Chapter 11 #3
“Sure,” Anton said. Sasha looked exhausted, she’d been running all day, watching people die, and now a baby being born, and trying to make sense of it in between.
Where they worked felt like the airport of life at times, with people arriving and leaving, life beginning and ending faster than one could understand.
They hurried down the street to the address they’d been given and found it easily.
Everything around the shelter had been bombed to oblivion and there were no livable buildings left.
They hurried down the stairs, and down a long passageway.
They could hear the woman screaming. The people living in the shelter had moved toward the entrance to give the laboring mother some privacy.
The mother was very young and the baby was big, and as soon as Sasha examined her, the problem was obvious.
The baby was turned face up instead of face down, and the only way to deliver it without a C-section was to turn it in utero.
The baby’s heartbeat was thready. The mother had been in labor for too long.
Sasha explained the situation to the laboring young woman, who sobbed between what Sasha said and the contractions.
Her sister was with her. Sasha spoke to Anton.
“This has to go fast,” she said quietly, “the baby’s in distress.
I have to turn it around. It’s not pleasant, but it’s the only chance.
” There was no way to call an ambulance and get her to the hospital, and it might be too late by then.
She asked Anton to hold the young mother’s shoulders and her sister to hold her hand.
And Sasha used all her strength to try as gently but forcefully as she could to move the baby.
The girl screamed relentlessly, and the baby didn’t budge.
It was a tour de force and Sasha wasn’t sure she could do it, when suddenly she felt a slight shift, and then a bigger one.
She kept on all the pressure that she dared to move it, and the baby turned.
“We’re all set now, Olena. You’ve got to help me.
Push as hard as you can. Keep pushing even when the pain stops.
” All three of them told her as forcefully as they could to keep pushing, and she nearly gave up.
She needed oxygen and an epidural, neither of which Sasha could give her in the shelter.
Olena just had to tough it out, or the baby would die, and it might anyway.
Her sister said she had been in labor for thirty-six hours.
On the last push, the baby shot forward and lay between Olena’s legs, looked at them, and gave a little whimper and then a loud wail.
They had done it. The baby was out. Sasha wrapped the baby girl in a towel and handed her to her mother.
She delivered the placenta, cut the cord, and stitched Olena up.
She gave her a shot to ensure she didn’t hemorrhage, and promised to send a nurse to check her in a few hours.
If no one had turned the baby, she would have died and the mother might have too.
It seemed like an almost worthwhile exchange for all the people who had died in the war that day.
One life had been saved, in exchange for so many lost. It was hard to make sense of it and to understand who had to leave and who got to stay.
The residents of the shelter filed back in and congratulated the new mother, and several of the women and Olena’s sister were going to clean her up and help with the baby. And Sasha left her something to take for the pain.
She and Anton walked back to the hospital. Sasha looked exhausted and smiled at him.
“I didn’t think we were going to win that one,” she said, almost too tired to walk the few blocks back.
“Neither did I. You never get a break, do you?”
“Not lately. And neither do you.” Sasha went to request a nurse or midwife to visit the young mother in a few hours, and she and Anton went to the cafeteria to get something to eat.
Sasha was shocked to see that it was ten o’clock.
They had left the hospital at six. She was too tired to eat, but she had some biscuits and a cup of tea, while Anton ate a full meal, which consisted of a bowl of rice with some thin stew.
The hospital was trying to stretch the food as far as they could, but the Red Cross humanitarian delivery had been stopped again.
Sasha wondered how long they could hang on.
It was a question she asked herself every day.
She prayed there wouldn’t be an air raid that night, or a major emergency.
They went back to their broom closet, and as soon as she lay down, she passed out.
Anton covered her with a blanket, and watched her sleep for a few minutes before he lay down next to her and fell asleep too.
The war had worn them all out. Every single day was a challenge to hang on and stay alive.
Help would come someday. Sasha and Anton still believed that. But when?