It Shouldn't Happen to a Midwife! Read Online Free PDF Page B

spectating window was a girl in a grubby quilted dressing gown. She gazed through the glass with the concentration of a child outside a sweetshop. As she secured her straggly hair into a ponytail she stood on heeled mules for a better view. She seemed too young to even tie up her own coat.
    Enclosed in her bubble, the baby gasped with the stressed endeavour of a newly-landed fish. Occasionally her tiny limbs jerked. A thin feeding line threaded up one nostril and seemed like a gross intrusion on such a fragile existence. The sweetie pink card incongruously announced she was Mary-Jo Fleming. 3lbs. 1oz.
    â€˜Such a big name for a wee girl.’ I was surprised my voice had gone husky, then was clutched by Marie as the girl suddenly froze and started knocking frantically on the window.
    â€˜She’s stopped breathing!’ she yelled. Her fingers scrabbled on the glass. ‘Oh God! Somebody help her. Mother of God, please!’ The cry was heart rending and resounded down that empty corridor where in the distance a baby cried as if in echo.
    All bar Seonaid stopped, uncertain what to do whilst she floated to the young woman’s side and took her arm. Miss Harvey had gone ahead but now came back looking puzzled, then pleased, as on the other side of the glass, a turquoise-dressed ball appeared, gently tapped the incubator like a discreet caller and prompted Mary-Jo to kick a leg as if in irritation at being disturbed.
    â€˜Good old Sister Bell, always keeping a lookout,’ said Miss Harvey, noting our collective sigh of relief. ‘Sometimes the premature babies need a wake-up call – they can be so far away they occasionally forget to breathe. She’d have been all right but Mum’s had a fright, poor thing.’
    She tapped the girl lightly on the shoulder. ‘Look, my dear, Sister’s signalling for you to see her in her office. See, there’s the door, just down the corridor a bit and I’m sure she’ll put your mind at rest. As for us,’ she looked at her fob watch, ‘we must press on. Antenatal awaits.’
    Whoever had designed the ward entrance must have been anticipating either a hurricane, flood or sonic boom. The heavy doors had rubber sealing all the way round, including flaps at the bottom presumably to stop an incoming tide or maybe the noise of screams from the labour ward directly opposite.
    From my ward maiding days, I recognised and saluted the hard work and polish spent on the brass handle on which Miss Harvey was now pushing and plainly not expecting the other half of the door to burst open. A burly man in a white coat barged through, practic- ally flattening Cynthia who’d been trying to beat Miss Harvey to it.
    â€˜Mind out!’ he snapped. With the look of a cross turkey cock he shook his wattles and strutted past. His splendour was somewhat dimmed by the following raggle taggle army of medical students, identifiable because my dining room irritants were there and winking as they followed.
    â€˜That’s Professor McQuaid.’ Miss Harvey’s tone was dry. ‘Always in a hurry.’
    Margaret fluttered her eyelashes. ‘My surgeon, Jim, used to be a bit like that and sometimes I had to chivvy him a little when he got impatient.’
    â€˜My surgeons were always most courteous.’ Cynthia was indignant. ‘That man’s very rude.’
    â€˜But not as rude as Nurse Macpherson sticking her tongue out at the students,’ Miss Harvey observed. ‘Now come along, class, we’ve work to do.’

5
AN ANTENATAL VISIT
    Apart from a couple of women, everybody else was out of bed and being rounded up by a staff midwife in a gender-insensitive pink uniform. Sister Uprichard, labelled and unmissable in red, was handing out vitamin tablets like prizes in a ward that had the congenial atmosphere of a WI meeting where everybody’s jam had set.
    She had a kindly way, the rosy cheeks of a countrywoman and the manner