CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was dark-thirty–my guess of the time–when I awoke a few nights after the wedding feast, to my treehouse quivering like someone was climbing up the ladder. I suppose I should’ve felt frightened, but I wasn’t. Perhaps because I was truly beginning to feel safe here with the Hundi.
When Jahnu’s head popped up from the hatch, I felt a twinge of confusion mixed with the comfort brought by his presence.
“I am sorry to wake you, Sid-de-nee,” he said, climbing the rest of the ladder and entering with a lantern. It cast the room in coppery shadows.
“I was awake,” I said, sitting up. “Is something wrong?”
He took me in. In my disheveled state I should’ve felt embarrassed, but oddly just felt glad to see him, and the silent treatment he’d offered me the past two days momentarily lifted.
His jaw tightened, “There is a woman in our neighboring village who travails in labor. Sali asked me to bring you.”
“Oh!” I quickly shoved on my shoes and followed Jahnu down the ladder. We walked through the village, finding a path I’d yet to travel on the eastern side.
The silence between us was charged and I felt the inadequacy of my labor and delivery skills mount with each step. What could I possibly do to help this old woman who’d likely delivered half the children in the tribe? I said as much to Jahnu, if nothing else than to break the deafening silence.
“‘Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor,’” he recited. I recognized the scripture and smiled.
“You do that a lot, you know?”
“What do I do?”
“Quote things…quote scripture….I recognize it from when I was young. My mom took us to church,” I explained. “I know a little scripture.”
“When Robert bring the scriptures to our village, I was not yet born. My father tell me many things change for our village because of Robert. He teach me as a child. Robert was like a second father to me. He taught me many t’ings about life and the God of the Bible.
When I attended school I learned even more of doctrine, of leadership.
The scriptures are the only thing that makes sense to me in this life.
I have grown to depend on that wisdom as I have become chief. ”
Silence resumed, and then he said, “Sali has helped bring many babies into the world. I was one of them. If she has a need for you, there must be a reason. Do what you can. That is all any of us can do.”
He was sad and reserved, and I longed to ask what was bothering him. But I kept quiet, following under the faint glow of the lantern that lit his silhouette against the deep dark of the jungle.
We walked for twenty minutes or so, I guessed, and finally came into a clearing with more treehouses and huts dotting the landscape, their shapes visible in the glow of the moon.
The village was large and the houses and huts fit closer together than those in the main village. Some were built high in the trees, others on stilts that kept them a few feet off the ground, their porches hugged the perimeter, similar to the huts of the Makia.
We walked down the lane where a hushed presence filled the sleeping camp.
The cries of the woman reached our ears before we rounded the corner, and I quickened my pace into the hut, leaving Jahnu outside.
The room was small and warm, lit by small candles and a lantern.
There was a handful of women crowding around the one in labor, her naked, brown body swollen and ripe.
She was beautiful, despite the effort of her labor, and I felt a momentary twinge of longing at her full womb.
The laboring woman held onto a rope which had been trussed up into the bamboo rafters, hanging down, giving her two ends to grasp during a contraction.
It gave her leverage and stability as she squatted.
The women were wiping sweat from her brow, offering her sips of water.
I spotted Sali who sat on a low stool checking the woman’s progress and crooning to her in wearied tones. I approached gingerly, not wanting to disturb the sacred space, when Sali spotted me. She rose and motioned for me to join, her away from the bunch.
“You are here,” she sighed.
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“It has been a day and a half. It starts and stops. She is weary…we are all weary, but she is only half ready. I fear she will give up before it is time.”
“I’m not a delivery nurse,” I warned. “I don’t know what I can do that you have not already tried.”
“But you have saved lives. I fear it may come to that. Hers…or the babies…”
“Babies?”
“I have guessed two, though she has stopped growing near the end.” Sali’s eyes were not filled with fear, but something akin to it. Dread. Unease. A reserved sorrow at the acceptance of life’s most difficult trials.
I turned my own eyes to the laboring woman, feeling a momentary bout of utter helplessness, until I snapped into the familiar activity of bringing care when it was needed most. I exhaled with the pleasure of the feeling. This is what I was made to do.
I gathered as much information as I could.
This was Daliah’s first pregnancy. By all estimations she was nine “moons” along and also believed she was carrying twins.
I manipulated her tummy, trying to map the babies, and based on my limited knowledge, felt they were breech.
I rebuked thoughts of my inadequacies and tried in vain to remember what I could from my rotation in labor and delivery.
Sali was right, her cervix was only dilated to a five, maybe six, and with the breech there wasn’t a head to help push the cervix open. This could very well continue for hours on end.
That was time we didn’t have.
I used Sali’s wooden Pinard stethoscope to listen for fetal heartbeats, but couldn’t get a firm read on one, let alone two. I wiped sweat from my brow and ordered all the burlap coverings on the windows open and the women to circulate the air in the room with palm fans.
Daliah’s contractions came every few minutes, and out of habit, I checked my watch to monitor them, but cursed beneath my breath at the blank screen. What good was this thing?
We waited for another hour, getting Daliah to try several different positions for labor, encouraging her to sleep between each contraction. Suddenly a thought wriggled to the surface of my memory.
During my rotation in labor and delivery I remembered a patient who labored without progress due to a retroverted uterus.
With Daliah’s babies most likely breech, I had to assume she had something similar.
Perhaps even a bicornuate uterus. I knew she was going to need help to open the cervix during the next few contractions.
I ordered her to lay flat, knowing the pain would be greater in this position, and with an apology, I used my fingers to tilt her uterus forward and hold it in place during a contraction.
She shrieked like a bird and threw out words I only guessed were expletives in her native tongue, but I felt the tilt and hold on her uterus had done something.
I inserted my fingers again, and held the cervix in place during the next contraction, despite her pleading, knowing if she didn’t fully dilate soon, there would be no delivery.
After another hour or so of keeping the uterus from tilting back, Daliah said she felt like pushing. I checked her, and to my relief, she was ready. Woven pads and cloths were spread out beneath her and we helped her to a squat, needing gravity to help bring the babies down.
I swallowed my doubt and fear and helped Sali with oil and warm cloth on the perineum as two feet began to emerge.
We gently delivered the arms and shoulders of a little boy, but something was hindering the head from coming down.
I reached into the tight opening. My fingers squashed by flesh all around and I felt the cord wrapped around his neck.
I gently lifted it with my finger, over his face, my hand crushed in the taught space, and with another guttural push from Daliah, he was born.
Sali took him and gave him to Daliah who cradled him against her chest, finding a momentary relief of pain as she crooned her love, awash with pleasure. His wail split the air, and with it, all levels of relief from mother to midwife.
Unfortunately, the relief didn’t last long.
Another contraction wracked her body and this time, I felt a head begin to emerge.
I oiled and stretched her, turning the tiny body as it made its way into the world.
As the last of the contractions gave way to birth, the second baby, a girl, did not cry.
She did not turn pink like her brother, but remained gray and lifeless.
She was small. Much smaller than her twin.
I rubbed her back in a desperate attempt to bring her life and willed her to breathe. With rapid movement, I dried her off, clamped and cut the cord, flicked the baby’s feet, swiped the inside of her impossibly tiny mouth with my pinky, and did my best to clear her airways.
I barely registered that Sali helped Daliah deliver the afterbirth.
Swallowing a lump of emotion, I began chest compression with my two fingers, just as I felt all the women’s attention on me in a horrified acknowledgement of what was happening.
Lifting her chin, I gave her two breaths.
Please, God! Help me save her! I hadn’t prayed since Jonathan lay in the hospital bed fighting for his life, but I was desperate.
I continued, robotically, for what felt like hours, two breaths, thirty compressions, two breaths, thirty compressions, until Sali came and placed her hands on mine.
“You have done all you can.”
“No, no, no.”
“She is gone.”
I didn’t know how to stop.
“Daliah wants to hold her daughter.”
“But she’s…she’s dead. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save her.”
Finally, I looked up into the faces of the women who’d stood witness. I felt embarrassed. Shame. I looked at Daliah, “I’m so sorry,” I shook my head.