This was a birth scene. One fast glance told her that. Someone had lain here and delivered a baby. The grass was crushed and there was blood…
And a baby.
A dead baby?
She moved swiftly, stooping to see, noting his stillness and the dreadful blue tinge of his skin. He was so pale under his waxy birth coating that she thought he must be dead.
She touched him and there was a hint of warmth.
Warmth? Maybe.
He wasn’t breathing.
She fell to her knees and lifted him against her. His tiny body was limp and floppy. Where was his pulse?
Nothing.
Her fingers were in his mouth, trying frantically to clear an airway that was far too small. She turned him over, face down, using her little finger to clear muck from his mouth and then using a fold of her T-shirt to wipe his mouth clear.
Then she pulled him up to her mouth and breathed.
She felt his tiny chest lift.
Yes!
Heartbeat. Come on. There had to be a heartbeat.
Her backpack was where she’d dropped it, and CJ’s wind-cheater was drooping out of the top. She hauled it onto the grass and laid the baby down on its soft surface. It was almost one movement, spreading the windcheater, laying the little one down and starting cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
She knew this so well. Cardiology was her specialty but to practise CPR here, on a baby this small…
She wanted her hospital. She wanted oxygen and suction equipment. She wanted back-up.
She had to find help. Even if she got him breathing, she needed help. Urgently.
CJ was standing, stunned into silence. He was too young to depend on but he was all she had.
‘CJ, run to the side of the parking lot and scream for help,’ she told him between breaths.
Breathe, press, press, press…
‘Why?’ CJ seemed totally bemused, and who could blame him?
Could she take the baby and run for help? She rejected the idea almost before she thought of doing it. How long had the baby been abandoned? How long had he not been breathing? Even if she got him back…Every second without oxygen increased the chance of brain damage.
She needed every ounce of concentration to get air into these little lungs. She breathed again into the baby’s mouth and continued with the rhythmic pumping that must get the heart working. Must!
‘This baby’s really ill,’she told CJ, fighting to get words out as she concentrated on CPR between breaths ‘You have to get someone to come here. Scream like there’s a tiger chasing you.’
‘There’s not a tiger.’
‘Pretend there is.’ She was back to breathing again. Then: ‘Go, CJ. I need your help. You have to scream.’
‘For the baby?’
‘For the baby.’
He considered for a long moment. Then he nodded as if he’d decided that maybe that what his mother was asking wasn’t too crazy. Maybe it even appealed to him. He disappeared around the other side of the rock. There was a moment’s silence—and then a yell.
‘Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. There’s a tiger and a baby. Help!’
It was a great yell. It was the best. He’d put his heart into it, and it sounded for all the world like a tiger was about to pounce, and a baby, too. But the end of his yell was drowned out.
The coach they’d come in was huge, a two-level touring affair. It had a massive air-conditioning unit, and even when idling it was noisy. Now, as it started to move and went through its ponderous gear changes, it was truly deafening.
Gina heard just one of CJ’s yells before the sound of the coach took over. The second and third yells were drowned out as the coach turned out of the parking lot, growing louder and louder until nothing could be heard at all.
Gina made to stand—she made to get herself out in front of the coach to stop it—but then there was a tiny choking sound from the baby. Her eyes flew back to him. Was she imagining it?
No.
If he was choking…His airway must still be slightly blocked. She had to get his trachea clear.
Once more she lifted the baby and turned him face down, and her fingers searched his mouth. The coach was forgotten. She desperately needed equipment. There might well be liquor or meconium stuck in his throat or on his vocal cords. How to clear his tiny airway without tracheal suction?
She shook him, carefully, carefully, supporting his neck as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
He choked again.
Something dislodged—a fragment of gunk—and she had it clear in an instant.
She turned him back over and breathed for him again.
This time his chest rose higher.
It fell.
It rose—all by itself.
Again.
Again.
She was breathing with him, willing him to breathe with her. And he was. Wonderfully—magically—he was.
She wiped his mouth again, using her T-shirt, and then searched her bag for a facecloth. She was cradling him against her now. She had to get him warm. Once she had him breathing, heat loss was his biggest enemy.
At least the outside air was warm.
She had to get help.
The coach was gone.
As if on cue, CJ appeared back from his tiger yelling. ‘I think they heard me,’ he told her, uncertain whether to be proud or not. His expression said he was definitely uncertain about the baby his mother was paying such attention to. ‘One of the ladies on the coach waved to me as it went past.’
Fantastic. She could hear it in the distance, rumbling down the unmade road, starting its long trip to Cairns.
To the airport. To America. Home.
She couldn’t think of that now. All that mattered was this tiny baby. His breathing was becoming less laboured, she thought, or was it wishful thinking? She wanted oxygen so badly.
She didn’t have it. She had to concentrate on the things she could do.
Swiftly she checked the baby’s umbilical cord. It looked as if it had been ripped from the placenta. Now that his heart was beating strongly, the cord was starting to ooze.
How long had the cord been cut? she asked herself, a bit confused. Obstetrics wasn’t her strong point, but surely the cord shouldn’t still be bleeding?
How much blood had he lost?
Where was the nearest hospital to Gunyamurra?
She couldn’t depend on a hospital. She was all this baby had.
She tugged the drawstring from her backpack and tied the umbilicus with care, then hauled the backpack wide and found her own windcheater—a soft, old garment that she loved. It’d do as a blanket.
Once again she checked his breathing, scarcely allowing herself to hope that this frail little scrap of humanity might survive.
But as if he’d read her mind and was determined to prove her wrong, he opened his eyes.
And even CJ was caught.
‘It’s a real baby,’ CJ breathed, awed at this transformation from what must have seemed a lifeless body to a living thing, and Gina could only gaze down at the baby in her arms