‘I want to push,’ Nadine told him.
He’d barely had time to check the position of the babies but there was no going back now. ‘Okay. We’re ready to go.’
Nadine’s knees were bent. Luci stood beside her, holding her hand.
‘Push,’ he instructed.
He reached between her thighs and eased the baby’s head out.
‘Okay, relax now. Wait for the next contraction.’
Nadine panted swiftly between contractions and with the following one Seb delivered the baby’s shoulders. The little girl slid out swiftly and he hoped it was because Nadine’s body was familiar with the process and not because the other baby had kicked it out. He didn’t want to deal with a breech presentation as well as the premature delivery of twins.
‘It’s a girl,’ he told Nadine. She came out yelling and Seb placed her on Nadine’s chest. Luci had loosened the hospital gown at Nadine’s neck so the baby could lie skin to skin on her mother but Seb couldn’t leave her there for long. She needed to be checked and kept warm and he needed to get ready to deliver the second baby.
‘Can you do the Apgar test?’ he asked Luci as he cut the cord.
Luci nodded and reached for the baby. ‘I’ll just check her out,’ she explained to Nadine. ‘You’ve still got some work to do.’
Seb briefly watched Luci holding the baby. It suited her. She had an expression of contentment and he hoped for her sake that she had a child of her own one day. He knew that was what she wanted.
‘One minute Apgar eight out of ten. Pulse ninety-six, tinge of blue in the fingers,’ Luci said as she put the baby on the scales. He was aware of her weighing the baby as she updated him. ‘Two point four kilograms,’ she said as she wrapped the baby. There was no time to clean her up as she needed to be kept warm and Luci needed to be ready to help with the second delivery.
Nadine’s contractions were continuing strongly. The second twin was on its way. He checked what was happening and breathed a sigh of relief when he felt Twin B moving down into the pelvis.
Seb had to rupture the membrane for Twin B and the next thing he saw was the baby’s head crowning. Thank God it wasn’t breech.
‘Five-minute Apgar nine out of ten,’ Luci said, updating him on Twin A. ‘Colour is good, heart rate ninety-eight.’
He nodded in acknowledgement to Luci but spoke to Nadine. ‘Okay, time for number two. You can push with the next contraction.’
The second twin was slightly bigger but was delivered just as easily. He handed the little boy to Nadine then checked the cord before clamping and cutting it. Nadine had a quick cuddle before Luci took him to assess.
‘Six out of ten. Pulse ninety-four. Sluggish reflexes, blue extremities, resp. rate thirty-five.’
The little boy was bigger, but not as healthy as his sister.
‘He needs oxygen,’ Luci said, and Seb knew she was looking to him to fix the problem. They had oxygen but how was he going to get it into a premature infant?
He looked around the room for inspiration as he prayed that the ambulance would hurry.
His gaze rested on the acrylic bassinettes.
‘Can you connect some tubing to the oxygen cylinder?’ he asked Luci as he covered Nadine with a blanket. The little boy was his priority now and there was nothing else he could do for Nadine until the ambulance arrived. If he could manage to hold the two bassinettes together he would be able to fashion a makeshift oxygen tent, which would be better than nothing in the short term. Taking the little boy from Lucy he placed him in a bassinette alongside his sister. He emptied the second bassinette and inverted it over the first. He grabbed a roll of medical tape and ran it around the edges of the cribs, taping them together. There was an opening where the sides had been cut down that would allow the carbon monoxide to escape. The ‘tent’ would be less efficient than he would like but it would be good enough.
Luci had connected the tubing to the oxygen cylinder. She passed the end to him and he slid it into the bassinette, taping it in place too.
‘Run it at eight litres per minute,’ he said as Heather came back into the room.
‘The ambulance is five minutes away,’ she told them, and Seb thought that was the best sentence he’d ever heard. He could handle five more minutes.
He left Luci to keep an eye on the babies as he spoke to Nadine. ‘Your babies are okay. Your daughter is doing well, your little boy is having a little bit of difficulty breathing so we need to give him some oxygen, but the ambulance is almost here and will transfer them to Dubbo hospital.’
‘What about me?’
‘You’ll go too.’
‘Byron?’
‘I’ve put him on the school bus with your other kids,’ Heather said as she returned to the room with the ambulance officers in tow. ‘Will there be someone home in Frog Hollow to take care of them?’
Nadine nodded. ‘My husband is there and my sister will give him a hand.’
The next fifteen minutes passed in a flurry of activity as the ambos stabilised the babies and Seb gave Nadine an oxytocin injection and delivered the placentas.
Somehow they got the whole family into the back of the ambulance and Seb breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the back doors and watched the ambulance take off.
When he went back into the community health clinic Heather was rescheduling the rest of the day’s appointments. She was proving to be worth her weight in gold today.
He left her to it and went to help Luci tidy up the makeshift delivery suite.
She was stripping the bed and had her back to him but he saw her lift her arm and wipe her hand across her face and he realised she was crying. Were they happy or sad tears? Her shoulders were shaking and as he got closer he could hear her sobs. It sounded like her heart was breaking.
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Luci, what’s the matter?’
She turned around but she was crying so hard she couldn’t talk. He wrapped her in his arms and held her tightly until her tears eased but didn’t stop completely. He brushed her hair from her forehead and kissed her gently. ‘What is it, Luce? Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘I can’t do this any more,’ she sobbed.
‘Can’t do what?’
‘Deliver babies. It’s one of the reasons l left Vickers Hill, seeing other women holding their newborn babies. I can’t do it.’
He frowned. ‘You’ll get your turn,’ he told her. ‘We’ve talked about this.’
But Luci was shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Explain it to me, then.’
‘Not here. I need to go home.’
‘Home?’ he asked. ‘To Vickers Hill?’
She shook her head and gulped air as she tried to get her emotions under control. ‘No. Back to the motel.’
He was happy to call it quits. It was almost the end of the day and hopefully Heather had managed to reschedule the remaining appointments. Rarely was anything so urgent with community health that it couldn’t be pushed back. He would start earlier tomorrow if necessary, before they headed back to Sydney. Right now Luci was his priority.
He had bundled her into the car and driven her back to the motel and now she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were red but she had stopped crying. He boiled the kettle to make tea, wondering