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She was checking all her patient’s fluid charts when Joyce, the ward cleaner, approached Joyce had been cleaning 2B’s floors and keeping everything spick and span for over two decades Hailey had no doubt that at any given tie that no bacteria would dare challenge the cleaner’s authority Joyce was alarded as one of the team

There was an old adage in nursing Patients told doctors a little, nurses a lot and the cleaning staff everything And a good nurse knew it Joyce was her first port of call when one of the parents was reticent with information

‘There’s an alarh-dependency bay ‘There’s no one in there’

An urgent beeping from a saturation monitor worked its way into her consciousness She realised then that it had been going off for a while Hailey frowned There was no one there? She’d subconsciously blocked the noise out, knowing it was Rosemary’s bay and the other nurse was supposed to be there

The alar her way next door She didn’t hurry, knowing that it would probably be just a dislodged probe The bay was empty of any parents and also empty of Rosemary, as Joyce had indicated She wasn’t supposed to leave the high-dependency bay without getting so from Henry’s bed and Hailey strolled over, still unconcerned

But when she got there, it was immediately obvious the alaren saturations as seventy per cent and one look at Henry confir for air, like a fish out of water, his lips and peripheries tinged with blue, sweat beading his forehead

‘Oh, no,’ Hailey muttered Was Henry’s trachy blocked or had he just worked hi his ency call button on the wall near the end of the cot with one hand as she manoeuvred the cot side doith the other

Callum, who had returned to the ward to fill out the paperwork for a pending admission, was at the nurses’ station when the distinctive tone of the eency call went off He looked at the nurse call board that displayed all the bed nuency

He strode into the high-dependency bay to find a very worried Hailey frantically suctioning Henry’s trachy One look at the little boy’s panic-filled gaze and cyanosed lips was enough to confirency of the situation

‘What happened?’ he de on the oxygen as inflating the bag

‘Not sure I think hethe suction catheter from the artificial airway ‘It’s no use I can’t pass it It must be completely blocked’

Callu to have to replace it’

The alar lower as Henry’s saturations continued to pluht The little boy’s colour was getting worse the en deprived he became

Hailey glanced at Callu in her ears A red flush was creeping up her neck She hesitated a split second before she nodded

‘What’s thea very pale-looking Rosemary, joined them

‘Get the resus trolley,’ Hailey ordered, her gaze not leaving her patient as she fuency box of supplies kept on Henry’s bedside cabinet

‘I’ll dilate the stoma,’ Callum said as he snipped the tapes that secured the useless trachy in place ‘You place the airway’

Hailey nodded as she handed him the trachy dilators The noise of the alarm and the controlled panic that surrounded her as Yvonne barked orders and nurses performed their much practised roles faded as adrenaline honed her instincts She are only of Callum and Henry as they worked in tandem to secure the little boy a patent airway

Callum whipped out the old trachy and inserted the dilators into the hole in Henry’s neck Hailey, her fingers tre of a new trachy and deftly inserted the sturdy, plastic airway into the tract She held it in place for Calluently puffed sos

The little boy pinked up alher and higher as his oxygen saturations climbed rapidly back into the nineties Henry started to cry as panic was replaced with relief The whole episode had obviously terrified him