Emergency: Wife Lost And Found Part 5

'You have to go to Theatre.' She could see the tears in James's green eyes as he forced her to see sense. 'If it ruptures, and it will rupture,' James said clearly, 'I don't want to lose you both.'

'Can we just go home?' Even as she said it, she knew how insane it sounded, and moved swiftly to clarify what she meant. 'I just need a night to get my head around it.'

'Lorna.' The registrar was nicer than her boss. Strict but kind, she spelt out the facts, held Lorna's hand and took her through it step by step-only despite the registrar's calm demeanour there was a flurry of activity going on in the room. An IV had been inserted into Lorna's arm, blood had been taken for a cross-match and a bag of saline was now hanging and dripping into her veins, to keep the line open, the registrar said, just in case. just in case.

Lorna knew what those words meant-on her emergency rotation she'd seen a woman rushed to Theatre, pale and exsanguinated. Her undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy had ruptured. At any moment, Lorna was being told, this could happen to her. Would Would happen to her, the registrar said gently but firmly, reiterating that from everything they could see on the ultrasound, rupture was imminent. happen to her, the registrar said gently but firmly, reiterating that from everything they could see on the ultrasound, rupture was imminent.

A consent form was there in front of her.

Just that morning she and James had been good-naturedly arguing about whether to find out the s.e.x. Lorna wanted to know so she could make lots of lists and choose names and colours. James preferred to wait, to enjoy the surprise of whatever they were given.

Now they were asking Lorna to sign a death warrant.

'We'll try and preserve the tube,' the registrar explained again, 'but till we get in and have a look...'

'No.' Lorna said it again in the hope someone would listen. She could see James was losing his patience, his jaw tense. He got up to pace the room as a nurse came in and slipped off Lorna's clothes and taped over her ring even though she was refusing the procedure.

'We'll just take off your nail varnish.' Lorna could smell the acetone and it made her gag. She wished James would do something-he was a doctor, for crying out loud.

'Even the examination we just performed could have exacerbated things,' the registrar explained. 'It's low in your Fallopian tube and it's too large for drug treatment. If we let you go home and it ruptures, James is right, we could lose you both.'

'There's nothing you can do?' Lorna begged. 'I saw a show once, this woman in India.'

'Lorna.' James interrupted her pleadings. 'The pregnancy can't continue.'

There was no way out-her ectopic pregnancy was at imminent risk of rupture. The pregnancy could not continue and there wasn't a single thing Lorna could do to change the facts.

She could still remember signing the consent form-laparoscopy for ectopic pregnancy, removal of POC and salpingectomy.

'POC?'

If it had been any day before this one, Lorna would have soon worked it out, except she felt as if her brain had been left on ice and was drifting into winter.

'Product of conception,' the registrar translated. 'And we'll do everything we can to preserve the Fallopian tube, but if we have to, we need your permission to perform a salpingectomy, which is the removal of the tube.'

Lorna started to vomit then, though not as she had that morning. Giddy nausea swept over her and she could see James's look of alarm as the registrar turned up the drip and paged her boss.

'Just sign the form, Lorna.'

Why couldn't he sign it? She could remember looking at him and thinking it. If it was so b.l.o.o.d.y easy, why couldn't it be him that signed? Except nothing about this was easy, so instead Lorna took the offered pen and signed the form. Then, dizzy, she lay back as she was rushed straight to Theatre.

'Hey!' He was standing at the door and though he gave her a smile, Lorna could tell it was a guarded one. He'd brought two vast take-away cups of coffee and what she a.s.sumed was her phone charger in a plastic bag. 'Sorry I didn't get in yesterday.'

'That's fine.' Lorna smiled. 'I was hardly going anywhere.'

He handed her the package and Lorna opened it, wincing as she turned to her bedside table to get her phone. James did it for her, plugging in the charger and making small talk, but awkwardly.

'Thanks for the coffee.' Lorna took a grateful sip. 'I'm starting to look forward to it, the hospital stuff is disgusting.'

'Tell me about it!' He sat down and she was glad that he did. Clearly she was getting better because she was at times bored. As a courtesy probably, because she was a doctor, she had her own little side room, but being so far from home, there were no visitors to look forward to and there was way too much time to think. Still, Lorna consoled herself, at least now she had her phone.

'I saw the mob in the corridor. Have they got to you yet?'

'Yes, they just finished. I'm doing very well apparently. I might even get home on Wednesday.'

'That's good.'

It wasn't, actually. For Lorna it was daunting.

'So will you go to your friend's?'

'I don't think so. She's away for another week and returning to find me in this state might be stretching the boundaries of friendship.'

'Will you go to your parents', then?'

Lorna hesitated before answering. 'I guess I'll have to. I don't know...' Just the thought of sitting in the car for the six-hour drive with her ribcage like this was bad enough, but with her father driving...Lorna closed her eyes at the horror of moving back there.

'You don't seem too pleased at the prospect. Are you not getting on?'

'We haven't got on for years, James.'

'They were desperately worried about you.'

'I'm their daughter,' Lorna said. 'They love me, of course they were worried when I was injured. They weren't at all pleased that I was thinking of moving back to London. This is proof to them that I shouldn't come.'

Her phone bleeped then, more than a week's worth of calls and texts all there, worried friends and family no doubt. She scrolled through them quickly, would get back to them later. It was actually the interview callbacks she really needed to hear about.

'Do you want me to go?' James offered, but she shook her head, rolling her eyes as she played back her messages, her pale cheeks tinging pink as four times, though nicely, though regretfully, she found out she'd been rejected.

'Well, now I really do wish I'd just stayed home that day!' She attempted a bright smile, but it faltered. 'I don't have enough experience...'

'You're a great doctor.'

'You never knew me as a doctor,' Lorna pointed out, 'but, yes, I am. I'm just not the one they want for the job.' She gave a small shrug, but it hurt to do so and she grimaced, not at the job loss but at the pain.

'Do you need something for pain?' James checked.

'I had something an hour ago.'

'Well, it isn't working. They can be mean with painkillers.' He stood up and picked up her chart, a doctor through and through. It didn't enter his head that it might be intrusive. 'You need to be doing some deep breathing and coughing if you don't want to get a chest infection and two paracetamol aren't...' His voice trailed off. He even blinked a couple of times when he saw just how strong the painkillers were that she was on.

'I'm on plenty.' Lorna tried to make light of it. 'It just hurts, that's all. Apart from getting someone to knock me out, I'm just going to have to put up with it.' She could see his worried features as he sat down. 'Mr Braun did the rounds this morning and he explained how long the cardiac ma.s.sage went on for. Add that to fractured ribs and a seat-belt injury, well, I'm just going to have to put up with it for a while.'

'That bruise.' James pointed to his own chest, but they both knew he meant hers. 'How far does it go?'

'Down to my stomach, under my arms. It really is quite spectacular!' It was, black and purple now, smudged with dirty yellow around the edges. In Emergency she'd been lily white with just a few shiny new blue bruises, with her hypothermia there had been no real sign of the extensive bruising that would follow.

'You poor thing.' James said simply, and it was said in such a way that it was more a fact he delivered, a statement that touched somewhere inside, made her feel like someone understood, because bruising and rib fractures didn't really describe the battering her body had taken. 'Lorna,' James said, 'you can't go home on Wednesday.'

'I know,' she answered, because since Mr. Braun had said that an hour or so ago, her mind had been going like a table-tennis ball, pinging back and forward with possibilities. As well as dealing with the pain, as well as remembering her baby, as well as seeing James, even if she looked as if she was just lying back on the pillow, she was mult.i.tasking. 'I've been thinking of going to a hotel for a few days.'

'A hotel?'

'That's what they do now for some women when they've had a baby-rather than take up a hospital bed, they send them-'

'Lorna!'

'It's a good idea! Meals sent up, fresh towels, the bed made and then when I'm feeling up to the journey...well, I'll think about that then.'

'You'll stay with me.' It was as simple and as complicated as that.

'How?' Lorna asked. A single word but there were so many questions behind it. 'I just need to rest, James.'

'You can do that at my place.'

'How?' she asked again, because quite simply she wasn't up to raking over the past, or catching up to the present. She wasn't sure that moving in with her ex, even if it was just for a few days, was a good idea.

'Look-we're adults.' James clearly had the same set of questions. 'We were over a long time ago, we've both moved on, but we were were married and, yes, I do care. I'm sure if the roles were reversed, you'd do the same for me?' She heard the question and she nodded. married and, yes, I do care. I'm sure if the roles were reversed, you'd do the same for me?' She heard the question and she nodded.

'Of course I would.'

'So it's simple. I'll be at work most of the time and I'm not going to be demanding answers about the past or anything like that. Anyway, you've got your guy in Africa.'

'Africa?'

'Kenya,' James said, and Lorna started laughing.

'Did my Dad tell you that?'

'Oh, yes.' James grinned. 'When he told me not to come and see you!'

'He's unbelievable!' Lorna snarled. 'I haven't seen Matthew in two years! You know I feel sorry for unconscious people-it's bad enough being half-dead, let alone having people talking for you who haven't got a clue what you want.'

James laughed, glimpsed for the first time the old Lorna McClelland, her fiery little ways, her strange thought processes that had once made him smile. Lorna would have laughed again, too. Actually she started to, but it hurt too much so she gave up.

'So that's settled, then.' James stood up. 'I'll take the morning off on Wednesday and take you home and get you settled.' He frowned down at her. 'Actually, I'll take the day off.'

'You don't have to.'

'Just the first day, till you're settled.'

'Thank you.' Lorna said.

'Your father's not going to be too pleased.' He half expected her to come up with some convoluted way to lie to her father, just as she had in the past, but instead she lay back on the pillow and gave the small shrug her bruised chest would allow.

'Oh, well.'

Lorna woke late afternoon, confused.

She was in a swirling place and her frantic eyes searched for James.

'It's okay, Lorna.' A nameless voice was taking her blood pressure. 'You're in hospital.'

Only she wasn't soothed, she was stuck somewhere between the past and the present, lying in a hospital bed and trying to work out what had happened.

She'd loathed waking without James after her surgery, wanted him to be the one to tell her what had happened to their baby, but he'd been ringing her parents and updating them when the registrar had come round.

She was a 'lucky girl', apparently. The Fallopian tube had ruptured about five minutes before they had gone in.

"It's no wonder you're sore,' the registrar had said, upping her pain control and telling her how difficult the procedure had been. The gluey cobweb of adhesions from her appendectomy had enclosed the Fallopian tube. It had been the first glimpse of the problems she had, but at the time it had been easier to ignore them, far easier not to think or ask about the future.

'Hey.' He sat down by her bed and took her hand. 'You're awake! I was just ringing your parents.'

'How were they?'

'Concerned,' James said, kissing her forehead. 'But I've told them you're okay...I saw the reg in the corridor. Has she been in?'

'Just.'

'What did she say?'

'Lorna?' The nurse was fiddling with her IV, dragging her back to the present and asking if she had any pain, to which Lorna nodded.

'Could you turn down the infusion?' she asked, to the nurse's confusion, but Lorna was too tired to explain.

The pain of the present she could deal with, it was the past and the future she didn't want to drift into.

'Pauline.' James ran a slightly exasperated hand through his hair as he eyed his home through Lorna's eyes. 'We're getting a guest.'

That he was even considering discussing with his daily that they hire a cleaner was less a reflection on Lorna's neatness and more a reflection on Pauline's lack of it.

He could never consider getting rid of Pauline.

It would be like asking your mother to leave.

Your messy, disorganised, borderline alcoholic mother, perhaps, but at least she knew how he liked his toast. At least she knew that when a telephone marketer rang at 10 a.m. when he was on nights, 'Professor Morrell' was not to be disturbed.