like to pass their newborn to her, still wet from its birth.

The bundle he was holding suddenly felt very precious and

he eased the baby girl ever so gently into his wife’s arms and watched as she stared at the child’s face with utter fascination. Harriet rocked the baby gently as she wrapped the

little one in the green cloth to keep her warm and her cries quietened.

He watched, fascinated, as the woman and child blinked at each other and then suddenly Harriet was looking up at him with wonder in her eyes and he felt a twinge of something deep inside. She looked so beautiful with that look in her eyes, even through the layers of theatre clothes and her face obscured by a mask.

Katya cleared her throat behind them and broke the intensity of their connection. Harriet handed the baby over to Katya, who also had her arms draped with a sterile towel so that Harriet wouldn’t contaminate herself and Gill pulled his head back in the game.

He wished there was a paediatrician standing by to give the baby the once-over, but this was a war zone. They made do with what they had with Joan assuming the paediatric role as Gill concentrated on the continuing operation.

He performed a controlled cord traction, gently pulling on the thick, rope-like structure to ease the placenta out. It came away and Harriet presented him with a kidney dish. He placed the placenta in the metal container and Harriet turned and passed it to Katya.

‘Large swab,’ he said, as he eased the now deflated

uterus out of the mother’s body.

Harriet passed him the thin but absorbent cloth with the radio-opaque strip down the centre. He spread it out over his open hand, inserted his hand into the uterus via the incision and did a sweep of the inside to ensure no products had been left behind.

Satisfied that all seemed in order, he asked Harriet for a suture so he could close. She passed it to him and he listened to her and Siobhan doing a count as he began his layered closure.

---