My Genes Don’t Fit

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Jane

S ydney, Australia. Twenty-nine years ago

My chilling scream pierced through dreamless sleep. Grabbing my stomach, my eyes snapped open while every nerve in my body frayed, torturing me with spasms of agony.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. The baby!

I doubled over as if a demon clawed the inside of my uterus with steel talons.

“Eeeee!” I squealed, covered with sweat, panting faster than a dog shut in a hot car while I curled around my pregnant belly.

The relentless contraction gripped my abdomen as if trying to turn me inside out. “God!” I had a high tolerance for pain but my eyes were rolling back, my entire body shook, and my mouth started watering like I was going to puke.

I reached for the controller to ring for the nurse, my stomach roiling, the back of my throat burning with the contents of my empty stomach.

“Help!”

I gagged. Heaved. Yellow bile spewed onto the sheet as I jabbed my thumb on the red dot. I’d been in the hospital for observation for three days and was scheduled for a cesarean in the morning.

At the moment, seven o’clock was a lifetime away. So was my absent husband.

Rocking back and forth, I clutched my arms around my stomach. “Nurse! God dammit!”

The blood pressure cuff encircling my arm began to inflate. The mere pressure brought on another urge to hurl. I tried to rip open the Velcro but collapsed with the torment of the cramping tourniquet gripping my gut .

This might be my first full-term pregnancy. But after a stillbirth at twenty-seven weeks followed by a miscarriage, I had a pretty good idea labor was not supposed to be like this. It should come on gradually with contractions becoming more frequent, but since I opened my eyes I’ve been in the throes of one continuous, murderously excruciating contraction that felt more like being ripped in half than squeezing something the size of a beach ball down to the size of a walnut.

The blood pressure cuff released and immediately restarted. I glanced at the monitor. My breath stopped. Holy shit, the reading was 187 over 122. I’ve never had high blood pressure in my life and, though I wasn’t an expert, I was pretty damned sure with a reading this high, the machine was about to explode.

My panting sped faster. For the love of God, no one had responded to my call. And if I didn’t get help in the next five seconds I was going to die.

That absolutely could not happen.

Not now.

Not before my baby was born.

“Nurse!” I screamed, sliding my feet off the bed while hot liquid gushed down my legs.

When the door opened, a flood of light blinded me followed by a high-pitched gasp. “We need to get you back on the bed now !” she said so fast, the words slurred together.

The nurse shoved me by the butt as she reached for the red phone. “Code green, room three-twelve. I repeat, code green, three-twelve!”

I managed to get one knee on the mattress as I doubled over with my everlasting contraction. “I’m gonna die!”

“Not while I’m here. No, no, no,” she said, injecting something into my IV.

As a calming effect hit my bloodstream, I rolled to my side, the room filling with a myriad of hospital personnel. Tears made the tubes flying around me appear distorted and liquescent, the conversation short and filled with so many acronyms I had no idea what was being said.

I didn’t care. “Save my baby!” I yelled as I clung to consciousness.

The soiled sheets disappeared before an orderly rolled my bed down the hallway at a run. One fluorescent light after another blurred past on the ceiling above.

They pushed me into a cold room where the lights were too bright and everyone was wearing green scrubs. “Hi, Jane,” said a woman, her face appearing above mine. She wore safety glasses, a face mask, and a blue hair net. “I’m Dr. Prendergast and I’m going to perform your emergency cesarean.”

I nodded, my consciousness waning, but I fought the drugs. I had to hold on for a few seconds more. “Please tell me my baby will live!” I tried to shout but my voice only managed a slurring whisper.

The doctor’s face filmed over. “That’s our goal.”

The last thing I heard were two words: ruptured uterus .