Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S

All the tension and anxiety left me, and I felt calm and confident. I had learned to respect the power of prayer. What change had come over the headstrong young girl who, only a year earlier, had found the whole idea of prayer to be a joke?
     
     
    I spoke to the police and told them it was an emergency. I was told that the safest way to get there would be to walk, but the quickest would be by bicycle. The policeman said: “There is no point in sending a car, because you can’t see further than the bonnet, and we would have to have a man walking ahead. We will send a bicycle escort.”
     
    I said I would be ready within ten minutes. My delivery bag was already packed and ready. All my thoughts were with Conchita - I did not think that the baby was likely to survive at around twenty-eight weeks gestation. Finding the bicycle shed in the smog and loading up my bike was a tricky business, but I was at the front of Nonnatus House in less than ten minutes.
     
    Two policemen arrived shortly after on bicycles with very powerful lights, front and rear, which illuminated about two yards ahead. One rode ahead of me, and I was instructed to follow him. The other rode beside me, I being on the kerb side. Thus we progressed with surprising speed, because there was no other traffic around.
     
    Looking back over nearly half a century it seems absurd to be racing to an emergency labour on bicycles at about ten miles per hour. But even today I can think of no better way. What would be the advantage of the most powerful police car with nil visibility?
     
    We arrived at the Warren household in less than fifteen minutes. I could not have done it alone. The men said they would wait, in case I needed them further, and a couple of the Warren girls took them down to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
     
    I went upstairs to Conchita. She looked ghastly, deathly white, with bright pink splodges under her eyes. She moaned. I took her temperature, which was 103°F. At first I could not feel her pulse, but, on careful counting, I found it to be 120, and intermittent. Her blood pressure was barely perceptible. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, at around forty breaths per minute. I watched her in silence for a couple of minutes, as a contraction came on. It was powerful, and her features distorted in pain, a high-pitched groan emanating from her throat. Her eyes were open, but I don’t think she could see anyone.
     
    Len was cradling her in his arms. The suffering on his face was enough to break your heart. He was stroking her hair, and murmuring to her, neither of which she seemed to feel or hear. Liz was in the room.
     
    I enquired if the doctor had been called. He had, but was still out on a call. The call had been put through to another doctor, who was also out with a patient. All doctors worked terribly hard at these times. The London smogs were notorious killers.
     
    I said that we should arrange for a hospital admission as soon as possible.
     
    “Is she tha’ bad?” Len asked.
     
    It is astonishing how people do not see what they don’t want to see. To me it was obvious that Conchita could easily die, especially if complications arose from labour and delivery. But Len couldn’t see this.
     
    I went and spoke to the policemen. One said he would telephone the hospital. The other one undertook to try to find one of the local GPs and escort him to the house, if possible. How an ambulance would get there and back was an open question.
     
    I returned to Conchita, and started to lay out my delivery things. It was possible that I would be alone with a premature delivery, and a sick and possibly dying woman.
     
    Suddenly I remembered that Sister Julienne was praying for us. Again, the relief was overwhelming. All my fears vanished, and the calm certainty that all would be well flooded my mind and body. I remembered the words of Mother Julian of Norwich:
    “All shall be well, and all will be well
and all manner of things shall be well.”
     
     
     
    I must have given a great sigh of relief, which Len picked up. He said, “You reckons as how she’ll be all right then, do you?”
     
    Should I tell him that Sister Julienne was praying for us? It seemed so silly, almost irrelevant. But I did; I felt I knew him well enough. He didn’t dismiss it.
     
    “Well, I reckons as ’ow its goin’ to be all righ’, then, too.”
     
    His face was brighter than it had been since I entered the room.
     
    It would have been advisable to