The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,16
her mother in San Francisco. It was an unfamiliar reflex, but her mother was a pediatric ICU nurse, and would tell her what she thought might be going on. Zoe was terrified this could be serious, and Jaime might die. Luckily, Beth picked up when she saw Zoe’s name appear on her caller ID. She was still at work. She was surprised to hear from her.
“Hi, Zoe, what’s up?” Zoe told her mother, and Beth made a wild guess, based on her recent years of experience.
“Sounds like some form of apnea to me. It could be a seizure, but I doubt it. I’m not a doctor. And if they want to do anything dramatic, get a second opinion immediately. Don’t wait,” was the best advice she could give her. But she sounded calm, which reassured Zoe.
“What else could it be?” Zoe was panicked. She had only known and loved this baby for less than three weeks, and already Jaime was lodged deep in their hearts, and Zoe didn’t want to lose her. The thought of that made her feel sick, and think of Rose.
“It’s probably nothing. Call me after you see the doctor,” Beth said and then had to go back to work.
An ER doctor examined Jaime carefully, and they were going to do tests. But he said his gut told him that it was some form of digestive apnea, where reflux from her digestive system backed up after she ate and may have caused her to stop breathing for a few minutes. “With any luck, it won’t happen again, but you’ll need to keep an eye on her now after she eats. There are some monitors available on the market that will warn you if she stops breathing. But they have constant malfunctions and false alarms. They’ll drive you crazy all night, and in the daytime too.”
“I’m with her every minute, I can sit up with her all night if I need to,” Zoe said immediately, already a devoted mom, ready to sacrifice herself.
“She’s more at risk now, at her age, than she would be as an adult or as an older child, after an episode like that. Eventually her digestive system will mature, and this won’t happen anymore. It happens to some babies, and they grow out of it.”
“I hope it never does again,” Zoe said with feeling and Austin nodded. He had never expected something like that to happen. She had nearly died right under their noses, and what if they hadn’t been watching her? Thank God Zoe had seen it quickly and reacted.
They called Cathy Clark and she came to see Jaime too and insisted she wasn’t overly worried. She said bouts of apnea happened to some babies, and often never happened again. They were going to keep an eye on it and see if it recurred before subjecting her to intense testing. Austin liked her conservative approach, although Zoe questioned if they should do the intensive testing now and not wait.
They spent the night in the hospital with the baby so the staff could observe her. And in the morning, the attending pediatrician told them to keep her upright for half an hour after she ate before they laid her down, which made sense, so her digestive system didn’t back up, causing her to stop breathing.
Zoe ordered a monitor for her from Amazon right from the hospital on her phone, even though the doctor said it was unreliable. It was better than nothing, and Zoe would rather be annoyed by a malfunctioning machine than lose her only child. And it would alert them in the event of sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS, too. The episode made Zoe think that maybe they should have another child, as protection if something happened to Jaime. But it affected Austin differently. It made him even more certain that he could only deal with the worry over one child, and not more. Jaime was definitely it for him. He was adamant about it now. The apnea incident had terrified him.
The baby slept on the way home, and when they got back to the apartment, Zoe and Austin talked about it before the baby woke up, and came to an agreement. One child was enough. Maybe even too much for them. They had had a rough start. But they had her now and were both determined to be the best parents on the planet. They owed her that. Austin was only just beginning to understand what that meant, a