“Will I could use an extra set of hands over here!”
I made my way around the other side of the curtain and looked her straight in the eye.
“What’s wrong?”
Shaking her head, she gestured towards the chair next to her.
“I’ve got a difficult breech here and I need another set of hands to help me pull Jacob out. You see this? We’ve got the shoulder and the knee coming out at the same time.”
I sat back in the chair for a moment after pushing my sleeves back. There was no way two people could possibly attempt this! This is impossible!
“Beverly, there is no way the two of us could even attempt this! You know as much as I do that this is an eight-handed job, not four. Can’t we at least get two nurses in here to help us out?”
But Beverly being Beverly, her stubborn Howard pride, she shook her head no.
“As you can see Will, we are short doctors, I don’t care if the doctors and nurses here served just over two nickels here. I don’t trust them. The best doctor we’ve got is lying here in this bed and in need of our help. It’s just you and me. We can do this.”
I blew out a breath and pulled on some gloves. I’d never attempted this before. My fairly short stint at Starfleet Medical, I had somewhat easy breeches. This one was difficult as Bev said.
“The way his shoulder and knee are coming out, it might be compressing his spinal column.”
She nodded her head at me and wasted no time moving forward.
“Ok, I’m going in. I need you to help me push Jacob back in so that I can help guide him so he’s facing head first.”
Swallowing, I followed her instructions, but something was wrong. What we were attempting wasn’t working. I heard Bridget begin to cry louder in the bed.
“Please get him out!”
I slowly looked over the sheet and tried my best to calm her down.
“Bridget, it’s alright. We’ll get Jacob out, we’ve just hit a little snag. Look at me, I need you to focus ok?”
She nodded her head and gripped the sheets once more. Beverly’s face was red and covered with sweat when I came back.
“So nice you could join me doctor. Grab me that scalpel over there.”
Now I was sweating. Swallowing, my fingers curled around the metal archaic scalpel and I handed it to Bev.
“A-an Episiotomy?”
She was concentrating but nodded once more. Holding out her hand I knew exactly what she was asking for.
“Yes, if we can’t get him out at 10 centimeters, we make it bigger. He has to come out for oxygen soon. Let’s get her some local anesthetic. This is easy to fix when finished.”
I handed her the syringe and she knew exactly what she was doing. I was at a loss. These instruments were not familiar to me at all. I had to admit, I was really nervous. I could see more of Jacob’s head now, instead of his shoulder and knee. Beverly and I both pulled him out and he began to scream at first, and started to cry.
“That’s what we want to hear! That’s a good boy. Will hand me that bulb syringe over there.”
I smiled and reached for the bulb syringe on the tray next to me.
“Luckily, I do know what a bulb syringe is. Dad said he used one on me when I got really bad ear infections.”
Placing it into her hand, I began wiping him off with a towel. This hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be, why had I left this profession? 99 percent joy and 1 percent tragedy. Most of the time it was pure joy. Megan was why I’d left.
To Be Continued…
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