Blue Eyes

Blue Eyes

MG Stough

Blue Eyes is a short story about a little girl. Being touched by Love is not always pleasant. Sometimes it hurts so bad that it scars you for Life. Blue Eyes did just that for Heather Moore, Registered Nurse Surgical Assistant.

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It was over now. All was finished. The patient had been taken out of the room, still heavily anesthetized and unaware of just how much her life had been changed in the last fifteen minutes.

The clock on the wall read six minutes before six thirty in the morning. Most modern surgeries used digital clocks now, but this was Walker County Medical Clinic. The medical staff was lucky to have a three dollar plastic analog clock from the Dollar Emporium down the street. Tak Tok Tak Tok the clock thumped through its monotonous count of the seconds. Normally, the clock's ticking was loud and distracting. Right now it was deafening and insistent, demanding that the medical staff should get on with their chores, drilling into each member of the surgical team's minds the last few minutes' worth of events.

Heather Moore was the Registered Nurse on shift. She was acting Surgical Assistant as well, so when the patient had arrived at the clinic it was only natural that she should be called in to help Doctor Piersau. Doctor Piersau was the only Physician in reach for two hundred miles, this being the rural part of the country. Annie Nguyen was there too. She was the Anesthesiologist and Medical Data Entry Technician. That's how small the clinic was. Three people working at any given time, if you were lucky.

When the patient had arrived, her condition was critical. Her pulse was thready and her respiration was very shallow. Sweating profusely from pain induced fever, the young woman lay upon the gurney as Death watched on like a vulture hovering near a plague ridden calf. The woman, Janie was her name, had reached out and taken Nurse Heather's hand in a moment of intense lucidity, eyes desperate, lips stretched thin with grief and pain. Take care of my baby! the patient had asked... demanded... pleaded. Then she was lost again, buried under a mountain of pain.

Something had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Janie's baby showed no vital signs through the ultrasonic and other monitoring devices in the clinic's small, sparse surgery. Janie herself was slowly sinking toward her own mortality as her body fought hard to reject that which had made her sick.

Doctor Piersau, Annie Nguyen and Nurse Heather worked hard and long all through the night.

In the end, they were able to stabilize Janie. The baby was lost though. Hard, cold medical fact. Fetus, that was what Doctor Piersau called it, as his latex gloved hands placed the tiny creature upon the paper lined tray next to the operating table. Annie Nguyen busied herself with the monitors and the adjustment of the patient's oxygen mask, immersing herself in the small tasks of an Anesthesiologist so that she would not have to look at the small lump of blood and placenta covered flesh. Doctor Piersau made a final tie in the stitching on the patient's Cesarian incision, ignoring the tray upon which he had placed the fetus. He told Nurse Heather and Annie Nguyen to transfer the patient into one of the the patient care rooms for her recovery. The patient was to be kept mildly anesthetized and observed closely until she could come to terms with the night's events. Annie Nguyen and Nurse Heather transferred the patient onto a gurney and wheeled her out of the surgery, then Nurse Heather returned to begin the clean up procedures.

Tak Tok Tak Tok... droning and thumping and pounding into her head like an angry heart beat, the clock on the wall reminded Nurse Heather of a all the deaths that came before. Cold hard scientific facts. Cold hard professionalism. Emotions must be turned off or you couldn't do the job. It would drive you insane, eventually if you didn't learn how to close your own self away and function like an automaton.

The operating table was clean now. The monitoring equipment was turned off and and each piece of apparatus was put into its appropriate place. The surgical instruments had been collected and placed into the autoclave so that they could be sterilized properly. That left one more thing to do, something that Nurse Heather had put off as long as she could. Now, having finished everything else, Nurse Heather could put it off no longer.

Nurse Heather steeled herself, closed off all of the pain and memories from the past, especially that one. It was time. She took a small tray and filled it with saline soap cleansing solution. Taking a stack of two by two gauze sponges, Nurse Heather walked over to the wheeled table on which sat the oblong paper lined tray with its tiny cargo.

Gently, Nurse Heather pulled the placental tissues off of the little corpse. She then arranged it so that the body lay upon its back. As she dipped a sponge into the cleansing solution, she noticed that it had been a little girl. A small pang of sadness managed to sneak through her wall of protection, reminding her of a time when she too had suffered a great loss. I was going to name her Becky came the unbidden thought. Nurse Heather took a deep breath and continued. With a damp two by two gauze sponge, Nurse Heather wiped blood and amniotic fluid from the tiny body. First, the torso with its tiny pot belly. Then the legs and feet, ten perfect little toes. Next, the neck and then the face. The lips were full and sweet, held in that perpetual kiss that beckoned for a Mother's breast. The nose was tiny and straight. Her eyes opened as Nurse Heather wiped them with a new damp sponge. It was just a reflex, Nurse Heather said silently, just a reflex from nerves that had not yet expended all of their energy. Those beautiful blue eyes were like crystals, the pupils tiny black wells into which one might peer so deeply as to see Heaven's Gate.

Nurse Heather continued to peer into that tiny peaceful face. Those beautiful blue eyes watched her in silent repose as she cleaned the blood and other materials off of the tiny little arms. Finally, Nurse Heather cleansed the baby's hands, each finger perfectly formed. It was time, then to move the little baby's corpse onto a folded white sheet, into which she wold be swaddled for the first and last time.

Carefully, ever so carefully, Nurse Heather picked little Becky up off of the tray. Why she had suddenly decided to name the baby, she did not know. It was just something that felt right. Something that needed doing.

Nurse Heather cradled little Becky in her arms, those beautiful blue eyes staring up at her just like any other baby might do. A sudden urge overtook Nurse Heather. It was a silly thing to do, yet it was—once again—something that needed doing and that was the right thing to do. Nurse Heather rocked the baby gently and sang a small Mother's Song to little Becky. Then, gently, as if little Becky was napping, Nurse Heather lay little Becky on the crisp white sheet. She smoothed the fine brown hair on her tiny little head and gave her tiny body a final loving caress. And as she lifted her hand away, eyes still looking into those loving beautiful blue eyes, Nurse Heather felt those perfectly formed itty bitty fingers wrap around her own pinky...

One single act of Love had been returned unconditionally. Nurse Heather sobbed the tears of a Mother then, finally understanding what it means to be a Nurse. It is not the ability to close off emotions that makes a Nurse such a wonderful person. It is the ability to show emotions and to feel that makes a Nurse such a wonderful person.

Those beautiful blue eyes would always be looking up at Nurse Heather with Love. Nurse Heather would always feel those tiny little fingers wrapped around her own. And that would make Nurse Heather a truly wonderful Nurse and a very special Mother... to all the lost little babies out there.

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(c) 2010 MG Stough. All Rights Reserved.