The Nurse's Baby Secret

Transferred to her room.

Despite how heavy her eyelids felt, Savannah pried her lids apart. Fluorescent lights shone in her eyes and she quickly closed her lids to block out the brightness.

She was in a hospital. That much registered.

“Blue,” the voice that had told her to breathe said. “With that red hair, I wondered if they would be. Your eyes, that is.”

Savannah exerted great effort and ordered her eyes to open again. Slowly, they obeyed and she struggled to focus on her surroundings.

“I was hoping you’d open them on your own before I had to do your next neuro check.”

A bright room with artificial lighting. So bright it made holding her eyes open even more of a challenge. Or maybe it was the fact that they felt so puffy, almost swollen shut, that made it so difficult to keep her lids pried apart. Even the slightest movement sent new shockwaves of pain through her body.

“Take another big breath to keep your oxygen saturation up,” the nurse repeated. “Your baby needs you taking big breaths.”

Her baby. Oh, no. Had she? No, the woman had told her to breathe deeply to get her O2 sats up for her baby. If she’d miscarried, her breathing wouldn’t affect her baby.

Her baby was alive.

Still, she wanted reassurance, especially as she didn’t feel any movement. Not that she always did, just that currently she felt nothing.

Nothing except pain. Great pain.

“My baby? Did I...?”

“Your baby is still holding his or her own. See.” The woman gestured toward a monitor.

Savannah squinted toward the direction the woman gestured. There were a lot of monitors and medical equipment hooked to her, two of which displayed steady heartbeats, one much more rapid than the other. One hundred and forty-eight beats per minute. Her baby had a good, steady fetal heartbeat.

She was in a hospital. Her baby was alive. She was alive. Why was she in a hospital? Why did she hurt so much?

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” the nurse asked.

She closed her eyes and strained to recall. Horror joined her pain. “I was in a wreck. My car was hit and then I hit the car in front of me and was trapped between them.”

“From what I was told, that sounds right,” the nurse agreed. “There was a fender bender that put traffic at a sudden stop on the interstate. Apparently, you were able to get stopped, but the driver behind you wasn’t paying attention and never braked. One of the witnesses said the driver was texting while driving.” The nurse gave a disgusted look. “You were slammed into by that car and that smashed you into the car in front of you. Then, another car hit the car that hit you and crushed you in between the two vehicles even more. I’m not a hundred percent that’s accurate, but it’s what I was told. Regardless, you are lucky to still be with us.”

Savannah relived the impact followed by another impact. She remembered thinking the hits, the being jerked forward, was never going to end, that she was going to die in her car.

“Was anyone else hurt?” she asked, almost afraid of the answer. When in nursing school, she’d done a few rotations where she’d worked the emergency department, worked motor vehicle accidents. She knew how serious they could be.

The nurse winced and Savannah knew someone had been injured. By the nurse’s expression, seriously injured.

“The driver who hit you, the one texting while driving, died instantly.”

Savannah’s heart squeezed. That impact that had jarred her very being, someone had died in that instant.

She could have died.

Her baby could have died.

Her gaze went to the fetal heart monitor, taking in the rapid little heartbeats.

She might hurt all over, but at least her baby was alive.

“Sad.” Her throat felt so dry, almost swelled shut.