Justifiable
Error Breakaway
+ 6 years, 4 months
Although outwardly calm, Helena remained worried. She looked down on this, her youngest patient and sighed in frustration. The worst was passed, thankfully, but the results of the repeated testings were undeniable. She once again reviewed the medical record trying to find out where it had happened. She had made a mistake somewhere and she feared tiny three-month-old Victoria Fraser was going to pay the price. Exhausted and deep in thought, she startled badly when a tech dropped a metal prep tray in the next room, the clattering noise jarring her back to the here and now. The baby slept on undisturbed.
“She’ll live, won’t she?”
Helena looked up to see Annette’s worried eyes searching her face. The sudden, near fatal illness that had almost claimed young Victoria had left Annette a worried mess, especially with Bill still away on a five-day mission.
“Yes, Annette, she’ll recover from the infection. But…”
“Oh, thank God and thank you, Helena. I’ll let Bill know so he won’t be so reckless trying to get back here before…”
Helena watched Annette’s eyes fill with tears as she covered her face with her hands and turned away. Helena stepped around the incubator and gently placed an arm around Annie’s shoulders, both women recalling the death of the first Fraser child, Marie, miscarried as a result of the moonquake that had nearly shattered Alpha a year earlier.
Quick to conceive again, Annie had fretted her way through her second pregnancy that had, in truth, progressed entirely normally. Victoria had been born at full term after a routine Caesarian section necessitated by a mild abnormality in Annette’s uterus. Helena had suspected that Annie could have delivered normally, but everyone involved had agreed that this way would minimize any risk to mother or child and would leave Annie almost certainly capable of having additional children. A vital concern for Alpha’s future. Bill had later confided to an amused Helena that Annie was just as pleased to have the surgery, that natural childbirth was not on her goal of life experiences to embrace. Helena smiled a gentle smile at that memory and of the healthy baby she had delivered. Now… Helena’s smile faded.
“Annette, I want you to go and get some rest. No…” Helena raised a hand to forestall the anticipated refusal. “Vickie will be able to go home in another day or so and you know how little rest you’ll get then.”
“Helena…”
“And I will stay by her side until you return. Go. Bill will be landing shortly and I’m sure he’ll come here first. And no, there is no need for you to wait for him.”
“Helena…”
“I am perfectly capable of explaining what happened, and no it wasn’t your fault. Sometimes these infections just happen.”
Annette’s resolution to stay with her daughter suddenly wilted. She was very tired. She had been at Vickie’s side for the past thirty-six hours since awakening in the middle of the ‘night’ with the sense something was amiss. She had found the baby listless and burning with fever. She had rushed the child to Medical Center, and none too soon. Victoria had been diagnosed with a bladder infection that had spread to her bloodstream leaving the infant with perilously low blood pressure, severely dehydrated and near death. Helena had been summoned from her quarters, and after a hasty review of the literature, had ordered potent antibiotics to try to save the child. The treatment had worked, but at what Helena now feared was a high price.
Annette headed to the door, but turned back with one more concern. “What about Stephen? He needs his mother, too.”
“John will bring him here to visit. He’s still young enough to be happy as long as he’s full and dry. And John is a very capable father.” Helena chuckled. “More than he ever expected.”
Annette nodded and smiled a small, exhausted smile of agreement. Who would’ve ever thought at Breakaway that the fierce, imposing Commander Koenig would make for a doting papa?
“You will call me…?”
“If she so much as hiccups. Yes. Now go.”
Annette finally left after one more caress of the sleeping Victoria and a backward glance at Helena.
Helena watched the frazzled woman leave, then pulled a chair and tablet computer over to the incubator where she could keep an eye on the child as promised. She expected that Annie would be back within a few hours, perhaps even before Bill landed, but that should still give her enough time to understand what had happened and figure out a way to explain her failure and its consequences to the parents.
Helena paused before she started her review and looked at the sleeping infant. She gently traced the almost translucent skin of Victoria’s perfect ear as she absently checked the IV lines supplementing a few key minerals. All of the children had been found deficient in some trace nutrients. Helena shook her head. They were still learning how to meet the special dietary needs of the youngest Alphans. Mothers who were able to breastfeed inevitably had their own dietary deficiencies, courtesy of the limited Alphan diet. Those deficiencies worsened as the infants leeched more of the scarce nutrients from their mothers’ bodies, or, more commonly, all suffered if the reserves were already too low. And those children who had to be maintained on formula were scarcely better. Helena ran a hand through her blond hair. Dammit. They just weren’t equipped for children. But they had to learn, and quickly, to avoid another mistake like the one she’d just made.
She settled down to review the electronic medical record. She found her answer almost immediately, but it took a moment for her tired brain to realize what her eyes were seeing. Her free hand reached out and clenched the edge on the incubator as she looked at the baby, stricken with guilt. Such a stupid, stupid mistake. And there was no way to fix it.
“Here she is, sport. Working overtime as usual.”
Helena startled at the deep voice behind her. She hadn’t heard the door open. She stood and turned to find John standing behind her, ten month old Stephen perched on his arm, tousled brown hair over a big gummy smile of delight at seeing his mum. She glanced at the still sleeping Vickie and then walked over to take her son. His warm arms wrapped around her neck as he burrowed under her sleeveless labcoat. She tilted her face to accept John’s kiss on her cheek. Smiling only slightly at her son, she missed John’s quick assessment of the situation as he looked between the infant patient and his wife.
“What’s wrong, Helena?”
Helena glanced at John and then looked back at Stephen who was reaching out to play with the stethoscope draped forgotten about her neck.
“I made a mistake, John. A stupid mistake that I would’ve chewed out any intern for making.”
“Uh huh.” John was well familiar with his wife’s high medical standards and had survived many a night as she castigated herself for a missed diagnosis or a bad outcome. He glanced about to make sure they were still alone, and then pulled Helena and Stephen into his arms for a hug. He could feel how stiffly she held herself. Helena was so very hard on herself, especially when it came to the children. And even more so when she was pregnant herself. “Go on.”
“The dose of the antibiotic was too high. I gave doses that would have treated an adult, not a ten kilogram child.”
“And no one else caught it either, I bet. Helena, no one here was trained in pediatrics. You’ve said so yourself on many occasions.” He tilted her face up to his and ran a light finger down its side. “You’re all doing your best.”
“But that’s no excuse, John. It was my responsibility and I failed!”
“And?” John looked at Vickie. To all appearances the baby looked fine to him. Her color was good and she was sucking her thumb contently in what appeared to be a normal nap, the hand with the IV clutching a small hand-made stuffed animal of some indeterminate species. He looked down to Helena’s guilt-stricken face.
“She’s deaf. Completely, irreversibly deaf.”
“Is that all?” John hugged Helena in relief, well aware at how very close to death the infant had been.
Helena pushed away and looked at John in amazement.
“Is that all? John, how will a deaf child survive on Alpha? She’ll never be able to hear the alarms or shouted warnings. She’ll be at risk for all sorts of dangers!”
“As will all the children. We’ll cope somehow.” John smiled slightly, for once finding himself to be the voice of reason. “We always do.”
Helena couldn’t think what else to say. She was amazed and disbelieving at how calmly John was taking this. What she had done, her medical malpractice, could very well be a future death sentence for this child.
Still holding Stephen tightly, she walked over to look at Vickie, then turned around to face John again, to try to make him somehow understand the depths of her error. She looked toward John, only to see Bill Fraser standing quietly just inside the door. The pilot looked between his sleeping child and Helena, his face completely unreadable. Helena had no idea how long the man had been there, but she feared long enough. Helena’s guts twisted. She couldn’t imagine a worse way for the man to find out his daughter would now be deaf. And at her hands.
Bill approached her slowly as she handed her son, her healthy, whole son, back to John and took a step away from them. The momentary pain of the stethoscope tangling in her hair as Stephen took it with him barely registering amidst the emotional tumult.
She would face the consequences of her action alone.
Bill stood in front of her, close enough that she could smell the all-to-familiar scent of a man who has spent too many days cooped up in an Eagle away from soap and water. He looked once more over her shoulder to the incubator and then looked down into her eyes. She steeled herself to calmly accept his rightful recriminations. He leaned closer still… only to place a small kiss on her cheek.
“Thank you, Helena, for saving my daughter’s life.”
29 December 2006
MGK
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