Chapter 4 - Code Pink in the ER
The ceiling lights of St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital streaked by in a blinding, rhythmic strobe.
"Fetal heart rate is dropping! One hundred... ninety-two... eighty-five!"
"She’s in hypovolemic shock! Start a second large-bore IV, two liters of warm lactated Ringer's!"
Voices cut through the fog of my agony like jagged shards of glass. I was strapped down on a gurney, shivering uncontrollably despite the suffocating heat radiating from my burned torso. Every breath tasted like copper and burnt sugar. The pain from my burns was now fighting a brutal war against the unrelenting, crushing spasms of my uterus.
"Ethan..." I mumbled, my lips parched and cracked.
"I’m right here, baby. I'm right here." Ethan’s hand was gripping my right fingers. He was dressed in surgical scrubs now, his face masked, but his eyes were bloodshot and brimming with pure dread.
The chief OB-GYN, Dr. Sarah Lin—a close friend of ours—jogged beside the gurney, an ultrasound wand slathered in cold gel already pressing into the right side of my abdomen where the skin wasn't burned.
She stared at the portable monitor, and her expression instantly hardened into stone.
"Complete abruption," Sarah commanded, shouting over the clamor of the trauma bay. "The placenta is tearing away. The baby is suffocating. We have less than four minutes before irreversible brain damage. Move! Crash section right now! General anesthesia!"
"No general!" I gasped, fighting through the haze of agony, my fingernails digging into Ethan’s palm. "Don't... don't put me out. I need to hear her cry. Ethan... let me hear her cry."
"Maddie, your burns—if we don't put you under, the surgical stress could stop your heart," Ethan pleaded, his voice breaking entirely.
"Sarah, please," I begged, looking at the doctor. "Spinal block. Please. I have to know she made it."
Dr. Lin looked between my pleading, blistered face and Ethan’s terrified gaze. "Spinal will take ninety seconds. Anesthesiologist, prep the rapid spinal! If her pressure drops one point, we tube her. Let's move!"
The double doors of Operating Room 3 blew open. The chill of the sterile room hit my exposed skin like needles. Within seconds, a team of six nurses and doctors moved with ruthless, practiced precision. A cold antiseptic sponge wiped over my lower spine, followed by the sharp pinch of the needle.
A heavy, numb warmth flooded down my lower half, deadening the monstrous contractions, though the fiery agony across my chest and abdomen remained untouched.
A blue sterile drape was hoisted between my face and my lower body. Ethan stood by my head, stroking my sweaty, tangled hair, his hand steady even though his shoulders trembled with silent sobs.
"Scalpel," Dr. Lin’s crisp voice rang out.
I couldn't feel the blade slicing through my lower abdomen, but I felt the violent tugging, the hurried shouts of the surgical techs, and the harsh, metallic clatter of surgical clamps.
"Suction! More suction! Clear the field!"
"Fetal heart rate down to sixty! She's bradycardic!"
"Ethan," I whimpered, staring at the fluorescent surgical light overhead. The reflection showed a blur of red and green. "Is she alive? Ethan, tell me!"
"She's almost out, my love. Just breathe for me. Breathe."
"Cord clamped. Time of birth: five-fourteen PM."
The room suddenly fell deathly quiet.
There was no sound.
No wailing. No sputtering. Only the hum of the air filtration system and the frantic, rhythmic *beep-beep-beep* of my own failing heart monitor.
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"Why isn't she crying?" I screamed, trying to lift my head off the surgical pillow, only for a wave of searing fire across my neck to slam me back down. "Ethan! Why isn't she crying?!"
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