CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) – A Chesapeake woman has filed a $5 million federal lawsuit against the contract medical services provider at the Chesapeake Correctional Center, alleging they committed malpractice that led to her brain damage.

Kristin Bailey, 35, was eight months pregnant when she was jailed last June on a probation violation. Bailey had a history with drug abuse but gave birth to a healthy daughter in July.

According to the lawsuit, Bailey began experiencing a serious medical emergency at the jail Aug. 15 with “neurological symptoms including altered mental status, vomiting, fever and seizure-like activity.”

“We started getting calls from inmates, saying that my daughter was having a serious medical situation,” Wayne Bailey said in a Monday morning interview. “They said they’ve been yelling for deputies, but they were not coming. We were told that she was on the on the floor. She was convulsing, her eyes rolling back.”

The lawsuit states that Bailey was evaluated at the jail by a doctor and a nurse from VitalCore Health Strategies, LLC, the Kansas-based contract medical services provider for the jail.

Kristin Bailey’s attorney Andrew Lucchetti says those providers missed signs of a serious medical crisis. “Upon her presentation, they should have immediately sent her to the hospital,” he said Monday.

Kristin Bailey wouldn’t be evaluated until four hours after fellow inmates complained about her distress, according to the lawsuit.

“When they finally intervene, you know, they just assumed it was a drug overdose,” Wayne Bailey said, and they treated her with two doses of Narcan, but Kristin, having spent the past two months in jail, wasn’t overdosing.

“With the vomiting, with the mental status changes, an ordinary person would have recognized that she needed care that the she couldn’t get at the jail,” Lucchetti said.

Wayne Bailey says his daughter wasn’t taken to Chesapeake Regional Medical Center until four the next morning – about 12 hours after the symptoms began.

He got the shocking news from hospital doctors. “She was in ICU, on life support. She was deprived of oxygen for quite a considerable amount of time, and she had a stroke in the process. She had a major seizure.”

The lawsuit accuses VitalCore, Alex Taylor, MD, and Brittany Jones, RN of deliberate indifference to serious medical needs and medical malpractice – first, for misdiagnosing Kristin Bailey as a drug overdose, on top of the delay in getting her to the hospital. The lawsuit is seeking $5 million on the basis of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Wayne Bailey says she was left with permanent brain damage.

“She’s starting to write things down in a book to to remember things, but she doesn’t remember what happened yesterday. She doesn’t remember giving birth. She doesn’t remember being in jail,” he said.

10 On Your Side contacted VitalCore at its headquarters in Topeka, Kan. for comment but the firm did not immediately respond.