Page 19 of Prognosis Do Over

‘Very good.’ Will nodded and risked a look at Lou. ‘Any concerns?’ he asked her.

Lou thought Terry felt quite warm, and checked the chart hanging at the end of his cot. His temp had been up this morning — night staff hadn’t handed that over. She checked his med chart. They’d given him some paracetamol.

‘He’s febrile at the moment,’ said Lou, again hoping he wasn’t coming down with something.

‘Get a ward urine test,’ said Will, seeing Lou’s concern. ‘Just to be sure.’

Terry chose that moment to sneeze, and show all and sundry some nice green nasal discharge. Lou dodged his attempt at rubbing his face into her shirt. The group laughed at her quick reflexes.

‘Hmm,’ said Will, grinning broadly, ‘and maybe an NPA as well.’

Lou pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped, much to Terry’s disgust. He grizzled at her, and then grinned when she stopped. He didn’t look his usual happy self. His eyes looked a little dull, and he was already rubbing at them — an indication he was ready for his morning sleep, which he wouldn’t normally be for at least another hour.

The round broke up, and Lou hurried away to alert her different staff members to the changes that Will had instigated for their patients. She was pleased to see Will go. She’d been conscious of his stare as she’d held Terry, and had been pleased with the distraction when the little one had almost slimed her.

Between Will’s stare today and the memory of his look yesterday, it wasn’t quite the way she’d planned to restart their professional relationship.

And I’m over him!

‘Kristy, have you done a naso-pharyngeal aspirate before?’ she asked, tracking the grad nurse down to the medication room.

Kristy shook her head. ‘Not yet. It’s on my checklist, though.’

Lou nodded. Grad nurses had to achieve proficiency in certain procedures during their ward rotations. ‘Good. Will wants one on Terry, and as he’s your patient you can do it. I’ll show you when you’ve finished there. He’s ready for his nap, so we’ll get the unpleasantries over, then he can have his bottle and go to sleep.’

Five minutes later a grizzly Terry was lying on his back in his cot, looking at them suspiciously.

‘We’ll do the urine bag first,’ Lou said. ‘Then the NPA.’

Kristy gooed at Terry as she undid his nappy, and Lou helped keep him still as Kristy secured the small, sterile urine-collecting bag. It was a tricky job and the bag needed to be fixed in the right spot or the urine could leak out everywhere. A wriggly, grizzly baby made it trickier still.

‘Much easier with a boy,’ Kristy commented as she checked her handiwork, folding the excess plastic into his nappy and refastening it.

‘Yes,’ Lou laughed. ‘Much.’

Terry had taken it reasonably well, for which Lou was pleased — because she knew there was no way on earth he was going to take the next bit well at all.

Lou talked to him soothingly as Kristy assembled the specimen collector into the suction line. Kristy turned it on at the wall, and Terry looked at her and started to grizzle.

‘It’s okay, baby,’ Lou crooned. ‘It’s only horrible for a few seconds.’

‘So I just put the catheter in his nose, advance it to the back of his throat and suck, right?’ asked Kristy.

‘Yep,’ Lou confirmed. ‘Are you ready?’

Kristy nodded, and Lou laid her chest across the little boy’s legs and torso so he couldn’t kick her, and held his head firmly between her hands. Terry started to cry and squirm his head, and Lou increased her grip.

He really complained when the thin clear catheter was introduced to his nose, and then coughed and gagged through his cries while Kristy completed the job. They watched as thick green discharge tracked up the catheter, and Kristy withdrew it quickly, satisfied they had enough for a specimen.

Lou quickly picked the protesting babe off the bed and gave him a cuddle as Kristy sucked a bit of sterile saline into the suction catheter to move the exudate into the collection canister at the end of the catheter.

‘Oh, no — real tears,’ Lou crooned as she sat with Terry on the chair beside his cot and wiped away a little tear from his face. ‘Will this help?’ she asked, and picked up his bottle.

Terry looked slightly mollified and reached for it. She handed it to him and he lay back, snuggling into the crook of her elbow and placing it in his mouth.

‘And then there was peace.’ Kristy laughed as she labelled the specimen.

Lou laughed too, and even earned a half-smile from Terry before he closed his eyes and drank himself to sleep.

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