he had the night to himself, he had collapsed early into bed. So when the phone rang at midnight, it took him a few seconds to pull himself awake and process what was going on.
When he entered the bedroom behind her stricken mother, he saw the bedsheets covered in blood, and a bucket and towels scattered about the floor, and in the centre of it all lay Adeline, her white lace nightgown shredded and stained as she writhed and screamed in pain, gripping the headboard posts, one in each ash-white hand.
Dr. Gray felt her abdomen as gingerly yet as thoroughly as possible, watching Adeline flinch at every negligible pressure of his hands. He took out his stethoscope and listened carefully to both her and the baby’s hearts, then turned back to Mrs. Lewis, standing trembling behind him.
“The baby’s heart rate is irregular—and her pain—the bleeding—it’s happening way too fast. Get the hospital on the phone and make bloody sure the ambulance I requested is on its way.”
Stunned by his tone, Mrs. Lewis rushed out of the room in a panic.
The minute she was gone, Adeline grabbed wildly at Dr. Gray’s arm. “Is the baby okay?”
“We need to get you to the hospital right away. You’re not in labour yet, but you’re bleeding profusely, and the baby is feeling the stress.”
She grabbed his arm even harder. “Am I going to lose this baby? Tell me the truth, Dr. Gray, please, I’m begging you.”
“We’re going to get you into surgery for a Caesarean section—the baby is too distressed to wait for a natural labour. But I have no reason to believe that he or she can’t be delivered safely that way. Time, however, is of the essence, so I will get you downstairs now, alright?”
Dr. Gray wrapped Adeline in her housecoat and carried her down the narrow staircase as carefully and as quickly as he dared. By the time they reached the bottom landing the ambulance was pulling up at the end of the garden path. The ambulance driver and the attendant jumped down from the vehicle and rushed up to meet them with the stretcher.
As the ambulance raced in the night to Alton, Dr. Gray stayed by her side, holding a damp towel to her forehead with one hand while holding her ice-cold hand in his other. He could do nothing else for her.
Dr. Howard Westlake, the surgeon and a longtime colleague of Dr. Gray’s, was not hopeful and called for additional blood supplies to be rushed over from the Winchester hospital’s new blood depot eighteen miles away, in case transfusion became necessary. Both he and Dr. Gray had learned the hard way over the years to plan ahead whenever local villagers ran into serious trouble, given the distance from the better-prepared urban Hampshire hospital. Dr. Gray asked for a quick second of private consultation as Adeline was prepped for surgery.
“I think it’s placenta abruption,” Dr. Gray said in a half whisper. “All the signs are there. The bleeding, the uterine tenderness, the fetal heart rate.”
Dr. Westlake was watching him carefully. “Did you think of trying to deliver the baby right then and there?”
Dr. Gray shook his head. “The fetus is in too much distress. And besides, they are both in danger, as you know. They needed to be here in the hospital, just in case.”
He paused to look through the long narrow window to the operating theatre and could just make out Adeline’s long brown hair fanned out behind her head, now obscured by the anaesthesia mask.
“Howard, you agree with me, that she should be the primary patient, right? All the literature says that—”
“Benjamin, we’ve talked about this plenty before—you know how I feel. You know you have nothing to worry about there.”
Dr. Gray nodded but looked so stricken, the surgeon wasn’t sure his words were sinking in.
“Go home and get some rest, Ben, alright? It’s going to be a long night, and no matter what happens, Mrs. Grover is going to need you on the morrow. We’ll call when it’s over.”
But Dr. Gray stayed all night at the hospital, unable to sleep. He knew he could make sleep come soon enough, when he wanted it to. Right now he wanted to stand sentinel at the gates of hell and keep Adeline from falling through. She was so young, with so many years ahead of her. This did not have to be the end, for her, no matter what happened—he would do his absolute best to see to that. And