Chapter 3 - Operating Room 4
The ambulance ride was a blur of fluorescent lights, shouting voices, and the bitter taste of oxygen pushed through a plastic mask.
"Vitals are dropping," the paramedic in the back called out over the radio to the hospital. "Maternal BP is 88 over 50, heart rate 130. Fetal heart rate is dipping into the low 80s. We are three minutes out!"
Mason squeezed my hand so hard his knuckles were white. "Hang on, Julia. Please, just hang on."
"Mason..." I rasped, tears clogging my throat. "If... if something happens... if you have to choose..."
"Don't you dare say that," Mason snapped, his voice breaking into a sob. "No choices. You and the baby. Both of you. Do you hear me?"
When the ambulance doors swung open at Atrium Health's trauma bay, a full surgical team was already waiting in blue scrubs. Dr. Foster jumped down from the front seat, shouting orders over the roar of the idling engine.
"Stat C-section! Category 1 emergency! Prep OR 4! Get two units of O-negative on cross-match!"
The gurney was pushed through double doors at a dead run. Ceiling lights flashed past like white stripes on a highway. Mason was forced to stop at the red line outside the surgical corridor. A nurse grabbed his shoulders to keep him back as he reached for me.
"I love you, Julia!" he screamed as the doors began to swing shut. "Fight! Fight for him!"
Inside Operating Room 4, the air was ice cold and smelled of iodine and sterile metal. I was transferred onto the narrow operating table. Arms reached over me, cutting away my clothes, slapping monitoring pads onto my chest, placing an IV line into my left wrist.
"Applying anesthesia," the anesthesiologist said near my ear. "Julia, you're going to feel a cold sensation in your tubing, then you're going to go to sleep."
"Is my baby alive?" I sobbed, staring up at the giant round surgical light blinding my vision. "Please... is he alive?"
Dr. Foster leaned over me, her face masked and cap drawn tight. She took my hand for one brief, firm second. "We are going to get him out right now, Julia. Close your eyes."
The cold liquid entered my vein. The harsh white light expanded, swallowing the room, swallowing the frantic beeping of the heart monitor, swallowing my pain, until everything went utterly black.
...
When I woke up, there was no sound of a baby crying.
There was only the steady, rhythmic hiss-click, hiss-click of a ventilator somewhere nearby, and the heavy, metallic smell of a recovery room.
My eyes fluttered open. The ceiling was white drop-tile. I tried to move my hand, but my muscles felt like wet cement. A low, throbbing ache burned across my lower abdomen, sharp and deep under heavy bandages.
"Julia?"
I turned my head slowly. Mason was sitting in a vinyl chair right beside the bed. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair disheveled, and his shirt was stained with dried blood—my blood.
My heart seized in absolute terror. The silence in the room felt like a physical weight crushing my chest.
"Mason..." I whispered, my throat dry as sandpaper. "Where is he? Is he... is he gone?"
Mason stood up quickly, leaning over the bed rail. He reached out and gently stroked my hair, his lower lip trembling.
"He's in the NICU, sweetheart," Mason whispered, a tear spilling over his eyelash and dropping onto my cheek. "He's alive. He's very small, and he's fighting, but he's alive."
I let out a sound that was half-sob, half-scream, pulling Mason down toward me until my face was pressed into the crook of his neck. "He's alive... oh God, he's alive..."
"His name is Leo," Mason said, choking back his own tears. "He weighs four pounds, two ounces. Dr. Foster got him out just in time. The placenta had completely detached. Two more minutes, Julia... two more minutes and we would have lost both of you."
The door to the room swung open softly. Dr. Foster stepped inside, holding a chart. She looked exhausted, her eyes heavy, but a small, compassionate smile touched her lips when she saw me awake.
"Welcome back, Julia," she said softly.
"Thank you," I rasped, clutching Mason's arm. "Thank you for saving my son."
"He's a tough little guy," Dr. Foster said, walking to the side of the bed to check my IV lines. "He's currently on a ventilator in the Neonatal ICU, and we're monitoring him for hypoxic brain injury, but his vitals have stabilized over the last two hours. You, however, lost nearly three units of blood. You need to rest."
"What about my family?" I asked, the sudden memory of my parents' living room flooding back like poison. "Did they... did anyone come?"
Dr. Foster’s expression turned instantly cold as stone.
"Your father and mother tried to come into the L&D waiting room two hours ago," Dr. Foster said flatly. "Your father brought an attorney and tried to demand your medical records to 'verify the severity of the injury.'"
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I felt my blood turn to ice. "What?"
"Mason had them removed by hospital security," Dr. Foster continued. "And twenty minutes ago, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers arrested your sister, Nicole Harper, at her apartment. She has been formally charged with Assault on an Unborn Child and Malicious Intent to Cause Serious Bodily Harm."
