Head Games Read Free

Otherwise, the Water Child was perfectly formed: tiny hands and tiny feet and a beautiful little head. And a purple, still body.
    Molly could barely look at it.
    â€œYou bellowed?” a cool voice greeted her from the door.
    Busy yanking out suction catheters and ET tubes and O 2 setups, Molly damn near fainted in relief. “It’s a submariner, Sash.”
    A “submariner” being a baby who’d been born right into the toilet. A “Water Child.” Sasha Petrovich took a second to evaluate the lifeless form on her bed and nodded. “Okay.”
    That was all the reaction they were going to get. Sasha, with her classic blond looks and spotless attire and dust-dry wit, was the perfect pediatric critical nurse. She never saw fit to be flustered by the fragile lives in her care. She never wasted that much energy.
    â€œHow long?” she asked, slipping on a gown and gloves.
    Molly’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely attach the EKG leads to the patches. If she’d tried to put the patches on the baby’s chest before connecting the leads, the simple act of pushing in the connectors would crush those gossamer ribs. “I don’t know how old. I heard it making noise till about a minute ago.”
    Sasha nodded again. “Then let’s tube him. Give me a two-point-five, okay? And give me an umbilical cath. Good thing it’s warm out today. Fidget might just have a chance … geez, who cut this cord? Lassie? Get me some Betadine. Lots of Betadine.”
    Sasha had just gotten the endotracheal tube down when the rest of the team tumbled in the door. Respiratory took over bagging so that Molly
could do one-fingered CPR, and a supervisor stood in paralytic shock over by the crash cart.
    â€œTake a breath,” Sasha advised Molly dryly as she drew blood from the umbilical vein before hooking up the IV line.
    â€œI will,” Molly assured her, her own focus on imagining a viable rhythm on the monitor. “Later.”
    This wasn’t the time she should be doing this. Not this. She could barely keep her feet in the room. Fortunately, the pediatric resident finally sailed in, coat flapping like a kite in a high breeze, lunch still clutched in one hand. Molly relaxed in minute increments. Bill was almost as sanguine as Sasha about these little crises.
    â€œWho was fishing under the limit in here?” he brayed. “Throw this little carp back till it’s bigger.”
    â€œThat particular pond is dry, Bill,” Sasha informed him, drawing up meds in tuberculin syringes.
    â€œWhere is she, this nurturing body of water that spat out our little fish?”
    â€œWith any luck,” Molly answered, “being introduced to the joys of four-point restraint by security. She was in the process of sacrificing the Water Child here before the clowns got it.”
    â€œThe clowns did get it,” the resident assured them with a rattling laugh. “Jesus, Molly, what’d you do, wrestle a wookie to the ground to bring this kid in?”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, Bill,” she said with a shaky grin, “yes I did. You don’t behave, you’re next.”
    Bill waved his sandwich at her. “Don’t toy with me, Molly. I have a weaker heart than our little fish here.”
    Their little fish had a stronger heart than Molly had thought. After only another hour and a half of sweat, swearing, and a judicious application of the Pediatric Advanced Life Support treatment algorithms, the team bought the baby a viable rhythm, a quivering attempt at breathing, and a transfer to the real pediatric hospital down the street.
    It also left Molly as spent as her bank balance and fully horizontal in the nurses’ lounge.
    â€œYa know,” Sasha said from where she leaned against the doorway,
“you’ve been a nurse since Nixon was a crook. You’d think you’d be used to this shit by now.”
    â€œIt was the