A Bump in the Road -- Watty Awards 2011 --

Chapter 11: Nothing Else Matters (V.O.T.E! & comment)

Nicole had fallen asleep smiling, with a strange fuzzy feeling of fulfillment and she knew that her own mother and grandmother were looking down and were proud of her.

However as the night went on, Nicole’s dreams turned to nightmares, vicious rapids and wind storms were tearing everything from their path – uprooting trees from where they stood, their life force being torn out as well.

Drenched in a cold sweat Nicole was wrenched from her dream and she sat up suddenly as a sick cramp tore across her lower stomach taking her breath away with the intensity. Clutching at the bedsheets Nicole gasped again as she felt a ripping sensation inside her, this time felt the downwards ripping bring out a flow of blood that pooled around her lower body.

A primal scream ripped from her body and Joseph woke to see his new wife in a pool of blood, shaking and too terrified to move. “Joe, oh god, Joe it’s the baby, I’m losing her, I’m losing her Joe oh God”.

 Joseph’s face whitened to the colour of her dress that was quickly becoming crimson. He whipped his blackberry to his ear, shouting at the emergency response unit to hurry over the phone even as he could hear the siren wailing down the street towards their apartment. J

oseph threw down the phone and picked up Nicole in one fell swoop, emerging from the elevator as the ambulance and fire trucks swerved into the parking lot. Nicole’s pupils had dilated enormously and looked at Joe for reassurance as tiny gasps and breaths of air tore from her lips as her body fought both to save and expel the baby in her. 

Like some sick scene from an opera, the train and hem of Nicole’s dress soaked in the blood, the life force Nicole was trying to keep inside of her. They whisked Nicole into surgery and despite Joseph’s furious tirade in a mix of French and Italian at the nurses, he was not allowed in, he could do nothing but sit and wait in the emergency waiting room as he heard her piteous pleas to save the baby become fainter as she disappeared behind the swinging doors of the surgery.

 “Take care of, of my wife” he called after them. The nurses tried to tend to Joseph as well, offering him tea or coffee but he could do nothing but sit in the grey plasticky chairs, his eyes closed and his hands, still covered in Nicole’s blood, clasped together as his lips moved silently in desperate prayer.

“Lord my faith is in you, save Nicole and this baby, Lord even if you take our daughter home to your kingdom I cannot live without Nicole, lord keep her safe. Please God please, please, please. Hail Mary, Sante Maria et angelus…”

The chief obstetric surgeon pushed though the doors several hours later and motioned for Joseph to come into his office. “Doctor”, he said his voice still hoarse with terror, “tell me is she? is the baby?”

 The exhausted surgeon pushed up his glasses and sighed, “both your wife and the baby are stable – for a while we thought we would have to deliver the foetus to save your wife although the baby is not yet viable outside of the womb at 26 weeks.

It would have meant aborting the fetus. However, by what I can only call an act of God, oxygen flow was re-established to the placenta and umbilical cord. The lack of oxygen caused by your wife’s high blood pressure and sugar levels was effectively starving the placenta to save the mother and so was contracting as it became more oxygen starved until the placenta entered a state called placenta previa.

She went into a form of diabetic seizure and shock. And as I said, miraculously, there is no medical reason for this, but although the baby’s heartrate became tachycardic, there is no lasting damage and both your wife and baby are resting comfortably. She’s lost a lot of blood though. Look Joseph I’ve known Nicole since she was a little girl and there is no one and no thing on this earth that can make her stop working, but I think this scare has shaken her up enough to realize that something needs to change.