Chapter 7 #2
By the time Hope got down to the emergency department, she’d already given herself a good talking to.
She had to keep her expectations in check and not hope for too much.
There was every possibility it wouldn’t even be Joe who turned up to see the patient and, even if he did, it could easily turn out to be a let-down in other ways.
He could be obnoxious, with a far too high opinion of himself, for a start.
Even if he was every bit as lovely as she hoped he’d be, her presence would mean nothing to him.
She could be any midwife and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to Joe, as long as she did her job.
‘Oh hi, Hope, it’s good to see you again.
Thanks so much for coming.’ Esther greeted her with a smile, and she felt absurdly pleased that the older woman had remembered her name.
Her biological father’s wife knew who she was and seemed pleased to see her.
It felt hugely significant somehow, and for a moment the urge to tell Esther so much more rose up inside of Hope, but she couldn’t do it.
Even if she eventually decided to share her secret, now definitely wasn’t the time.
‘Good to see you too, and I’m always happy to do whatever I can to help.’
‘Thank goodness, because the obstetrician is going to be at least half an hour, apparently. All the consultants are already busy with urgent stuff.’ Esther frowned and shook her head.
‘The patient, Elena Novak, is thirty-six weeks pregnant and made the decision to stop taking medication for bipolar disorder around two weeks ago, against medical advice, due to what she perceived were low foetal movements, even though monitoring didn’t highlight any concerns.
Elena’s husband, Tomá?, brought her in, after she fainted.
She’s been refusing to eat or drink anything, because she’s convinced herself that someone is trying to poison her, and she’s showing all the signs of being dehydrated.
We need to get some fluids in to rehydrate her, but when I mentioned the IV, she became hysterical. She’s clearly terrified.’
‘I’m not surprised, poor woman, that must be incredibly tough. Are the mental health team here yet?’ Hope tried to keep her tone light, as though it wouldn’t matter to her either way if someone was coming or not, let alone who that someone was.
‘We’ve put a call in and they’re going to send someone as soon as they can, but it seems to be one of those days today, everyone is stretched to the limit.’ Esther frowned again. ‘If it takes too long, I might have to pull in a favour and get my husband to come down.’
‘Sounds like a good plan; there has to be a benefit to having friends in high places.’ Hope was still fighting to sound casual, even though there was nothing she wanted more right now than for Esther to put in that call, but in the meantime, she had a patient who needed her help and that had to be the priority.
‘Do you think she’ll let me examine her? ’
‘I’m not sure, she wouldn’t let me anywhere close.
Although she did ask to see a midwife, so that’s something.
Apparently, her mother’s a midwife, but she lives in Slovakia, so that doesn’t do us or Elena a lot of good.
’ Esther’s sigh was even deeper this time around.
‘It might help her to trust you, though.’
‘Let’s hope so, I’d better give it a try.
It doesn’t sound like there’s any time to waste.
’ Hope swallowed against the frisson of nerves that were bubbling up inside her.
There were times in her job when she felt so powerless, as though nothing she did could help, and all she could so was hope that this wouldn’t be one of them.
‘I’ll take you through.’ Esther was already leading the way. ‘Her husband Tomá? has been doing his best to help persuade Elena to let me examine her, but she just kept repeating that she doesn’t want a nurse, she wants a midwife.’
‘Fingers crossed I pass the test.’ Hope followed Esther through to the side room where Elena was waiting, still on her feet, rather than resting on the bed.
The patient clearly needed calm and privacy if there was going to be any chance of reducing the distress she was under.
That meant she needed to be away from the busy cubicle area, which Hope suspected could have given Waterloo station a run for its money, with the number of people passing through.
‘How are you doing, Elena?’ Esther asked as they entered the room. ‘This is Hope, one of the midwives, she’s come to see how you and the baby are.’
‘You’re not touching me. Don’t let them touch me, Tomá?. They want to give me poison. Promise me you won’t let them.’ Elena turned away, pressing herself into her husband’s arms. ‘Don’t let them do it, please. I couldn’t bear it if we lost her.’
‘No one is trying to hurt you, Elena.’ Tomá? tried to stroke her hair, but she shrank back from him as though he’d burnt her with a cigarette.
‘They are, that’s what they always do when they think something is going to be wrong with babies like ours, because they don’t want them to live. Why don’t you believe me? I need you to believe me, Tomá?, or it will happen to our baby too.’ Elena’s distress was so obvious it tugged at Hope’s heart.
‘What do you mean when you say “babies like ours”?’ Hope kept her voice low, sensing that Elena needed to feel listened to, rather than being given empty platitudes that she couldn’t believe.
‘We weren’t born here, I am from Slovakia and Tomá? is from Poland, and there are so many people who don’t make us feel welcome. They won’t want our baby here either, especially if there is something wrong with her. They’d rather she died.’
The breath caught in Hope’s throat for a moment, the ache she’d felt in her heart deepening even further as she realised the cause of Elena’s distress.
The mental health challenges she was facing were significant, especially as she’d stopped taking her medication, but the distress she’d been experiencing clearly wasn’t ‘all in her head’, and Hope had a horrible feeling that Elena had experienced some form of racism that played into the anxiety she already felt.
‘No one here right now feels that way. I promise you that.’ Hope knew her words were never going to be enough to change how Elena felt, but she said them anyway.
‘It happened to my friend Kristina in the hospital. She trusted them and they let her baby die.’ Elena turned her tear-stained face towards Hope.
‘That’s not what happened.’ Tomá? reached for his wife, but she shrank away from his touch for a second time and he looked towards Hope, desperation etched on his face. ‘Kristina had an infection, I can’t remember the name, and that’s why the baby died.’
‘It’s not!’ There was a wild expression in Elena’s eyes now.
‘The doctors said they would give her the medicine the baby needed, so he wouldn’t get the infection too, but he still died, because it wasn’t medicine, it was poison.
That’s what they’ll do to me, and they’ve put it in the water too, and my food, because I won’t take their medicine and make it easy for them.
I’m not going to take anything until this baby is here! ’