Oh my gosh! The suspense is awful! What happened?
You took me back thirty years! We had a duck egg shatter nearly three days early. We don't know how it happened, but his bantam surrogate mother went ballistic, so we knew something had attacked her nest. There was a sharp edge dangerously close to the duckling's neck, and the baby was moving, so the vet advised we remove just that piece. Still, he told us not to expect it to live. We carefully removed the dangerous piece, crossing our fingers that it wouldn't bleed.
It didn't, at least not much, but we could see the distended yolk-belly through the gap. It was so scary! We kept the baby warm and moist (a small heat lamp in an aquarium and moist paper towels on a wet washcloth nest.) We had to spray mist it every few hours with warm, distilled water.
Little Hathaway stayed curled up, but alive, until the day he was supposed to hatch. Then, like magic, there he was! He was the friendliest, most spoiled little bird I've ever known - and we all loved him!