My Bundle Of Joy: Part Eight

~ beetleypete

This is the eighth part of a fiction serial, in 746 words.

Despite the discovery in my knickers, I was surprisngly calm, and decided to enjoy that hot bath anyway. But when the water turned pink, I lost my nerve. I wanted to be sensible. I already knew that such bleeding wasn’t that unusual, so I rang the NHS non-emergency helpline as I sat wrapped in a towel. The young woman went through her prompt screens in a very sympathetic tone, and I managed to answer all her questions without raising my voice. But when a peek under the towel showed fresh bright red blood, I lost it. “It’s starting again! I’m bleeding onto the towel now!”

It was decided to send an emergency ambulance, so I quickly dragged on some clothes and sent Olly a text telling him to meet me at the hospital, but not to worry. How stupid was that? Like he wouldn’t worry reading that text.

The ambulance arrived in less than twenty minutes. The man and woman crew were very nice, but insisted on going over all the questions I had answered on the phone, as well as taking my blood pressure a couple of times before they got a small wheelchair to take me to the ambulance. They had left the blue lights flashing, and I got the first sight of the immediate neighbours when I saw them standing in their open doorway watching the proceedings.

We had met Mariusz, the retired widower who lived on the unattached side, but had never even seen the neighbours in the house attached to ours. They looked to be either Indian or Pakistani. The woman had a veil covering her face, and the man was wearing one of those little white cotton hats.

Unbelievably, I waved to them as I was wheeled up the ramp into the ambulance. Why did I do that?

Before the ambulance drove off, the girl got me to lie flat on the stretcher, then inserted a needle into the side of my wrist and attached a bag of fluid to the connector. “Just normal saline, nothing to worry about”. I was clutching my Maternity Book as if it was a first edition of the Gutenberg Bible. Nothing would have prised that out of my hand. The drive was sedate, no sense of urgency. The ambulance girl wrote all my details down onto something, and chatted amicably on the way. When she asked me if I had ever been to The General before, I suddenly panicked. “No, no. We are supposed to be going to Saint Mary’s. That’s my hospital. Look, it’s on my book”.

She patiently explained that they had to take me to the nearest hospital, unless I was full term, and in labour. The County General was easier to get to than driving into the city, and closer in terms of miles too. Then I got in a flap about Olly, who I knew full well would be heading across the city, and might even be at Saint Mary’s already. I asked if I could send him a text, and she nodded.

When they got me into the Casualty Department and spoke to the nurse in charge, she decided to send me to Maternity, to see a midwife. The ambulance people put me in a wheelchair, and a chirpy porter wheeled me along a maze of corridors until we got to where I could hear women yelling and swearing from behind a row of closed doors. An enormous West Indian midwife came up to me. “Okay, lets go in here and have a look at you, my darlin'”. And she had a good look. Someone else arrived with a monitor that was attached to my belly, and we could soon hear the fast beep of Leah’s heart. The first midwife smiled, perfect white teeth glinting in the bright lights. “Ah, baby’s doing okay, honey”.

They had bleeped a doctor to come and see me, but the next time the door opened, it was Olly who walked in. He looked ashen, and was visibly trembling. “Are you alright, Ang? The baby? Have we lost her?” I managed to calm him down, and listened as he told me how he had actually run all the way to Saint Mary’s from work, before reading my text. He had then stood in front of a taxi to make it stop for him, telling the driver his partner was ‘critically ill’ in County General.

Then I started to sob uncontrollably.

36 thoughts on “My Bundle Of Joy: Part Eight”

  2. (1) Bad citation: “…they got a small wheelchair to take me to the ambulance. It was so tight, they had to perform on-site liposuction to stuff me into it. If only they’d known that I was pregnant, and had not worked on sucking the fat out of my pot belly…”
    (2) The police shot out all the bulbs in the red light district except for the blue ones. They left the blue lights flashing.
    (3) Angela tried to see the face of the Pakistani woman, but to no a- veil.
    (4) The ambulance driver had been sedated. Nothing to worry about…
    (5) Overheard:
    Ambulance Gal: “Have you ever been to The General before?”
    Angela: “No, no. We are supposed to be going to Saint Mary’s. That’s my hospital!”
    Ambulance Gal: “Okay, but does the name County General at least ring a bell?”
    Angela: “No, I’m only familiar with the bells of St. Mary’s.
    (6) Bad citation: “The ambulance people put me in a wheelchair at County General. But the wheelchair was so big, they had to add a lot of padding to keep me from flailing about, even though I’d insisted they restore all the fat the liposuction had taken out.”
    (7) The censors had bleeped a doctor because he was given to shouting vulgarities.
    (8) Overheard:
    Olly: “Are you alright, Ang? The baby? Have we lost her?”
    Angela: “No, i just look skinny now because of all the liposuction.”

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  6. I could tell you had the experience about going to a hospital other than the one the patient was used to. At those times I would trust the knowledge of the EMTs. Glad that the baby is still fine.

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    1. Thanks, Elizabeth. At one time, it was complusory to go to the nearest emegency department. But that has been changing since the advent of more specialist ‘trauma centres’. This story is set in modern times, (note Internet and mobile phones) but not the present day. Not at the moment, anyway. Later episodes will bring things up to date.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  9. Good chapter in terms of capturing the environment. Most people try to remain calm in such a situation, but it doesn’t take much to have the underlying feelings of nervousness come out. You have the advantage of your expertise as an EMT to fall back on.

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