Читать книгу Gracie - Marie Maxwell - Страница 6

‘Hello little one …’ the young woman said quietly as she stared at the baby she was meeting for the first time. ‘I’m your mummy …’

Reaching out her hand, she touched her fingers on the clear wall of the incubator, willing the tiny person inside to know she was there with her and fighting for her. As she spoke the words, she could feel her heart beating so hard inside her chest she thought it might explode with the toxic mixture of love and fear that was racing through her whole body.

‘Touch and go’ was what they had said when they’d grouped around her bed to talk about the health of the child. ‘Touch and go’ – because they simply couldn’t say if the child was going to live or die.

She ran her hands back and forth across the machine that was imprisoning the premature baby in order to save her life and tried not to cry again. It had been nearly forty-eight hours since she had given birth and apart from the fact that her baby was alive she knew nothing, except that it was ‘touch and go.’ Forty-eight long hours, enduring mental anguish and physical pain, before she’d been allowed to make the short journey from the maternity ward to the premature baby unit to see her daughter for the first time.

‘Can I touch her?’ She asked the nurse who was standing behind her with her hands on the wheelchair that was a condition of her visit.

‘I’m sorry my dear but you can’t, not yet.’

‘What do you think? She looks so small …’

‘She is small, but I’ve seen far smaller, that’s for sure. We just have to wait. She’s still with us at the moment and where there’s life, there’s hope.’

The woman continued to stare at the incubator, taking in every detail of her daughter. She was perfect from head to toe and she was certain she was alert and aware, unlike how she had imagined she would be when they had given her the news of her condition.

The tiny baby moved her head and her eyelids flickered.

‘She’s looking at me, I can see her eyes …’ her mother said, her hope rising.

‘I’m sure she is, she senses you’re here,’ the nurse said as she moved around the wheelchair and then turned it slightly. Her expression was serious as she looked down at her patient.

‘Now, I have to talk to you. I don’t want you to get upset again but we think it would be a good idea for her to be baptised. Just in case. Your priest came to visit while you were still groggy from the operation so you may not remember the conversation …’

‘Baptised?’

‘Yes, as I said, just in case. He’ll baptise her as soon as you say the word; I can ring him for you. Have you chosen a name yet?’

‘Yes, but …’

As she tried to interpret the meaning behind the words, the nurse jumped forward and looked closely at the baby in the incubator. The little girl’s chest was heaving up and down as she struggled for breath.

‘I don’t like the look of this, something’s wrong. I’m going to get the doctor …’

With those words, the young nurse was away out of the door.

All that the woman could do was stare at her tiny child in the incubator and pray.

Please don’t let my baby die.

Please don’t take another one away from me …