Birth Birth Still kneeling, Andrew stared at the child with a haggard frown. The whiteness meant only one thing: asphyxia, pallida2, and his mind, unnaturally tense, raced back to a case he once had seen in the Samaritan, to the treatment that had been used. Instantly he was on his feet. “Get me hot water and cold water,” he threw out to the nurse.
“And basins too. Quick! Quick!” “But, Doctor—” she faltered, her eyes on the pallid body of the child. “Quick!” he shouted.
Snatching a blanket, he laid the child upon it and began the special method of respiration. The basins arrived, the ewer, the big iron kettle. Frantically he splashed cold water into one basin; into the other he mixed water as hot as his hand could bear. Then, like some crazy juggler, he hurried the child between the two, now plunging it into the icy, now into the steaming bath.
Fifteen minutes passed. Sweat was now running into Andrew’s eyes, blinding him. One of his sleeves hung down, dripping. His breath came pantingly.
But no breath came from the lax body of the child. A desperate sense of defeat pressed on him, a raging hopelessness. He felt the midwife watching him in stark consternation, while there, pressed back against the wall where she had all the time remained — her hand pressed to her throat, uttering no sound, her eyes burning upon him — was the old woman. He remembered her longing for a grandchild, as great as had been her daughter’s longing for this child.
All dashed away now; futile, beyond remedy… The floor was now a draggled mess. Stumbling over a sopping towel, Andrew almost dropped the child, which was now wet and slippery in his hands, like a strange, white fish. “For mercy’s sake, Doctor,” whimpered the midwife. “It’s stillborn.” Andrew did not heed her.
Beaten, despairing, having laboured in vain for half an hour, he still persisted in one last effort, rubbing the child with a rough towel, crushing and releasing the little chest with both his hands, trying to get breath into that limp body. suffocation or unconscious condition caused by lack of oxygen and excess of carbon dioxide in the blood, accompanied by paleness of the skin, weak pulse, and loss of reflexes -