Sarah stopped in front of Breanna’s hospital room door. Inside she could hear someone crying. There were a lot of tears shared on the pediatric cardiac floor, some were happy, but there were a lot of sad tears too. While Sarah wanted to give her patient’s family their privacy, she had to see if there was anything she could do to help. She knocked on the door and entered to find the young mother she had met only the week before in a rocking chair crying while her little girl slept surrounded by tubes and machines. Maggie looked up at Sarah as she entered, her face streaked with tears that she was too tired to wipe away. Sarah had once been a young mother all alone waiting at the bedside of her child waiting to see if her son was going to wake up, too tired to hide the sight of her tears from others.
“Hey, Maggie, I just wanted to check on you. Is there anything I can do to help?” Sarah said. “I know all of this is very scary, but I’ve spoken with the cardiologist and the cardiac surgeon and they say Breanna’s doing really well after her surgery.”
Maggie looked from her child to Sarah. “I know she’s better. She’s so pink now, just like a normal baby, but she isn’t normal. She’s hooked up to all those tubes and I can’t even hold her except when the nurses are there to help. I don’t even think she knows who I am,” Maggie said as she started to cry again. “And I know I should be happy that she’s doing so much better, but I just can’t help it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. John worked so hard on the nursery and we haven’t even been home since I went into labor. And now John’s left because he has to go back to work.”
Sarah moved over to a chair beside Maggie where she sat hugging herself then wrapped her arms around the young woman. She didn’t have the answer to all of Maggie’s worries right now, but she could at least give her some company.
“I know it’s hard going through all of this, especially now that John is gone, but we are here to help.”
“I know,” Maggie said as she grabbed a tissue from a half-empty box. “Everyone’s been great. It’s just I never dreamed this would happen, you know? You always hear of things like this happening to other people, but you never think it could happen to you.”
Sarah felt her heart squeeze for a moment. She knew only too well how it felt when you realize that the horrendous things that happen to other people have happened to you.
“How about we move the rocking chair over to the crib and I’ll help you hold Breanna?”
Sarah left the room after sharing her number and the number of another mother who lived in the Houston area whose child had been born with the same congenital defect as Breanna and who was happy to help with other families. Maggie had promised she would call one of them if she needed to talk, but Sarah would check back with her before she left for the day. It was hard for some people to reach out to others as she well knew.
Speaking with Breanna’s nurse, she shared that she had helped Maggie get Breanna from the crib and the two of them were doing fine though the nurse would need to check on them shortly.
Sarah turned to see David talking to another nurse, before he waved at her and headed her way.
“What’s up?” she asked as he joined her on the way out of the unit.
“I saw you come out of little Breanna’s room. Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Breanna’s doing great. It’s her mother that’s a mess right now. Her husband, John, had to leave to return to work and she’s all alone. Add to that the fears of any new mother and it’s just a lot. She’s really worried about losing the bonding time that most mothers get with their baby. I think we just need to work harder to get her involved with Breanna’s care.”
The overhead speaker squawked then a monotone voice started to speak. “Code blue, PCIC room ten.”
As the speaker repeated the information, the two of them ran back down the hall.
“It’s Lindsey,” she said to David as they pushed past the rest of the staff. As the charge nurse assigned jobs, she rushed over to the nurse performing compressions on the small chest.
“What happened?” David asked as he moved behind the bed with the respiratory tech and prepared to intubate.
“She suddenly desated down to the sixties. By the time I got in here she was in PEA,” the nurse said as one of the patient techs took over the compressions.
“Have you given her any meds?” David asked as he expertly inserted the endotracheal tube with a skill that she would have expected from an older, more experienced doctor.
“Giving epinephrine now,” said Mel as she pushed the medication into an IV line.
David moved back and the respiratory tech quickly hooked up the Ambu bag to the ET tube and started squeezing the bag that would force the air into her lungs. Sarah watched as Lindsey’s chest began to rise up and down. Checking the monitors she could see that the oxygen saturation was rising.
“It’s time for a rhythm check,” the charge nurse called out. The room turned silent as they all turned to look at the monitor.
“See if we have a pulse with that,” David said as he checked the carotid and Sarah checked the femoral. She held her breath.
Please let them get this sweet girl back.
Then she felt the weak beat under her
