Max checked Mel’s abdomen again and her uterus finally remained well contracted. Max nodded and looked at Georgia. ‘Better.’
‘Thank you,’ he said to Flo, and he smiled to include the other nurse, who blushed and backed away. Then Max looked at his wife. ‘Well done, Georgia.’
He leant down and spoke to Mel’s abdomen. ‘Now, why did you do that?’
The tension lightened in the room and Mel roused enough to say in a weak voice, ‘What happened?’
Tim sighed with relief and then suddenly paled further, sighed and sagged sideways.
‘Grab the baby,’ Max called to Flo, who scooped Tim’s son from his arms as Tim fell back in a dead faint. Max caught the new dad easily under the arms before he hit the floor, and dragged him into a chair.
Max looked down at the ashen Tim. ‘Just to top it off, poor guy.’
‘Never a dull moment,’ Georgia said, as she carried a damp facecloth across to Tim, who stirred groggily as the blood returned to his brain.
By the time a sheepish Tim was sitting upright, Mel had recovered some of the colour in her face as well.
Max jotted down the sequence of events with times and then crossed the room to speak to Tim and Mel. ‘Unfortunately we probably will never know why your uterus decided not to contract after birth.’
‘Mel’s BP is back to ninety on fifty and her pulse is one twenty,’ Georgia said.
Max nodded and spoke to Tim. ‘Mel’s compensating for the lower volume of blood she has circulating now, but childbearing women have extra safeguards for the risk of bleeding after birth. We’ll check what her actual red cell levels are and think about blood transfusion or not and discuss it later.’
He smiled that smile Georgia really did love. ‘Everyone in the room has a pulse of one twenty at the moment but it’s all settling now. Mel’s uterus is firm and behaving itself and the bleeding has stopped.’
He spoke to Georgia. ‘We’ll run the drip over four hours to make sure it stays that way and keep her in this room for a while so we can keep an eye on her to ensure it doesn’t start again. But it shouldn’t.’
Mel spoke faintly from the bed. ‘So much for not having a needle. That was a bad choice.’
Max shook his head. ‘Not so. Don’t lay blame on anything in particular. Lots of people decline the needle after birth and though it statistically increases risk, it didn’t cause what happened.’
Max paused to let the words sink in. ‘Unless you have a history of bleeding! Now you have that history…’ he shrugged ruefully ‘… I think your choice is limited for the future.’
Bravo, Max. Georgia wished she could clap because she knew a lot of medical officers who would have ground Mel down for her choice. She would tell him so tonight. In fact, she couldn’t wait until dinner tonight and the chance for their first real discussion about a specialty of medicine they both obviously loved.
Baby Billy nudged at his mother and Georgia smiled. ‘Would you like a hand to put your son to the breast? During breastfeeding more hormones are released, which will help prevent further bleeding as well.’
When Billy was settled at the breast, Georgia and Max left the new parents to enjoy their son in peace after the traumatic events following the birth.
Max slipped his arm briefly around Georgia’s shoulders and hugged her before he dropped his arm to his side again. ‘We’re a good team. That could have been much worse if the F2 alpha hadn’t worked or you hadn’t been prepared.’ Max smiled down at Georgia and she nodded.
‘I was glad you’d dropped in when the floodgates opened. It’s always tricky to do everything at once when things go only slightly unplanned, let alone a full-blown PPH. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the stress while I waited for you.’
Max’s eyes softened. ‘Is it still good to be back at work when you have occasions like that?’
Georgia looked at him and nodded without any doubt. ‘When it all turns out as well as that did then, yes, of course. And the birth was lovely.’
His face clouded again and she put her hand on his arm. ‘What’s wrong?’
He smiled and she wondered if it was forced. ‘Nothing. I was very proud of you, my wife, in there. But now I’ll have to go to work and crunch some numbers around until you call me again.’
He patted her shoulder and just before he moved off he said, ‘Do ring me. Any excuse to get out of the office is gratefully accepted.’
‘Perhaps you could come back at lunchtime and check on Mel and share my sandwiches.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ He smiled and waved and she watched him go.
He’d been a pleasure to work with and as cool as ice in an emergency. But, then, she’d known that since Elsa’s birth.
She was trying to ignore the fact that her heart had given a jump when she’d first heard his voice, and just watching him talk to Mel had made her so proud to think that for the moment, at least, he was her man.
She gave herself a little mental shake. She needed to think more about her work and less about Max.
That night at dinner it seemed the floodgates of work discussion opened. They’d never really discussed much about Max’s work but it was as if he’d finally decided he could talk to Georgia and she would not only understand but be deeply interested and have much to offer him in response.
‘I had no idea how much I missed the face-to-face obstetrics that I grew away from in administration.’
‘How could you not notice you’d left a clinical role?’ Georgia listened with her chin on her hands and watched the play of emotions cross Max’s handsome face. How had she come to be with this man? His kindness to her seemed to have no limits.
‘I started teaching.’ He shrugged. ‘And that always moves you back a pace as you encourage students to gain skills and be safe. The only way to impart that knowledge is to let them do it—which meant I didn’t.
‘That access to students meant people were always asking about change and why things were done in a certain way. Soon I was the person advocating change and fighting against the old school of habit.’
She smiled. He would be a good teacher. ‘That must have been satisfying.’
‘In its way it was,’ he said with a twitch of his lips, ‘but that pushed me further away from the births and into the boardrooms and medical committee meetings. Before I knew it, funding had become the big issue.’
She wouldn’t like that herself. ‘You must have been good at creating change?’
‘Maybe, but it is paradoxical that the more I see of grass-roots obstetrics the more I want to be part of it again.’
She could listen to him all night. She’d never had this. As an only child she’d never had a sister or brother she’d been able to really relate to and she’d never been close to Tayla.
Her loving parents had died together when she had just left her teens—too young to have really understood her mother yet old enough to see that true love was a worthwhile goal.
Her marriage, after the initial honeymoon period, had never included an equal partnership so any conversations had been dominated and directed by Sol.
With Max she felt she could dispute, digress or downright disagree, and her contribution would be appreciated. He must have felt the same because he stood up and held out his hand.
‘Come and sit with me for a while on the veranda. We’ll look over the ocean and check out the stars. It is a beautiful night.’
She took his hand and the feel of his fingers around hers as he helped her up made her