Book Review
Title: Seaplanes Don’t Fly At Night
Author: Jeff & Clare Curtis
Genre: Memoir
Rating: ****
Review: All I knew about Seaplanes before I went into it was it follows the successful young couple Jeff and Clare Curtis who are enjoying a romantic holiday in the Maldives while Clare is pregnant and she goes into premature labour, so this really caught my eye and I was excited to get into it. The opening to Seaplanes Don’t Fly at Night was dramatic and really got my heart racing as we are introduced to Jeff and Clare as Clare goes into labour nine weeks early on a small island in the Maldives. Something is clearly wrong as Clare is bleeding but the baby is also in breach as well as being premature so the small medical team on the island can’t accommodate the birth. Jeff and Clare along with Mauroof, the courteous butler, and Arjun, the island’s resident nurse, have to travel to a neighbouring island in an extreme storm to have the baby delivered safely but this is only the beginning.
After reaching the hospital Clare is told she can be given injections to stop her labour which causes both to relax but the doctor tells Jeff privately that the baby is going to be delivered tonight and while they might be able to save his wife the baby is going to die, completely shocking him. We then jump backwards to ten days before, where Clare has some bleeding but after a trip to the doctors these fears are alleviated but he does ask them to go somewhere less remote for their holiday. We learn that Clare and Jeff had some major trouble conceiving which is why this baby is so precious and that they also worked out a route to the nearest major hospital if anything went wrong but they weren’t counting on a major storm moving in. With the lives of his wife and child on the line, Jeff jumps into action trying to get them to the hospital they had in the plan but the seaplanes don’t fly at night so they have to wait until morning. Knowing that both Clare and the baby could be dead by the Jeff asks Mauroof and Arjun if the boat could get them to the other island that has better medical facilities in the storm, it can but it would take hours with the weather against them. Caught between a rock and a hard place Jeff doesn’t know what to do, especially since he knows that raising Clare’s heart rate could accelerate things which they don’t want right now.
With travel out of the question for Clare, Mauroof offers to take the boat to the other island and collect the paediatrician which would be a lot quicker, but hours after he left no one has heard from him and they all pray he is okay. Meanwhile, Clare is struggling to keep herself calm enough so that she can have the second steroid injection to slow down her labour and when her normal doctor phones her waters break. The doctor tells Jeff to get her to the OR but he has to explain they are still in the Maldives in a hospital with the most basic of equipment and they are most certainly not equipped for the difficult birth Clare is going to have and for the needs of their son. This hospital can’t give Clare any pain relief because they don’t have it so she has to deliver her son naturally as she can’t have the C-section that was suggested. Throughout the labour Jeff manages to Clare through it but when the baby arrives he isn’t breathing, however, the hospital staff actually do their job and get the baby to breath but he is struggling and needs proper medical attention and soon. It is now 4:30am and daylight is still hours away meaning the planes still can’t fly and travelling by boat is out of the question for the frail Cameron.
In the eight hours after Cameron’s birth it is an all-out battle for Clare and Jeff to keep their son alive. Both often argue with the hospital staff who don’t speak English, don’t understand the consequences of some of their actions and the hospital’s very limited resources. The first battle they have to overcome is the issue of an incubator, at first the hospital says they don’t have one but they do it just doesn’t work. Knowing this Jeff tries his hardest to fix it but things don’t seem to be going in their favour when a mysterious man tells them to fill the water tray which gets the incubator working, however, only Clare and Jeff saw this man and they saw his shirt as different colours. While I don’t believe in divine intervention, it seems to be what the couple believe. The next battle is oxygen which Cameron desperately needs but the hospital’s supply is running dangerous low and soon they find themselves with the final tank which will only last for four hours meaning they have to get to the bigger hospital in that time but there are several logistically problems they have to overcome. Jeff ends up meeting with the Mayor to get a license for the seaplane to land on the island given their circumstances which the Mayor agrees to do, he also agrees for the matter of the marriage license number which they need for the paperwork to be suspended until they get home. The final issue they face is paying the hospital bill as they won’t wait for the insurance company to pay it but they won’t accept Jeff’s international credit card so Arjun pays it knowing Jeff will pay him back for it, after they overcome all these issues they are on the seaplane heading for the bigger hospital with the assurance their insurance company will get them all home in a few days but their battle is just beginning.
When they arrive in Male there are even more delays which put Cameron’s life in more danger, even when they arrive at the hospital they were expecting a pregnant woman not a premature baby. The hospital’s policy means they have to wait in A&E which could take hours but they manage to get bumped up the list but immediately Clare is taken to a gynaecology ward while Cameron is take the neonatal intensive care unit and while Jeff goes with the baby he is also separated from his son while they assess him. At this point both Clare and Jeff are completely exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally but neither can afford to give up now when the light at the end of the tunnel is drawing ever closer. At the hospital in male, Cameron has access to better medical treatment but after staying only one day they find an infection in his blood and despite giving antibiotics another has sprung up signalling that it might be sepsis which is fatal in babies. As it turns out to be one issue or problem after another, Clare and Jeff are both on the verge of breaking down and the only thing keeping them going is their son, so I am really hoping that little Cameron makes it, because I know better than most that not all memoirs have a happy ending.
As the days pass the prognosis for Cameron doesn’t look good as at firs the doctors believe it to be sepsis, then possibly a hole in his stomach but he is fighting hard. Meanwhile, Jeff is trying to get his family out of Maldives but Dubai requires Cameron to have a five year passport in order to return home which they can’t get for him and they can’t get him to the UK in less than 7 days so Jeff suggests Singapore as he has friends there and knows they have a great medical systems. I did find the part of the mosquitos quite funny despite the real danger they posed to little Cameron but it was just quite amusing to visualise. For days Jeff has been given the run around from the consulates and an official he speaks to but after asking his father to get a passport for Cameron which failed, his mother took the bull by the horns and I know she is going to get something done as that is the type of person she is. In the end, the family do get home and we get a glimpse into their life after the birth of their son and how he is doing. Overall, it took me a while to get into Seaplanes Don’t Fly At Night but the emotional payoff at the end was definitely worth it.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this review copy from YA Bound Book Tours
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