The Cure, стр. 40
Senator Mathers paused. It seemed strange to him that The President should require his sign off on anything. He’d never been required to agree any legislation before so why now. With that said it sounded like a breakthrough in the medical field and surely that could only be a good thing, right? ‘Yes, Mr. President, you have my agreement. Please let my office know your findings and the outcome. Good luck,’ he said.
‘Senator, for the purposes of this call, which is being recorded, I need you to say the following for the record ‘I, Senator Mathers, agree the use of chemical testing for the purposes of curing multiple disease and illness as proposed by the CDC in the state of Idaho on 31st December 2020,’ the President said over the telephone.
‘Erm, ok, yes,’ and the Senator repeated the message. ‘Is there anything you’re not telling me Mr. President,’ he said jokingly.
‘No Mathers, thank you for your time. I believe you’re currently in Washington with your family. Please, give your wife my best and congratulations on your impending arrival,’ he said stoically.
The phone went dead and the Senator tried to process what had just happened. He shook his head and went back into the hospital room.
When he opened the door, his wife was on her side and a doctor was injecting something into her back whilst two nurses looked on. One of the nurses had her hand on her mouth looking upset which immediately concerned him. ‘What happened?’ he said.
‘It’s fine, she started seizing,’ said the doctor ‘It’s normal under the circumstances but we need to ensure her heart rate is kept at a minimum.’
‘Under the circumstances? You mean giving birth?’
‘No Senator, I mean with your wife’s heart condition. Your first son was a normal birth?’ said the doctor.
‘No, yes, I mean, yes normal. He was pretty much out by the time we got to the hospital suite. It all happened so quick. Wait, heart condition? My wife doesn’t have a heart condition,’ said Mathers.
‘It’s right here in her charts Senator Mathers, since birth, and these pills,’ he held up a small pot of tablets.
‘For indigestion,’ he said.
‘No, for her heart sir. She has atherosclerosis, a blockage of her heart valves. If we do not manage the regulation of her heart it could have very serious consequences.’
‘I didn’t know, she never told me. Is she going to be ok? Is the baby ok?’ said the senator.
The boy, Logan, peered over his comic taking everything in his stride. Nothing to see here he thought.
‘I’m going to want to get an ultrasound in here to check the baby’s heartbeat. Your wife is stable, but she’s medicated. Once she becomes conscious you will need to calm her down and keep her breathing normally,’ said the doctor.
‘Yes, yes, ok, just tell me what to do.’
One of the nurses reassuringly put a hand on his shoulder whilst the other left the room, presumably to get the Ultrasound machine. The Senator was in shock that his wife had kept her heart problem a secret from him for so long and hearing that she had had a seizure had scared him. ‘Logan are you ok?’ he said to his son. ‘Yes dad,’ the toddler replied without looking up.
The nurse returned with the Ultrasound machine and the doctor started rubbing ultrasound gel onto the machine and holding it on Brianna’s stomach, moving left, then right, up and down, all the time squinting at the screen but not saying anything.
‘Doctor?’ the Senator almost pleaded with him.
‘It’s not good news I’m afraid Sir. Your baby seems to have the same heart condition. Its heartbeat is irregular. There’s a very large possibility that the child’s heart will not be strong enough to cope with the trauma of a normal birth. However, a caesarean will undoubtedly cause your wife the same stress on her heart. You will need to make a decision on how you want to proceed?’
The Senators legs felt like jelly underneath him. ‘You mean I need to choose between my wife or my baby living?’ His face turned red and he started sweating profusely. He wanted to be sick. ‘Save my wife,’ he said.
The doctor nodded that he understood.
The Senator’s wife’s eyes rolled back into her head and then back again and she started talking quietly. Nathanial held her hand, now limp, and rubbed it with his thumb. He felt a tear roll down his face as the doctor and nurse placed their hands within her gown and together started to try and take out the baby. He looked up at the clock in the room. The minute hand was suspended five minutes to midnight and the Senator tried to justify his decision to himself, wondering what he would tell Brianna when she awoke.
Suddenly one of the machines next to the bed started beeping and people were everywhere around him. What was going on? He had seen enough hospital dramas to know that the stationary line on the monitor wasn’t a good thing. Instead of hearing the people around him their voices turned to white noise drowning out any words. The doctors and nurses were pouring through the door and pushed him to the back of the room. It was like an out of body experience watching something he couldn’t quite believe. He watched a doctor take a baby’s body out from under the bed covers and pass it to a nurse who laid it down on a table and was joined by another doctor. The whirring of the machine continued, and he watched his wife’s