Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
Ten little fingers and ten little toes
Based on a true story
By Rebecca
Haley lay in her hospital bed, completely drained of all her energy, yet she had never felt this amazing in her whole life. She was a Mom. Nathan had stretched himself out along the bed next to her and they both lay in silence, watching the little miracle that was lying quietly between them. They’d named her Isabella.
She was perfect. Ten little fingers and ten little toes, a shock of dark hair just like her Dad, and deep brown eyes like her Mom. The birth had been so quick; Haley had her first contraction as she was locking up the café, luckily Nathan was with her, picking her up, and brought her straight to the hospital. Isabella was born 87 minutes later. The tiny girl had some red lines through her eyes, a couple of burst blood vessels from the quick birth, but the doctors had reassured them that it just happened sometimes, they would keep an eye on her, but she should be perfectly fine.
Nathan tore his eyes away from his new daughter to again meet the awestruck gaze of his wife. ‘You did good Hales.’ She leaned forward a little, being very careful not to crush the tiny body between theirs as she kissed him softly with as much passion as she could muster, before flopping back onto the bed with an exhausted sigh.
Nathan slipped quietly off the bed and scooped his daughter up into his arms, giving her a gentle kiss before laying her carefully into her crib alongside Haley’s bed. He smiled down at her as she flailed her tiny fists in the air, and Nathan couldn’t help but catch one of them to hold in his hand, marvelling at how tiny her fingers were compared to his own. They just didn’t seem real.
Haley had already given the baby girl her first feed; the midwife had suggested it almost immediately after birth, and although neither Haley nor Bella really knew what they were doing, it hadn’t gone badly for a first attempt. Not long after though Haley had quickly covered herself up as they heard a tentative knock on the door of her private room, and Brooke, Peyton, Lucas and Deb had come in to meet the new addition to the family.
Nathan hadn’t let them stay long though, he had wanted some time alone with Bella for them to bond straight away. Apart from the fact that he didn’t want to have to share her much yet, she was just so new; but it was also what the books had said to do. Nathan, having never been much of a reader of anything except the occasional playboy magazine or sports illustrated, had been almost as surprised as Haley at his obsession with early parenthood books during the latter months of her pregnancy. Haley had started him off; she'd left a couple of books beside the bed and Nathan had picked one up and been unable to put it down. He wanted to be as prepared as he could be to be the best father to this little one as possible.
He pulled the pale pink hospital blanket up around her, wrapping her in the way the midwife had shown them, making sure to wrap up her hands as well, and he gave her another kiss as he turned back to his wife, wiping gently at the tears of joy that were welling in the corner of his eyes. But he needn’t have bothered; Haley wouldn’t have noticed a thing. She’d fallen asleep. Nathan kissed her gently and tucked her in too, then dimmed the lights and took a seat in the armchair next to her bed, content to just watch his two beautiful girls sleep.
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‘Good morning, Mommy and Daddy.’ Nathan looked up from watching Isabella’s tiny mouth sucking at Haley’s breast to see Brooke’s beaming face peering around the door. Nathan could just make out a couple of balloons floating behind her through the small crack in the door, and at Haley’s nod she pushed the door open with her toe and awkwardly pushed herself and all her goodies through the doorway.
‘Oh my god…wow…Thankyou Brooke…’ Haley laughed in disbelief at Brooke’s display of affection. She had what looked like two dozen Helium balloons in various shades of pink, a huge bunch of purple and white lily’s, a giant fluffy pink teddy bear and a smaller cream coloured, ultra soft stuffed toy elephant, as well as a box wrapped in coloured paper.
‘Okay, this time I’m fairly certain that they are going to have to name the gift shop after me, coz I just bought out what they said was a months worth of girls balloons.’ Haley just laughed at her friend as Brooke dumped everything rather unceremoniously on top of Nathan and bent over to give her a gentle hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘Congratulations, you two. Now, gimme the baby.’ Haley complied with the brunettes wishes, but mainly because Bella had fallen asleep at her breast, clearly haven already drunk her fill. As Haley gently pried her tiny mouth from her breast, Brooke’s eyes grew wide in awe.
‘Whoa Momma…Hales…when did they get so big?’
Nathan laughed and shook his head at her. ‘Not bad, huh?’
Haley scoffed at both of them and quickly pulled her gown around herself, tucking it under her arm to keep it in place as she carefully passed her child over to Brooke.
‘God Brooke, you’re as bad as Nathan…that was the first thing he noticed too.’ Laughing, she turned and picked up the bunch of lilies out of Nathans lap and closed her eyes as she inhaled their scent.
Brooke was stunned to silence by the tiny miracle in her arms. The baby’s face was relaxed in sleep, her tiny dew-drop mouth still gaping open a little, a pearl of milk clinging to her pouty dark red lips. ‘Wow you guys…’ Haley looked up when she heard the emotion choking Brooke’s voice, and gave her a gentle smile as the brunettes tear filled gaze met with hers. ‘She is so amazing.’
Nathan had let the balloons go so they rested against the roof and moved to sit on the bed next to Haley with the wrapped package in his hands, turning it over in his hands curiously as he handed it to his wife. ‘No no Nathan, that one’s for you. Open it.’ Brooke said mischievously as she gently rocked the baby in her arms.
Curious but a tad wary, this was Brooke after all; Nathan tore off the wrapping paper and immediately burst out laughing as he read the title of his ‘gift’. ‘Blowhard Girls?’ Haley laughed too as Nathan handed the DVD to her, smiling as he pointed out one of the pictures on the back cover.
Brooke just smiled. ‘I thought it might come in handy for the next few weeks, seeing as our little Hales is going to be out of commission for a while.’ At their incredulous looks she threw her hands up, mock defensively. ‘What? I read too you know…there’s not much else to do at your house these days, its baby central.'
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Haley had Isabella lying on the bed before her, her little hospital gown discarded and a folded diaper underneath her naked bottom as she waited for Nathan to finish running the bathwater, her fingers running gently over her little girls smooth skin. Haley picked up and examined the baby’s feet, one at a time, then moved her attention to her tiny fingers, noticing how purple the little girls feet and hands all appeared to be.
‘Nathan, did it say anything in any of your books about babies hands and feet having circulation problems after birth?’
Nathan smiled at her, chuckling softly at the concern in her voice and sitting carefully beside her on the bed. He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. Haley sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. He pressed his lips softly to her forehead and she closed her eyes, savouring the touch of his lips.
‘She’s fine Hales…look at her. She’s perfect. We’ve got nothing to worry about.’
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It was lunchtime, and Haley was ready to go home. She’d packed up all of her and Bella’s stuff; it was actually amazing how many belongings the two day old baby had managed to accumulate. She sat in her hospital bed, Nathan by her side holding the baby while she ate her last hospital lunch meal whilst waiting for the doctor to come in and give her and the baby both the all clear to go home.
‘Hello, Haley?’
Haley looked up from her sandwich to see Jacquie standing in the doorway, and smiled hugely at her favourite midwife.
‘I hear you are going home today.’
Haley nodded eagerly, watching as the midwife walked around the bed to scoop the little girl up out of Nathans arms.
‘I see hundreds of new babies every month, but I swear this little girl is one of the prettiest babies I’ve ever seen. You two are going to have your hands full with her.
Biting her lip a little, Haley glanced from Nathan to the midwife and back again. She knew Nathan was probably right, there was nothing wrong with their little angel, but it didn’t hurt to check, right?
‘Umm, Jacquie? Can you just have a look at something for me please?’ She looked over at Nathan and he nodded immediately, knowing exactly what she was doing. This would be the best way to put her mind at rest, so he too stood up to watch as Haley laid the baby down on the blanket and removed her jumpsuit, leaving her only in her pink cotton singlet and diaper.
‘Do her hands and feet look alright to you? They seem to be really purple like she has really bad circulation, and they look like their getting worse?’ The concern in Haley’s voice was clearly evident, and Nathan put his arm around her as the midwife moved closer to examine Bella’s fingers.
‘How long as she been like this?’ The midwife asked, not taking her eyes off the little girl.
Haley looked up to Nathan and he silently nodded his confirmation as she said, ‘Oh, pretty much since birth, but like I said, her skin looks like its getting…darker?’
Jacquie lifted Bella’s pink singlet and examined her tummy, pressing down on it with two fingers, and Haley immediately noticed the dark patch, almost like bruising that remained on the baby’s skin after the midwife had removed her fingers.
‘I’m just going to take her down to our RN for a minute, okay?’ Without waiting for an answer the midwife turned quickly and took off out of the room.
Nathan looked down at Haley, and could see the confused shock on her face. He felt exactly the same. She pushed the covers off her legs and grabbed his hand as they both decided without any need for discussion that they needed to hear what the RN had to say. ‘Oh God Nathan…what if…’
She was cut short by an anxious sound. It was the sound of panic. Keys jangling and running footsteps and short breaths. As the young couple got to the door of Haley’s room Nathan’s hand instantly shot out to prevent her from colliding with the midwife who was now practically sprinting up the corridor with their little girl in her arms, closely followed by several other nurses, and a woman who Nathan presumed was the RN.
The elderly woman stopped when she saw them both standing in the doorway in a state of shock.
‘Mr and Mrs Scott. Can you both please come with me? You have to sign some release forms immediately so we can start working on your daughter.’
Nathan found his voice first. ‘What work, what is…What is wrong with her?’ He barely felt Haley collapsing into his side for support, but his arm automatically came around her for support as his other hand linked its fingers through hers.
The RN looked sympathetically at the young couple, but she knew she didn’t have time to waste explaining it tenderly.
‘Your daughter has been rushed to intensive care. It’s seems that there is something wrong with her heart. I’m sorry, but that’s all I know right now. Please, we need those forms signed immediately if we any chance of saving her life.’
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Ten little fingers and ten little toes…Day Two
The room was buzzing with activity but all Haley could do was stare into the crib at her little girl. She barely felt Nathan’s arms around her, or the tears that had been streaming down her face for the last half hour.
Every heart specialist in the immediate area seemed to have been called in to look at Bella; four of them were currently bending over her crib as they talked in hush tones to each other.
Bella had been given oxygen when they first got her to the intensive care nursery, but it had only made her worse. Her oxygen saturation levels had been 38 percent, but when they had dropped very rapidly down to 26 percent they took her off the oxygen immediately.
Haley had stood by and watched as Nathan signed all the medical release forms, but since then her mind had been in a total fog. Haley could see that the doctors were performing some sort of examination on Isabella through her belly button; they looked to be pushing a thin straw up through her body.
A concerned nurse came over to them and put a comforting hand on Haley’s shoulder, turning her away from the scene before her.
‘Why don’t you both come and sit down in the private room…there’s nothing you can do for her right now.’ Haley obediently allowed herself to be led away, and still clinging to Nathan’s hands she beckoned silently for him to follow her. They walked past another mom who was sitting between her twins cribs and had been watching all the commotion since Bella had been brought in. The woman looked up and met Haley’s eyes, her sympathetic, concerned gaze halting Haley for a second as the woman asked softly ‘Is she going to be okay?’
The simple question brought Haley instantly back to tears as she answered ‘I don’t know.’
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Nathan hung up the phone. He had only managed to get out a few words before his Mom had broken down, but Nathan had asked her to let the others know. Learning she had something to do, something they were relying on her to do for them had given her the strength to pull herself together.
Haley picked up the phone and dialled the familiar number of her parent’s cell phone. Her fingers automatically knew the pattern of the numbers on the keypad now, which was good because Haley’s mind was completely void of all conscious thought. It took her a second to realise that her Mom had answered the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Oh…mom…’
‘Haley-bub, are you still at the hospital, or has Nathan taken you girls home already? We’ll be arriving sometime tomorrow; your dad doesn’t want to drive any more today, so we’ll park soon and continue on in the morning, we should be in Tree Hill by early tomorrow afternoon…’
Haley shook her head, trying to take in her mother’s rambling excitement at meeting her newest grandchild, and knowing but not being able to care that she was about to shatter it. She interrupted her Mom with two words, but it broke her heart having to say them aloud.
‘Bella’s sick…’ Haley felt Nathans hand slide over hers on her leg, and let her body collapse into his side.
‘Bub…what’s wrong with her?’
Her mother’s suddenly frantic voice was too much for Haley and she collapsed into Nathans lap. She felt him gently ease the phone from her grip, and heard him give her mother the details.
‘We don’t know yet, except that there is something wrong with her heart. She’s turning blue from the lack of oxygen in her blood…’ Nathan paused, obviously waiting for Lydia, then uttered a few more words that Haley couldn’t understand before ending the call. Nathan lifted her sobbing body easily and pulled her fully into his lap as he threaded his arms through hers and held her close to his chest as her tears overwhelmed her.
Nathan wanted to let go of his own grief, but he knew that if he did they would both be lost. His eyes stung with his unshed tears, and his head was pounding with his confusion and grief. He dropped his head so it rested against Haley’s sweet smelling hair. He wanted to comfort her, he wanted to tell her their little girl would be just fine, but he didn’t know that, and he couldn’t lie to her.
‘Mr and Mrs Scott?’ They both looked up towards the balding doctor who stood in the doorway, Haley trying to wipe her tears from her eyes, not from embarrassment but just to clear her vision so she could see his face.
‘Yes? What’s happening?’ Nathan kept his arms around Haley, as much to comfort himself with her presence as to comfort her. The doctor came into the room and closed the door behind him, the beeping of the machines just outside dimming a little with the action.
‘We’ve examined your daughter; we went in through her central line with a camera to have a look inside her heart, but at this point we are still rather unclear exactly what her problem entails, except to say that it’s extremely serious. We need to conduct further tests before we can diagnose her, so we would like to transport her immediately by ambulance to the New Hanover Medical Center. Their neonatal unit has a level three care nursery, ours is only a two, and we just do not have the equipment here to conduct the necessary tests.’
Nathan met Haley’s eyes, seeing the raw pain in them, and just nodded. His last slim chance that this was only something minor vanishing, as he made himself realise that his daughter was seriously ill.
‘We are trying to stabilise her before the journey, but at this point she is very fragile, and I’m afraid that I must inform you both that there is a very likely chance that we could lose her before or even during transit. I’m very sorry for you both, but please understand we are trying absolutely everything possible to save your daughters life.’ Nathan felt Haley break, he could feel her face pressed tight against his chest as her tears started again and soaked the front of his shirt.
‘Can we see her before you try to move her?’ Nathan asked, trying so hard to keep control, for Bella’s sake, and for Haley’s sake. The doctor nodded and beckoned back towards the nursery before leaving them alone. Nathan stood, bringing Haley with him, then paused to lift her face up to meet his eyes.
‘We have to do this Hales…just in case. We have to…to say goodbye to her.’ He choked on the words, hating himself for saying it.
Haley tried to lower her head, not wanting to hear him, not wanting to accept what he was saying, but he wouldn’t let her. She met his eyes, saw the pain and the unshed tears, and reached her lips up to his, kissing him desperately, needing comfort from him, but for the first time in her life it didn’t help. The pain was still there. She had to go and say goodbye to her daughter.
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Haley sat by the crib with her arm draped over the hard plastic side, determined to keep her finger threaded through Isabella’s hand as the baby gripped onto her Mom even though she was unconscious. Another doctor stood over the top of the crib with a tiny ultrasound scanner, reading the waves bouncing through her daughter’s heart. Nathan’s sat on the hard plastic chair beneath her, barely noticing that his leg had fallen asleep from Haley having been sitting on it in the same position for well over an hour.
‘Can I speak with you two please….over here?’ The doctor beckoned them over behind a partition and sat them both down, again in hard orange plastic chairs. ‘I have done extensive sonograms on Isabella’s heart, and at this stage I can confirm that she has a congenital heart defect, but I have never seen anything like this before in my life. I simply cannot work out how her heart is even still beating, when there seems to be so much out of place.’
He pulled a clean piece of paper out of his printer and proceeded to draw a diagram for them of a normal heart, then beside it drew a diagram of what he knew of Isabella’s heart. Haley sat alert and paid full attention, her sorrow forgotten as she focussed on these facts before her. Knowledge, diagrams, chemistry, biology all flashing through her mind as the academic in her tried to work out the problem.
‘We’ve called ahead for the neonatal emergency transport team from Durham to fly down here immediately to pick her up. There is a specialist paediatric cardiologist at the Duke University Medical Centre, we’ve phoned ahead and he’s expecting her tonight. There is only room in the chopper for one of you to travel with her so…’
‘I’ll go.’ Haley immediately informed him. Nathan rubbed his hand up and down her back, kneading the muscles gently, and turned her to face him, speaking softly. ‘Baby, are you sure?’
Haley nodded, biting her lip to try to keep her resolve. She didn’t want to go through any of this without Nathan, but she didn’t want to be separated from Isabella either.
‘Then Mr Scott, may I suggest you pack some bags of provisions for yourself and your wife before you follow, you may find that you’re up there for some time.’
Nathan nodded, again pulling Haley into his arms, but they were both distracted by the sight of three large men in orange and black flight suits entering the nursery, pushing before them a special crib to be used to transport Isabella. They slowly stood and approached the team, the shortest of the three men introducing himself as just David and explaining the whole process to the shell shocked young couple before him, while the other two men prepared Isabella for her flight.
Twenty minutes later, when everything was secured and finalised and she was ready to go, an unconscious dusky blue Isabella was wheeled out of the nursery, her Mom desperately trying to keep up with the crib to keep her baby in sight.
Nathan had kissed them both goodbye, Isabella gently and lingering on her cheek as he brushed her soft skin with his calloused thumb, a lone tear escaping his iron mask and dripping onto her cheek as he said goodbye. Then he had turned to Haley and clung to her desperately, kissing her and whispering to her that everything was going to be alright. He promised.
Now, watching the two most important people in his life leave the room, Nathan suddenly felt dead inside. God, this just couldn’t be happening. He had to wake up from this horrible nightmare.
Feeling his sorrow taking control of his entire body Nathan allowed himself to slide to the floor in the exact spot that Isabella’s crib had been standing one minute before, his tears flowing, pouring down his face as if he’d never cried before in his life. Oh god, after everything they had been through, why did this have to happen to their little girl? Didn’t they deserve some happiness in their lives?
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Haley was strapped in so tight to her seat she didn’t think she’d be able to breathe, and was then instructed by the pilot to try to get some sleep, she would have a long night ahead of her. She laughed out loud in his face, knowing that the last thing possible for her to do right now was fall asleep, no matter how much her body and mind craved the peace of oblivion.
The flight wasn’t very long and Haley barely took her eyes off the crib containing her tiny daughter, inlaid with buttons and lights and beeping machinery. Every time one of the controls alarmed Haley watched obsessively as one of the team attended to her, but mostly she just watched the tiny movements of her baby’s chest as it gently, just barely, moved up and down.
On arrival at the Duke Medical Centre, Haley was immediately taken into a room and grilled for what felt like hours on her medical history, and Nathans, the pregnancy; and the young nurse seemed most alarmed when Haley mentioned being hit by Daunte’s car, she phoned back to Tree Hill for Haley’s admission notes to be sent along with the details of the birth and care for Isabella so far.
It was 3am before finally she was shown back to her daughter, in yet another crib; a middle aged Asian doctor smiling over her. Haley was initially shocked to see this man smiling, and stared very dubiously at him until he introduced himself.
‘I am Dr Lau, and I will be your daughter’s surgeon. I would like to operate on her immediately, with your permission of course.
Haley nodded, still confused but suddenly a little relieved.
‘Please ma’am, if you will take a seat I will explain to you what is wrong with your daughter.’ Obediently Haley sat on a cushy armchair beside Bella’s crib, and Dr Lau pulled over another chair to sit across from her.
‘I have discovered that your daughter has what is known as TGA - Transposition of the Great Arteries, and she will require open heart surgery to correct this problem. However, we cannot perform that operation at this time as she is far too unstable and weak at the moment, but let me explain what is happening.’
Haley nodded, very scared of what she was hearing, but relieved to be finally getting some answers.
‘There is a shunt in a baby’s heart in-utero that allows the blood from their own heart to mix freely throughout their body’s, as their heart doesn’t need to function on its own while their mother’s heart is doing that for them. But at about two days old this shunt starts to close over, causing the blueness and lack of oxygen throughout her body. You see, a normal heart will work in a figure 8 motion; the blood travels from the heart, through the body, back to the heart then through the lungs and back again.’
‘However, in Isabella’s case she doesn’t have a natural figure 8 motion of her heart. She has two circles. Blood is travelling from her heart to her body and back again, while the other side of her heart is pumping blood to her lungs then back again. There is no mixing of the blood, no re-oxygenation of the blood flowing through her body, and no de-oxygenation of the blood constantly getting cleaned by her lungs.’
‘The Switch operation she will need to undertake will cut her Main Pulmonary Artery and her Aorta and switch them over, allowing the blood to mix, but in the meantime we need to go in and perform a balloon atrial septostomy; basically we insert a tube into her central line through her belly button and feed it up into her heart, pushing it through between the walls of the left and right ventricles; we then inflate a small balloon and pull it back through to tear a small hole through the ventricle wall to allow her blood to mix.’
Haley sat in silence absorbing all this medical jargon, trying her best to understand it all.
‘But…tearing a hole in her heart. Won’t that make things worse?’ She was trying not to panic, hating that she had to make this decision on her own.
The Doctor smiled kindly at her. ‘Actually we have a very high success rate with this diagnosis, we see about a dozen of these cases a month, Isabella is actually the fourth TGA baby I’ve seen this week, and about 80% of these babies do just fine. But let me tell you this if you’re considering not going ahead with the surgery. In the condition Isabella is in right now, without this operation she won’t make it through the night.’
Haley nodded her consent immediately. ‘Okay then Doctor, you have my consent, Please just do whatever it is you need to do to fix her.’
The doctor nodded and stood immediately, motioning a nurse over to begin preparing Isabella. But with another look at Haley he realised he hadn’t quite finished there yet. ‘Mrs Scott, this will take some time. There is a bed in the ongoing care ward for parents staying over with their babies; you are welcome to it while you are waiting. I promise I will come and inform you immediately of her condition following the surgery, okay.’
Haley hesitated a moment longer, not wanting to leave Isabella again, but knowing she couldn’t go in during the surgery anyway, so she conceded, and let the doctor point her in the direction of the parents room.
‘Thankyou so much Dr Lau, you are the first person to actually give me some real answers. I need to ring my husband then I’ll go and lie down, but I won’t sleep until I know how the surgery went. Thankyou again.’ She smiled a little and walked down the hallway toward the payphone to ring Nathan on his cell. Well, at least now they knew the details.
The doctor smiled again at her retreating back. They always said they wouldn’t sleep, but after such an emotionally draining day he had serious doubts that this young woman would manage to stay awake waiting for the results of the 2 hour operation. He just hoped he would be able to wake her up with good news.
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