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Little Toy Bikers and a Woman on the Run
Chapter 50 Tested
Tara's shift in the ER would end in four hours. At least there was an end in sight to this nightmare.
The words she used to tell Jax that Wendy was dead were the standard words she used to deliver death notifications. She always said the same words, so she didn't have to think about what she had to say. It also helped her to keep some emotional distance.
Tara had seen a full range of reactions from screaming and hysterics to Jax's numb with a side of disbelief. Gemma kept quiet. The MC gave Jax hugs. For a crazy second, she almost started laughing. These big tough bikers were a bunch of huggers. Luckily, she'd gotten control of herself in the nick of time.
Jax had been uncertain when she asked him if he wanted to say good-bye to Wendy. She knew from a medical perspective it was important to loved ones to say good-bye. It was supposed to help heal the loss. She was OK with that when the deceased was an adult.
She found it almost unbearably sad when a baby died and the mother would hold and rock the baby for hours unable to let the baby go. It never got easier to see.
From the time that Wendy was pronounced dead to the time the baby was born was under three minutes. The baby wasn't doing well from a combination of developmental issues and the premature birth. She had warned Jax to prepare for the worst.
He told her that he and Wendy planned to name the baby Abel for a boy or Bela for a girl. They had wanted to wait until the birth to find out the sex of the child.
She needed to update Jax on the baby's condition, but there was something wrong with the test results. This wasn't the first time, she'd gotten odd results from the hospital's lab. She was quickly discovering that St. Thomas wasn't the hospital of her dreams.
If patients knew how often the hospital gave out wrong test results, there would be even more malpractice suits. That was another thing she hadn't thought about when she became a doctor. Every time a patient died, she worried that she'd get sued.
Her mind returned to the test results. The lab called and confirmed them. There still had to be something wrong. She instructed the lab tech to come down and take another blood sample from the baby. The other lab tech did the test three times and gotten the same results every time.
Tara shook her head. Nothing in medical school had prepared her for what she had to do. No matter how she did it and which news she broke first, she knew she was going to screw it up.
Excluding the day her mother died and the day her father died, this was the worst day of her life and it was just going to get worse.