Aurelie sprang into action, grabbing gloves and her tablet.As a nurse practitioner, she was often called to assist when a doctor couldn’t be reached, at least until it became clear that they’d need to life-flight a patient to the city.
“Hi, Mrs.Brown,” Aurelie said, taking the woman’s hand and squeezing it.“What’s going on with you today?”
Holding Nichole Brown’s hand was a way to connect with the patient, to calm her, but also a way to bypass the numbers on the machines that beeped and trilled obnoxiously, and check the patient’s pulse the old-fashioned way.The technology in Banberry might not be up to snuff—at least until the state-of-the-art birthing center was installed in the clinic—but Aurelie’s training made up for that with inherent knowledge med students didn’t seem to have anymore.What good did all the training on tech do when they couldn’t assess real-world symptoms?
“Seems…” Nichole took a sharp breath.
Aurelie had never had children, but she knew the rapid uptick of Nichole’s pulse was due to discomfort.Her pulse-ox dipped to 89.Damn.
“Seems like Genevieve wants to come early.”
“I love the name,” Aurelie said as she placed an oxygen mask on her patient.It was getting close to needing to call for a life flight or get OB down here, stat.“Is it a family name?”
“No, it’s from one of my…my favorite—” Nichole hissed and doubled over.Aurelie hit the call button in the room.Fran was there in seconds.
“We need Dr.Warwick.This will have to be a cesarean.”
“Noooo,” Nichole wailed.“Please.I have a birth plan.Mike can’t get off the ranch until tonight.Can I…”
Her cries faded as her blood pressure plummeted.
“Dammit,” Aurelie muttered.“We’re going to lose them both.”
“The doctor is in surgery for a breech birth.She’ll be an hour still.What do you want to do, Aury?”
Aury bit her lip, hating the only option she had.But it had to be made.“There’s no time to wait.Call the life flight.”
Aurelie kept Nichole’s meds and vitals regulated, but she wasn’t cleared to perform cesareans, especially not alone.
“Okay, we’ve got a helicopter on site.Let’s wheel her out.”
Aurelie and Fran wheeled the gurney to the helipad, where medics took over.After Nicole was stable and airborne, Aurelie sighed with relief, but it was tinged with frustration.
They couldn’t keep doing this.They needed to keep these women here; their families depended on it.Look at Nichole Brown.Her husband couldn’t even be called off the ranch for an early birth, and now he’d be expected to travel to Bozeman to see his wife and child as they recovered?Ifthey made the flight without decompensating.
The bottom line was that things weren’t working as they should.Something had to give.
Aurelie’s phone felt heavy in her pocket.The news about her visa and her father added to that sense of being off-balance, but hopefully, neither would become an issue.
“Ooof.Anytime you ladies wanna get that clinic up and running is fine with me.It’ll be nice to have some place local to send these moms,” Fran said when the copter had headed east.“If for no other reason than I can’t imagine how hard it’s gotta be for the local ranchers to travel to the city to be with their spouses if anything goes wrong.”
“You’re not kidding.I was just thinking the same thing.”Just that week alone, they’d transported three moms.And Nichole made four.“We’re just waiting on the last bit of funding from the investors, then we can break ground.And it’ll be a quick six months of building, or so they tell us.”
Fran shook her head.“You ladies are doing God’s work, that’s for sure.But I wish He made it a little easier for y’all.”
Aurelie did, too.
She, Sophie, Analise, and Paige—whom Sophie had dubbed the “Fab Four”—were responsible for bringing the clinic to life, thanks to Sophie’s law practice that had fronted a majority of the costs.The rest came from investors and grants, meaning they’d be solvent for at least a few years without worrying about finances and could just focus on healthcare and healing.The clinic would be combined with a shelter for women and children seeking safety after leaving a traumatic home or space, too.Just the thought of the good they could do made Aurelie giddy.
It wasn’t just the philanthropic part of the project that inspired Aurelie, either.No, it was knowing she was working with three other strong women—four, if they included the auto shop owner, Steve’s wife, Jackie, whom they’d hired to manage the front desk when the center opened—and they all had a unique part to play.Steve was Brad’s best friend, and his quick engagement to Jackie had made the woman immediate family.
She glanced over the edge of the helipad at the lime green buds on the trees and let the morning wash over her.Some of the news she’d received was good.She was still part of the Connors family, at least when they needed some relief, which was fine by Aurelie.No one loved Maddie outside her immediate family like Aurelie did.Doting on her goddaughter was as easy as breathing.
The other bits of news were less than awesome, but they couldn’t get Aurelie down, not when she had an uninterrupted evening with her goddaughter ahead of her.
On her way out of the hospital, her back and knees feeling the long, hard shift as much as her heart, she stopped by to grab her two newspapers.The dogwoods were blooming, and their aromatic sweetness permeated the air.Aurelie inhaled deeply, committing the scent to her core memories.It was so different from the salt and brine of her home country.
When she flipped open the paper Paige called atrashy gossip rag, her heart rate spiked.
