Practice Makes Perfect

‘Where are you, Lucy?’ she asked, and when she found out that the woman was only three or four hundred yards down the road she suggested that Lucy put the baby in the pram and bring him up to the surgery. ‘Dr Davenport’s out at the moment, and I can’t leave the house because I’m waiting for the plumber, but if you like I can have a look at the baby just to make sure there’s nothing drastically wrong, and the break will probably do you good—me too. It’ll be nice to see you again. I’ll put the kettle on,’ she added, and it was only after she had hung up that she remembered she had no water.

Shrugging, she ran up to Sam’s flat with her kettle and filled it from his tap, then took it back to her kitchen through the communicating door in the hall and put it on to heat while she changed her clothes and dragged a comb through her hair.

Lucy arrived a short time later, with baby Michael still screaming lustily in his pram. After tracking down her grandfather’s medical bag Lydia examined Michael carefully, checking his ears and throat particularly for any sign of infection, and taking his temperature and listening to his chest.

‘He seems fine. Lucy, I think it’s one of two things. Either he’s eaten something which has disagreed with him, in which case he’ll probably get diarrhoea very shortly, or else he’s just having a paddy! Let’s see if we can distract him.’

Picking up the screaming child, she tucked him in the crook of her left arm and rocked him against her, crooning softly.

Almost immediately his eyes fell shut and he dropped off to sleep, much to Lucy’s evident relief. However, he woke screaming again as soon as Lydia tried to put him down, so she laughingly picked him up again and carried him through to the kitchen.

Tea?’ she asked over her shoulder, and made a pot one-handed while Lucy slumped down at the table and nodded.

‘Please. I feel exhausted! I had no idea babies were so tiring.’

Lydia smiled. ‘You’re at the worst stage. The euphoria has worn off, he’s not sleeping through the night yet, and the lack of unbroken sleep is just getting to you. It’s nothing to worry about. Provided you can get through it, you’ll be fine. Thank your lucky stars you aren’t out planting rice every day with him tied to your back!’

They chatted over tea, catching up on the years since they had last seen each other, and Michael slept through it all without a murmur.

‘You see, I told you it was just a paddy!’ Lydia joked. ‘I should think you were all wound up and communicating your tension to him. Babies arc usually very tough little things, you know. They’re awfully good at getting their own way—look at this! He’s been cuddled for nearly an hour, and he’s had a terrific time! You ought to buy a baby-sling and carry him next to you. That way you can get on, and he can be near you all the time. Where did you have him?’

Lucy pulled a face. ‘Hospital. Daniel insisted. I would have liked to have him at home, but perhaps it isn’t really sensible for the first one. What do you think?’

Lydia thought of the little Indian babies she had delivered in appallingly primitive conditions in some of the villages they had visited, and stifled a laugh. ‘If the facilities exist it would seem to make sense to use them,’ she said cautiously. God forbid that she should be seen to be giving Lucy medical advice!

‘What would you do?’ Lucy persisted.

‘Me?’ Lydia laughed. ‘It’s unlikely to affect me as I’m not about to have any children.’

‘But if you did?’ Lucy persisted.

‘I’d go for a home delivery—but hopefully I’d be married to a doctor!’ A sudden image of Sam sprang to mind, and she dismissed it hastily. ‘Anyway, I’m the wrong person to ask because I hate hospitals—that’s why I’m a GP!’

Just then the plumber arrived, and so Lucy left, with the now calm Michael sleeping peacefully in his pram.

After the tap was repaired the plumber departed, amid dire threats about the use of brute force and the unlikelihood of the system surviving another winter. Lydia really didn’t think she wanted to know.

The phone was quiet, there was no sign of Sam and so she decided to go for a walk through the fields down by the old gravel pits, to stretch her legs and get away from the house.

Her grief, still very fresh, was catching up with her and hour by hour was sinking further in. Always a bit of a loner, she suddenly felt the need to be miles away from everyone so that she could come to terms with all the sudden and drastic changes in her life. Regretting her petty gesture with the wall but lacking the energy to take it down, and unable to face another confrontation with Sam today, she dug out her old waxed cotton jacket and wellies from the boot-room and bundled herself up in them.

There was a lane that ran behind the house, and she followed it for half a mile before branching off across the fields towards the copse. Stark against the skyline there was an old wind-pump which had been used in times gone by to pump water from the bottom of the gravel pit, but it was long abandoned and the rusty old sails now creaked forbiddingly in the gusting winds.

Lydia snuggled further down in her coat and tried to ignore the shiver of apprehension that ran down her spine at the eerie noise. There were some children running around near the edge of the copse, and she could hear their shrieks as they played. She hoped they would have the good sense to be careful.

Then she noticed the pitch of their screams, and she started to run, feet slipping and sliding on the wet ground, and as she got nearer the children’s cries became more audible.

‘What’s happened?’ she called.

‘David’s fallen in the water!’ the nearest child screamed, and the shiver of apprehension turned into a full-scale chill of horror.

By the time she’d reached them her lungs were bursting and she could hardly stand, but somehow her legs dragged her on to the edge of the old workings.

Down in the pit, some thirty feet below her down a ragged, broken bank, was a pool formed by rainwater collecting in the bottom of the gravel pit, and floating face-down in the black water she could see the colourful figure of a small child.

She quickly dispatched the two oldest to run for help and call an ambulance, and scrambled headlong down the bank, examining the situation in escalating dismay.

There was only one way to get to him, and she did it before she had time to talk herself out of it. Ripping off her outer clothes, she plunged into the icy water and struck out for the child. The cold knocked all the breath from her lungs, and for a moment she thought she would go under, but then her chest started to work again and she dragged in some air and forced her frozen limbs to work.

Grabbing a handful of his anorak, she pulled the child back to the bank and hauled him up the edge, slipping and sliding as she went.

His skin was a bluish white, his lips almost purple, and there was no sign of breathing at all.

Oh, God, no!’ she muttered to herself, and just because she couldn’t give up without trying, and because there was always an outside chance that his sudden immersion had triggered the diving reflex, she forced her frozen limbs into action.

Tipping the child on to his front, she gently depressed his chest to squeeze water from his airways. There was very little, backing up her guess, and when she laid her ear against his chest, she could detect a faint heartbeat every few seconds.

‘Severe bradycardia, pulseless, no breathing apparent,’ she recited, and, flipping him on to his back, she gently tipped his head back and, covering his nose and mouth with her lips, she breathed carefully into his tiny lungs. After two breaths she crossed her hands over the bottom of his breastbone and pumped steadily fifteen times, then gave two more breaths and pumped again.

After a few minutes she heard scrambling behind her, but she was too busy counting to pay attention.

‘For heaven’s sake, woman, you’ll freeze to death!’ a man’s voice said, and Lydia became aware that she was still dressed only in her underwear, and the biting wind was chilling her body rapidly.

‘Press here, like this,’ she said, and while the man took over she dived into her clothes and then pushed him out of the way, continuing the massage.

‘She’s wasting her time. Anyone can see he’s dead—look at him!’ one of the other bystanders said in an awed voice, and Lydia shot him a black look.

‘Not yet, he isn’t. Not until I say so. Go and look out for the ambulance, please, so they don’t waste time trying to find us.’

She turned her attention back to the child, counting fifteen pumps, then two breaths, fifteen pumps, two breaths, until suddenly a pair of large warm hands closed over hers and a reassuring voice murmured, ‘Take over the top end. One to five.’

Lydia had never been so glad to see anyone in all her life.

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