He rushed down the hallway his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum of the floor, only stopping when the elevator held him up. He boarded as soon as the doors opened and quickly hit the button hard to the fifth floor, hitting it repeatedly when the door didn’t shut straight away. The ride seemed to take forever as he bounced from foot to foot while he waited for the ding. He should have taken the stairs, he would have been there by now, damn it he should have taken the stairs. He knew as soon as he answered the phone that it had been bad, her voice had sent chills down his spine and he hadn’t been able to get to her quick enough.
“Nick?” She almost sobbed and instantly she had his attention as he sat bolt up right in the bed.
“What is it?” He asked panicked.
“There’s something wrong with Charlie,” She cried, “I need you.”
He hadn’t replied, just hung up the phone and made his way to her and him as quickly as he could, thankful that Rebecca had decided to stay, he hadn’t even left her a note, then again if he had what would he have said? For three o’clock in the morning he was quite awake, maybe that was from the shock of being called out of the blue, from the panic of not knowing what was happening and he was instantly thrown back almost three years to when he had felt like this before.
“What the hell happened?” he asked as soon as he met Aaron at the security desk.
“I don’t know, I just got a call from Shan saying that she couldn’t get hold of you, that’s she needed you, that Matilda and her we’re in trouble and to tell you that you we’re right,” he said as they walked hastily towards the parking lot.
He felt sick to his stomach, what he had feared had happened, the worst he could imagine and he had not been able to stop it. He had seen all the warning signs, tried to coax her into talking to him but it hadn’t been enough and he had failed them both, just like he always failed at everything. But this time it was different he couldn’t just shrug this off or dust himself down so he could try again. People’s lives had been at stake and he knew that if something happened to either of them he would never forgive himself.
“How bad is it? Have you seen her? Is Shannon okay?” He kept firing questions at his brother the whole journey back towards the hospital.
“I’ve seen her I met her at the hospital after I called you. He got her good Nick, she’s got three broken ribs, a fractured cheek bone, she’s practically purple.”
“Has Matilda seen her? God she doesn’t need to see her mother like that,” He sighed thinking what a sight like that could do to a little kid. His brother’s silence shook him from that thought though, and before he even said anything he knew.
“He got her too didn’t he? That son of a bitch,” he yelled punching the dashboard.
“She’s in intensive care,” he muttered.
“How bad is it?” Nick asked rubbing his temples not really wanting to know.
“Bad. He broke four of her ribs and he’s bruised the hell out of her lungs, they were having problems with blood when I left to pick you up.”
“What kind of problems?” He asked.
“I don’t know she has a rare type or something, they are trying to locate some.”
Although the situation was slightly different the same feelings of helplessness where there, he had no clue what was going on, whether it was just Shan and her over active imagination or whether it was actually something more serious. Deep down he knew it was serious, she wouldn’t have called him like that if it wasn’t, not sobbing like she had been.
The doors to the elevator opened a few moments later and he stepped off turning left and taking off down the hall towards her room almost crashing into a nurse when she stepped out of the room.
“What’s going on? Where’s Shannon? What’s wrong with Charlie?” He fired at her quickly. She put her hand on his arm to silence him as she led him over to the nurses station.
“Mr Carter Charlie’s been taken to the NICU-”
“Why?” He asked quickly without giving her a chance to finish, “When I left he was fine.”
“He was having some trouble breathing after feeding, so it was decided tha he needed to have some tests carried out, needed some oxygen therapy,” she informed him.
“But he’s okay?” He asked.
“They are still carrying out some tests, but as soon as we hear anything we will come and let you both know.” He didn’t miss how she avoided the question, she didn’t know if he was okay, whether he was going to be okay and Nick wanted to yell at her to just answer his question. He knew she wouldn’t be able to though, because nobody knew for sure and for the first time in his life he understood how Shannon and his family must have felt when nobody could give them concrete answers about his prognosis after the accident.
“Where’s Shan?” he asked.
“In her room with one of my other colleagues go right in,” she said nodding towards the door.
***
She made her way over to the squawking infant, lifting him out of the bassinette trying to soothe him as she made her way back to the bed, knowing full well that only way he would stop crying would be if he was fed again.
“You are going to pop little guy,” she joked as she made herself comfortable, getting him settled and as shut off the lamp plunging them back into darkness again. Okay maybe this was nice, she had enjoyed the late night feeds with Matilda, it was so peaceful and quiet, the only noise coming from the suckling infant and she knew as soon as he was finished he would have the drunk from milk look on his face, a look that told her he was totally satisfied and ready to go back to sleep, it was a look she loved.
So when he pulled away from her totally breathless the alarm bells started ringing again. Even in the darkness she could see that his breathing pattern was erratic, it was almost as if he was gasping for breath and she quickly reached for the lamp, her heart in her throat when she looked at him.
“Oh God!”
He was blue, completely blue.
She moved from the bed as quickly as she could, the pain in her lower stomach not even registering, she needed to get help, and so she turned to the head of the bed and pressed the big red button, the emergency buzzer as she turned and placed him on the bed and began to strip him off his sleeper.
“HELP ME! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!”
It seemed to take forever for people to reach her but in reality it had only been about thirty seconds, all the nurses rushing into her room, the crash trolley rattling in behind one of them.
“Get the warmer,” One said as she continued to strip Charlie off.
“He’s cyanotic, what are his sats?” Doctor Fleming asked as he made his way into the room, his hair sticking up every which way a clear indication that he must have been sleeping just a few minutes previous.
“Seventy six and dropping” The nurse tried to tell him quietly but Shan had heard, hell it was quite obvious anyway, no one with one hundred percent oxygen saturated blood would look that colour, they would be pink, he quite clearly wasn’t.
“Okay airway is patent for now, lets try and correct the cyanosis with some O2 and page the NICU attending, get him here now, where is the warmer?” He reeled off quickly as he held his stethoscope to Charlie small chest.
“Here,” Said one nurse as she wheeled it in quickly.
He quickly scooped up the still blue Charlie, and placed him upon the warmer before carrying out the rest of his assessment, the nurses connecting her baby to the equipment, it amazed her how quickly it all happened, how well they worked together as a team. Then again in this type of situation where she worked it was exactly the same, everyone knew what they were doing, what their role was, what came next, because if you didn’t then there was no hope for the sick child that they were trying to save.
“Okay I need access, get me a 22 gauge cannula, and I need a blood gas stat,” The resident said as he prepared an area of Charlie’s skin to get a line into.
It just seemed so surreal, she didn’t feel part of what was going on around her, she knew exactly what they were doing and why but she felt so helpless and so she just stood and stared until he jabbed her child with the needle, well that was the last straw. It made her heart break when she heard his feeble cry, not the screech she heard when he had been first born, this was more like a whimper, like he didn’t have the energy to vocalise his distaste to what they were doing.
“Oh God,” She whispered to herself when the full impact of what was happening hit her.
“His tachy at 190, I can’t get a decent BP,” The nurse told the Resident, again trying to be quiet but Shannon heard every word.
“Oh God help him, please help him,” She begged edging closer to the warmer.
“Should she be in here?” Dr Fleming asked as he filled up the capillary tube with some blood so they could get a blood gas before handing it to the waiting nurse, who took off out of the room and down the corridor with it.
“I’m not leaving!” She replied shrilly to his question.
“Shannon maybe it would be-” A Nurse tried.
“I’M NOT LEAVING!”
“Okay what have we got?” A balding man obviously in his early fifties, asked as he walked into the room, Shannon recognised him as one of the neonatal attendings. He quickly made his way over to Charlie, listening to what Dr Fleming had to say.
“One day old male, initial baby check unremarkable. Feeding Mom noticed difficulty breathing, profoundly cyanotic, tachyneic.”
“Passed muconium? Been feeding okay?”
“Yes, I don’t think it’s TOF,” Dr Fleming said as he looked over the blood gas that was handed to him shaking his head slightly, “Metabolic acidosis, his lactate is through the roof, PC02 is climbing, PO2 is seventy percent.”
“It’s a cardiac problem isn’t it?” Shannon said making both the doctors look at her.
“Do cardiac issues run in your family?” The neonatal doctor asked.
“No but he’s not responding to the oxygen is he?”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No I’m a PICU nurse,” She told him.
“It’s certainly looking that way.”
She kept replaying the past hour in her head, wondering if there was anything she could have done differently, if only she had been insistent that they do further testing on him, then this could have been slightly avoided, they could have kept him monitored more closely, could have kept him stable rather then let him collapse in a big heap right in front of her.
Once they had stabilised him enough they had whisked her newborn to intensive care and she had been left with a nurse to try and comfort her, offering to call Nick, to make her a drink but she didn’t want any of that, she wanted to be with Charlie, to see what they were doing, to make sure they were doing everything right, that they didn’t forget anything. Of course they wouldn’t allow that and so she had made the call to Nick, sobbing down the phone, knowing that when the phone went dead he would be on his way as fast as he possibly could, just like he always had been.
“Why haven’t they come back with more news?” Shannon asked the nurse, whose name escaped her.
“They will just as soon as they have any. They’ll want to get him stable, to run the tests, to be absolutely certain on a diagnosis before they come back, it doesn’t mean that anything bad has happened,” She tried to comfort.
“That’s bullshit, the longer it takes the worse it is,” She said bluntly from her own experiences. “Sorry,” She apologised quickly.
“It’s okay, its going to be harder for you because you know so much, maybe a bit too much but you have to remember in this situation you aren’t a nurse, you are his Mother. You don’t need to worry about the numbers, about the tests, there are others to do that for you. Are you sure I cant get you anything? A drink, maybe something to eat, are you in any pain?”
“I just want to see him,” She said her eyes filling once again.
“As soon as he is settled you can,” She said rubbing Shannon’s shoulder.
As soon as the door opened and she saw his worried face she broke down again, he was by her side in an instant wrapping his arms around her protectively.
“It’s okay, I’m here baby, shhhhhh, it’s okay,” He whispered in her ear as he rocked her back and forth. She let him comfort her for a few minutes but she knew that he needed to know what was happening, that he was almost completely in the dark about Charlie.
“He’s really sick Nick,” She told him quietly as she pulled away from his embrace taking his hand in hers.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I was feeding him and I had the light off, god if I had had the light on maybe I would have noticed earlier, maybe I would have seen,” she said getting choked again.
“Shannon this isn’t your fault,” The nurse tried.
“But I would have seen.”
“Seen what?” Nick asked confused.
“He just started breathing funny and when I turned on the light he was…he was so blue Nick,” she said sobbing again after the confession.
“So he’s not getting enough oxygen? So it’s something to do with his lungs?” Nick asked trying to piece together everything. It was confusing enough to hear accounts of what had happened rather then seeing it with his own eyes but at times Shannon seemed to forget that he didn’t have the knowledge she had, that with most medical things he was totally clueless. So when she shook her head he was totally confused, “So what is it then?”
“It’s probably his heart,” She told him.
“His heart?” He asked confused.
“We don’t know anything for certain yet so I think we should wait until the doctors come back to talk to you both before we start speculating. I know it’s difficult Shannon but just try and shut your mind off from it,” The Nurse tried and Nick knew instantly that what she had just said had been a big mistake and he mentally braced himself.
“Shut my mind off from it?! My Baby could have a Hypoplastic left heart and you are telling me not to think about it?” She almost hissed making the poor women flush crimson.
“I’m sure he’s not a hypoplast Shannon, he would have been a lot sicker a lot more quickly.”
“You don’t know that though do you? Hell six hours ago you all told me my baby was perfectly healthy, well did he look perfectly healthy when they wheeled him out of here? Do perfectly healthy babies turn blue? Do they have to spend their first night in a NICU?!” She bit back angrily the pitch of her voice rising dangerously.
“I think it might be a good idea if we’re on our own for a bit,” Nick said to the women with an apologetic look hoping she would get the hint. She nodded at him in understanding as she vacated the room.
“How dare she?!”
“Shan she’s only trying to help,” he tried knowing instantly they he had made a grave error as well.
“HELP?! HELP?!” He could tell she was just about to go into another rant but instead as just crumbled, big wet tears sliding down her cheeks, her chest racking with sobs and he just wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest holding her tightly. Wanting nothing more then to join her in her tears but knowing that for know at least he was going to have to be the strong one.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Here you go guys. Sorry it has taken me a bit longer to get this chapter out! I've been busy and have decided that I was putting far too much pressure on myself about getting chapters out. So I have decided that my aim is to try and update weekly, of course this depends on work and such.
Chapter End Notes:
Please let me know what you think!
