Chapter 18 #3
“It’s not supposed to be red is it?” she asked.
“Where’s your mate?” the doctor asked.
“Won’t come. Too hard.” The woman slurred her words.
We reached the exam room.
“Surgery?” I asked.
“Not yet. I need to determine what’s the matter.”
Hoisting her onto the table, I grunted with pain, but soon forget about my injury as the woman’s condition worsened.
Lamont shouted orders to me and the patient. I fetched bandages and sterilized instruments.
The woman groaned and shuddered. “The baby wants to come out.”
“Not yet. Hold on a little longer.”
Doctor Lamont examined the patient and I held her hand. She squeezed my knuckles so hard, I thought she would crack my bones. The hand-crushing grip came every minute and was accompanied by moans from the woman.
“Contractions,” the doctor said. “Flip that switch there.” She pointed to a wall and I extracted my hand long enough to comply.
“Surgery now.” Lamont pressed a pedal and the table sprouted wheels.
We rolled it into the surgery.
“Don’t you need more help?” I asked.
“Called with the switch. He should be here soon.” She launched into a flurry of instructions, leaving me no time to think.
The events blurred together. Another upper arrived and I had two people yelling orders at me. The woman’s cries mixed with the loud bawl of a newborn. And somehow I ended up out in the exam room, holding a swaddled infant while the doctors attended to the woman in the surgery.
If Cog could see me now, he would be incapacitated with mirth. At least, the baby was asleep. Although I marveled that she could sleep after what had happened to get her out. The doctor had said the placenta blocked the birth canal and the woman needed an emergency C-section.
The baby weighed the same as Zippy, my small cleaning troll.
More than I expected. I peered at her tiny face and wondered what name the woman would give her.
Naming a person seemed a huge responsibility.
In the lower levels, the scrubs handed their babies over and the Care Mothers assigned them names.
The male doctor bustled from surgery, peeling off bloody gloves.
“She’ll be fine. Thanks for your help.” He came over and put his hands out.
“The mother doesn’t want to see her.” He took a small bottle from his breast pocket.
Unscrewing the strange rubber-topped lid, he withdrew a thin glass tube.
“Hold her still,” he instructed as he opened one of the baby’s blue eyes.
He squeezed the rubber and a drop of liquid splashed into her eyes.
She startled and blinked. The doctor quickly doused her other eye, and returned the bottle to his pocket. He held out his hands. “I’ll take her now.”
As he settled her in the crook of his arm, she opened both eyes wide and gazed at me with brown eyes. I almost stumbled. He had changed her eye color! Is that what Domotor meant when he had said I had been born with my father’s blue eyes?
Doctor Lamont wheeled the woman from surgery, and I helped transfer the patient from the table to a bed. The woman cried in silence. Tears flowed down her temples and her mouth gathered into a tight grimace.
Lamont stroked the woman’s head and squeezed her hand. “It’ll be all right. The baby’s healthy. She’ll do fine.”
Nothing the doctor said eased the woman’s misery.
When we returned to Lamont’s office, she collapsed in a chair behind her desk and opened a drawer.
Taking out a small glass and a bottled filled with an amber-colored liquid, she poured herself a drink.
She considered, then reached for another glass and poured another albeit smaller portion.
“Sit down, Ella. Your performance in surgery was exemplary.” She pushed the second glass toward me as I settled in the opposite chair. “Most people would faint on seeing so much blood, and to see the inside of a person’s body.”
I sniffed the contents of the glass. The fumes stung my eyes. “I tried not to think about what it meant. Just followed orders.”
The doctor sipped her drink. I copied her, and almost spat the burning liquid out. She chuckled. “Haven’t had spirits before?”
“No. My friend did once, but he wouldn’t let me try it.” Good thing, too, or I would have yelled and brought unwelcome attention.
“It’s an acquired taste. The burn down your throat and the numbing warmth in your stomach becomes a pleasant experience.”
Knowing what to expect, I swallowed the second sip without choking. The doctor rested her head on the back of the chair, closing her eyes.
“I do have a question.” I ventured.
Without opening her eyes, she raised her glass in a swirl. “Go ahead.”
“Why is the woman so upset?”
Her eyes snapped open and she fixed me with an incredulous expression. “You don’t know?” Seeing my evident confusion, she straightened. “Aren’t the women in the lower levels upset when they give their babies away?”
“Some are, I guess. But this is the upper level. You have families.”
Understanding smoothed her sharp features before lines of grief deepened. “Yes, we have families, but, up here the rule is one couple, one child. We don’t have enough room for more people, so if a couple has an accident, and conceives another child, the child is sent to the lower levels.”
The unexpected information slogged through my brain. Had she just said the child was sent to be a scrub?
The doctor continued, “The woman was upset because the baby is her second, and the infant will be sent to a care facility in the lower levels.”