She nodded gratefully but she had a frightened expression on her face every time she fought for breath, and she looked absolutely worn out. ‘I’ll leave her in the wheelchair for a minute or two before trying to move her,’ I thought. I sincerely hoped her coughing wouldn’t trigger contractions, as her lungs were in no fit state right now to support her through labour.
Suddenly Mrs Johnson’s eyes flashed and rolled in her head.
‘Th – ha – h – hurgh. Hurgh HURGHHHH’ she spluttered, throwing her right hand up to her chest and slumping dramatically forward in the wheelchair.
My own heart tightened. I could scarcely believe it, but I knew exactly what was happening. Mine and Stella’s startled eyes met temporarily. We both knew what to do and, drawing strength from a fear-loaded adrenaline surge, we manoeuvred Mrs Johnson onto the floor as quickly and carefully as possible. I started working on her chest and instructed Evelyn, the auxiliary, to run for help.
‘Unless you ladder your stockings, to my mind you haven’t made a good job of dealing with a cardiac arrest!’ I could hear Sister Hyde’s voice in my ear. That’s what my old mentor had taught me on my very first day under her wing on the cardiac ward at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and right here, right now, I was putting that training into practice with all my might.
Stella and I worked desperately on Mrs Johnson, giving her cardiac massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The medical registrar had arrived in the side room within moments, and he worked with us, offering words of encouragement as he did so. Stella had taken the same route as me into midwifery and was a newly qualified State Registered Nurse (SRN), and we worked well together.
My heart was pounding ten to the dozen as I worked on Mrs Johnson, but that did not stop my brain focusing on the job in hand and doing everything in my power to try to save my patient’s life.
The crash team who deal with patients who have had a cardiac arrest arrived and took over the resuscitation. They began pushing down on Mrs Johnson’s chest, trying to keep her heart beating, but the awful truth was starting to dawn.
Nothing seemed to be making any difference. It was one of those absolutely tragic situations where you are following all the correct procedures, doing the very best you can, but it is simply not enough. Mrs Johnson had had such a massive heart attack her life was possibly already lost before we started our desperate attempts to resuscitate her.
It wasn’t until the moment when Stella and I looked across at the registrar, who gave the signal for everyone to stop trying to resuscitate Mrs Johnson and move away from the patient, that the enormity of what had happened began to hit me. This lady had died right in front of me, and her baby’s life was lost, too. It was so horrendous the shock came over me in wave after wave.
I felt battered and wrung out. I tried to imagine Sister Hyde had been watching me, and that now she was reassuring me that I had done my very best, despite the unthinkable outcome.
I can’t remember walking into the kitchen, but I know I sat very quietly alone in there with my thoughts for some time, drinking sweet tea. I felt the gentle hands of colleagues rubbing my back, and soft words being whispered around me. Nothing soothed my pain, however. I ached all over, and deep within my heart.
At around 5.30 p.m. Mr Johnson arrived at the hospital to see his wife. He had been ushered to sit in a side room by a rather nervous and unprepared female doctor called Dr Bodsworth, and I was called in, too. I looked at my watch and registered it was about half an hour since Mrs Johnson’s death, though if someone had told me I had been sitting down in the kitchen for three minutes or three days I would have believed them. I absolutely dreaded seeing Mr Johnson and I had to peel my eyes off the ground to look at him as I entered the side room.
He was looking worried but not panic-stricken, and we greeted each other with a polite ‘Hello.’ Mr Johnson had clearly come straight from work. He was wearing a mechanic’s boiler suit and still had traces of oil on his hands, though he smelled strongly of Swarfega, a heavy-duty cleaner he must have used hastily on his skin when he got the message to come to the hospital. I recognised the distinctive smell because Graham used it sometimes when he tinkered with his car.
‘I’m sorry, but I have to tell you your wife has arrested,’ Dr Bodsworth told Mr Johnson plainly.
‘I see,’ Mr Johnson said, nodding his head sagely but looking rather bemused. ‘She’ll be all right, though?’
‘No, Mr Johnson, your wife has arrested,’ Dr Bodsworth repeated, more slowly this time.
He looked to me, clearly not understanding the terminology.
‘I’m very sorry, Mr Johnson, but your wife has died,’ I said quietly.
The words seemed to hit him like a bullet in the stomach. His head dropped and he crumpled over in his seat and stared at the floor.
‘The baby?’ he asked eventually, looking up at me pitifully.
‘The baby’s died, too. I am so sorry.’
The three of us sat silently for what felt like an age until Mr Johnson asked, ‘Can I see her?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I replied, glancing at Dr Bodsworth for approval. ‘Come with me. She is in Room 2.’
Dr Bodsworth did not stop me, but she looked agitated. I had heard that she had questioned why no attempt had been made to deliver the baby, but I knew this was an inappropriate question to have asked, and nobody deigned to answer it. In the circumstances we had to try to save the mother first. That was correct medical procedure. We might have got Mrs Johnson’s heart going and been able to perform an emergency Caesarean in the operating theatre, but it hadn’t happened like that. We weren’t to know what the outcome would be and we did what was required, swiftly and efficiently. Nobody was at fault. Nothing more could have been done, but nothing we had done had been enough.
‘I’m very sorry about the baby,’ I said to Mr Johnson, my voice cracking as we each took a seat beside his wife.
Mrs Johnson just looked as if she was sleeping, with the blanket pulled up over her chest and her arms flopped casually over the top of it. Mr Johnson squeezed his wife’s left hand, smudging it with oil from his own hand.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted the baby without … my Beryl,’ he whispered, staring at the wedding band on her finger.
Noticing the oil mark he’d made on his wife’s skin, Mr Johnson looked at her face and said apologetically, ‘Sorry, love,’ just as if she could hear him. I gulped and tried to stop the tears that were welling in my eyes from splashing down my cheeks, but I failed.
Mr Johnson tried to rub away the black mark from his wife’s pale skin, but made it worse. ‘What a mess,’ he gasped, letting go of her and holding his head in his hands as he broke down. ‘What a bloody mess.’
All these years on I still find it very difficult to revisit that day’s events. I thought long and hard about whether to include Mrs Johnson’s death in this book, but it did happen and so I decided I should. Her death was unusual in the extreme, however, and I certainly do not want to frighten anybody, particularly any pregnant women.
We found out from the post-mortem some weeks later that Mrs Johnson suffered from an extremely rare syndrome that affects blood pressure and heart rate and had unfortunately never been diagnosed. Her repeated chest infections most probably exacerbated her condition, but ultimately it was the little-known syndrome that killed her.
Even before the post-mortem results came back with that information I was sure in my own mind that Mrs Johnson’s death was unrelated to her pregnancy. I desperately wanted to reassure the other women on the antenatal ward, who inevitably knew about the tragedy, and I chose my words carefully.
‘Please don’t worry yourself unnecessarily,’ I told each and every one of them as the terrible news began to spread, setting off a very upsetting chorus of gasps