and forced herself to get back to work.
Just as she did so she spied one of her patients leaning against the wall, her hands gripping her swollen belly. Margie Terrington, an English transplant like herself, had just come in yesterday for a quick check to make sure things were on track. They had been.
At least until now. From the concentration on her face and the grey cast to her skin, something wasn’t right. Darcie glanced around for a nurse, but they were still tending to the morning’s patients. Darcie hurried over.
“Margie? Are you all right?”
Her eyes came up. “My stomach. It’s cramping. I think it’s the baby.”
“Let’s get you into a room.”
Alarm filled her. No time to check her in or do any of the preliminaries. This was the young woman’s second pregnancy. She’d miscarried her first a little over a year ago, and she was only seven months along with this one. Too soon. The human body didn’t just go into labor this early unless there was a problem.
Her apprehension grew, and she sent up a quick prayer.
Propping her shoulder beneath Margie’s arm, they headed to the nearest exam room. One of the nurses came out of a room across the hall, and Darcie called out to her. “Tessa, could you come here?”
The nurse hurried over and got on the other side of their patient.
“Once I get her settled, can you see if you can find Lucas? He arrived a few minutes ago, so he might be in the lounge or the locker area. Let him know I might need his help.”
“Of course.”
The patient was sweating profusely—Darcie could feel the moisture through the woman’s light maternity top. Another strike against her. If she had some kind of systemic infection, could it have crossed the placenta and affected the baby? A thousand possibilities ran through her mind.
Pushing into the exam area, the trio paused when Margie groaned and doubled over even more. “Oh, God. Hurts.”
“Do they feel like contractions? Are they regular?” They finally got her to the bed and helped her up on it.
“I don’t know.”
Tessa scurried around, getting her vitals, while Darcie tried to get some more information. What she learned wasn’t good. Margie had got up and showered like normal and had felt fine. Forty minutes later she’d got a painful cramp in her side—like the kind you got while running, she’d said. The pain had grown worse and had spread in a band across her abdomen. Now she was feeling nauseous, whether from the pain or something else, she wasn’t sure. “And my joints hurt, as if I’m getting the flu.”
Could she be?
As soon as Tessa called out the readings, the nurse went out to get the patient’s chart and to hunt down Lucas.
“Let’s get you into a robe and see what’s going on.”
“Wait.” Margie groaned again. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Grabbing a basin, she held it under her patient’s mouth as she heaved. Nothing came up, though.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Darcie started to reach for a paper towel, only to have Lucas arrive, chart in hand. He took one look at the scene and anticipated what she was doing. Ripping a couple of towels from the dispenser, he glanced at her in question. “What’ve you got?”
“This is Margie Terrington from Southbank. She’s cramping. Pain in the joints. Nausea.”
“Contractions?”
“I’m not sure. I’m just getting ready to hook her up to the monitor.”
He tilted his head. “Theories?”
“None.” She laid a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Are you up to telling Lucas what you told me?”
Even as she asked it, Margie’s face tightened up in a pained grimace, and she gave a couple of sustained breaths, dragging air in through her nose and letting it out through her mouth. A second or two later she nodded. “Like I told you, I took a shower this morning. Then I started getting these weird sensations in my side.”
“What kind of weird?”
“Like a pulled muscle or something.” She stiffened once again. She gritted out, “But now my whole stomach hurts.”
“Where’s the father?” Lucas asked.
“He’s at work. I—I didn’t want to worry him if it’s nothing.”
Lucas frowned. “I think he should be here.” He glanced at Darcie. “Can you get her hooked up while I ring him?”
If anything, Margie looked even more frightened. “Am I going to lose this baby too?”
Darcie’s heart ached for the woman, even as her brain still whirled, trying to figure out what was going on. “Let us do the worrying, love, can you do that?”
“I think so.” She wrote her husband’s phone number on a sheet of paper and handed it to Lucas.
While he was gone, Darcie got Margie into a hospital gown and snapped on a pair of gloves. Then she wrapped the monitor around her patient’s abdomen. Wow, she was really perspiring. So much so that it had already soaked through the robe on her right side.
And her abdominal muscles were tight to the touch. “Are you having a contraction right now?”
Margie moaned. “I don’t know.”
She started up the machine and the first thing she heard was the quick woompa-woompa-woompa-woompa of the baby’s heart. Thank God. Even as that thought hit, a hundred more swept past it. A heartbeat didn’t mean Margie’s baby wasn’t in distress, just that he was alive.
She stared at the line below the heart rate that should be showing the marked rise and fall of the uterus as it contracted and released. It was a steady line.
Placing her hand on Margie’s abdomen again, she noted the strange tightness she’d felt before. But it seemed more like surface muscles to Darcie. Not the deep, purposeful contraction of a woman’s uterus.
Lucas came back and glanced at the monitor. “Your husband’s on his way.”
“Thank you.” Another moan, and her hands went back to her stomach.
Lucas sat next to the bed and held the patient’s hand, helping guide her through the deep breathing.
“She’s not contracting.” Darcie’s eyes were locked on the monitor where a series of little squiggles indicated that something was happening, but it was more like a series of muscle fasciculations than the steady rise and fall she would expect to see. Could she have flu, like Margie suspected?
“When did you start sweating like this?”
Lucas’s voice drew her attention back. He eased Margie’s robe to the side and stared at the area where moisture was already beading up despite just having been exposed to the chilly air of the ward. Strange. Although Margie was perspiring everywhere—Darcie gave a quick glance at her face and chest above the gown—there was a marked difference between her moist upper lip and her right side, where a rivulet of liquid peaked and then ran down the woman’s swollen belly.
“I don’t know. An hour after my shower? Right about the time I started to hurt.”
He peered at her closer. “You said you took a shower. Did you feel anything before or after it? A sting…or a prick maybe?”
A prick? Darcie stared at him, trying to figure out where he was going with this.
“No.”
“Where did the pain start exactly?”
Margie pressed her fingers right over the area that was wet from perspiration.