Hunched at the desk of the paediatric consultant, her face eaten with anxiety, Jeanette briefly thought about her scream when the young doctor had told her. For fifteen months that scream had whirlpooled about her brain, making her feel like she was drowning. Next to her Simon gripped his fists, as if trying to crush the awful memories.
Dr Bennett, the report in his hands, said in his slow, self-certain voice: ‘These are the hospitals own findings, let us not forget, and they are damning. Short-staffed, equipment missing or not working properly and, most crucially, a doctor who didn’t understand the significance of baby having different oxygen saturations, SATS, in her hand (99%) and her foot (88%). Such a difference is an indicator of coarctation of the aorta, a congenital heart condition.’
‘Congen…? From birth?’ Simon asked.
‘The investigators find Zara should’ve been referred to a more senior doctor for a review of the SATs.’
‘Definitely didn’t do that,’ Simon said.
‘And yet despite multiple signs that Zara was unwell – observed to be blue, spitting up blood, failing to feed, plus the SATs – they say an occlusion of the baby’s airway during skin-to-skin may have contributed to her collapse.
‘Smothering? Not true, is that what you’re…?’
‘It’s garbage, Simon!’
/
‘Is everything OK?’ she asked. The junior doctor, his assessment completed, nodded and hurried off. ‘Too many babies, not enough staff,’ a midwife muttered, scurrying by.
She tried breastfeeding Zara but she wasn’t latching. ‘Feed her formula in a cup,’ another midwife said, not stopping. Jeanette dripped the milk into Zara’s tiny mouth. Blood came out, staining the facecloth. The midwife waved Jeanette away, saying, ‘Nothing to worry about.’
When Zara began making a repeated grunting noise, she was taken to neonatal intensive care. ‘So busy here this evening,’ the midwife said on her return, ‘all these sheets to wash. Your baby’s being looked after.’
At eleven o’ clock the doctor returned and said quietly, ‘I have some bad news.’
A week later in the church she saw a tiny coffin. It had taken two days to make, likewise she had gestated nine months: both labours for a life which lasted just a few hours.
/
‘Thank you,’ Simon was saying. ‘You don’t know how much… the relief. The support group said you’d…’
‘Many times I wanted to kill myself,’ Jeanette whispered, as though she were talking to herself.
‘It happens too often, Dr Bennett said, ‘the suggestion that responsibility for poor care lies beyond the hospital’s walls. You are not to blame.’
‘A weight gone,’ Simon said.
‘She might have lived with prompt care. If the drug Prostin had been administered, she might possibly have survived.’
‘If…’ Simon repeated
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ the consultant added. ‘You have a living child, I believe.’
‘‘We are learning to be parents to a child that is dead as well as one that is alive,’ Jeanette murmured.
‘There’ll always be four of us,’ Simon agreed.
The doctor put down the report.
