Batsa told them, “She did not want the men to see her unclothed. Her friends promised her they would protect her.”
Maxence glanced up. The house where they had set up the clinic was filled with people, some women, some men, and boys and girls of all ages.
Dree said, “She’s dying. We don’t have time for this.”
Maxence had lived in the midst of half a dozen very different cultures over the last decade of his life. He told Father Booker, who had also traveled the world for missions, “Let’s get the sheets off the beds.”
The old priest didn’t bother to nod but sprinted for the pallets on the other side of the room. They stripped the thick blankets and coverlets off the beds and returned with their arms filled with the large pieces of fabric. “Batsa, we need your help.”
They didn’t have time to string a cord across the room to hang the sheets from, so each of the men took corners of the sheets, faced away from the dying woman on the table, and made themselves into makeshift tent poles with sheets as curtains between them.
Batsa called something back over his shoulder even as they faced out into the room, and the women’s voices calmed.
Maxence sneaked a glimpse backward to make sure this was working.
Dree and the other women were bent over the woman on the table. The young woman’s long brown limbs splayed off the edges of the table. Dree was muttering and using hand signals with the women, placing their hands on her patient’s legs and patting their hands to indicate that they should hold the woman’s legs as Dree examined her.
The orange and blue paisley bed sheet lay on the floor.
Dree occasionally called for Batsa to translate something, but for the most part, they had it under control. At one point, Batsa said something to a woman in the waiting room, and she came and held the sheet aloft as he walked backward for some more intricate translating.
About forty-five minutes later, during which time Maxence again had a lengthy opportunity to review all the events in his life that had led him to this place and observe the interactions of parents and children in the waiting area, Dree announced, “Okay, guys. You can lower the curtain now.”
Maxence turned back. “Did she make it?”
Dree nodded as she scrubbed her hands with a small brush in a bucket of clean water. “For now. She had a fourth-degree tear of her perineum. I gave her a local anesthetic and sutured her muscles and skin. I gave her friends my strongest antibiotics for her. I did my best, but she should have been in an operating theater with general anesthesia and a real surgeon.”
“We only have motorcycles. I don’t see how we could’ve transported her to a hospital in less than six hours.”
Dree blinked hard as she scrubbed up past her wrists to her elbows. “She didn’t have six hours, especially sitting upright on a motorcycle. I think she might be okay, but she lost a lot of blood.” She blinked again, and a tear dripped down her cheek. “She doesn’t know the baby didn’t make it yet. They told her that they’d given the baby to a wet nurse until she was better.”
Maxence prayed in his mind for the soul of the baby, and his heart contracted with deep sadness for what the woman and the world had lost.
She said, “We have to get these NICUs up and running or something. From their description, that baby could have survived in a halfway decent NICU. It sounded like he was maybe three pounds. He could have made it.”
Max stood beside Dree and stroked her back down her spine. Her body quivered like her lungs were fluttering.
She asked, “How do you deal with it?”
“I’m not,” he said, his throat tight. “I’m devastated. I’ve just seen it so many times that I can feel it without falling apart.”
She turned and grabbed his shirt, burying her face in his chest.
Maxence wrapped his arms around her, one palm on the back of her head under her gray religious head covering.
Her arms were tight around his waist, and he stroked her back lightly.
After a minute, her arms loosened, and Maxence opened his arms so she could step back.
She wiped the tears off her face with both palms. “I have other patients to see.”
Maxence helped her with the rest of the patients, again deciding who needed to be seen quickly and who didn’t need to be seen at all. A light bruise doesn’t need to be seen by an exhausted nurse, no matter how much the status-conscious father wants the privilege and honor of his child being examined.
As darkness fell, Maxence and Batsa evaluated the few remaining people and decided that none of them needed any medical attention. One older man was obviously just interested in the proceedings because his complaint kept changing from headache to an imperceptible wound on his hand to a vague stomach complaint with no diarrhea or vomiting to a ringing in his ears. He’d chatted with every other patient and parent in the waiting area all day, listening to their complaints with animation and then describing his variable maladies. Batsa had been watching him and giving them updates.
At the campsite that night, the fire at the center blazed merrily in a hastily constructed fire pit and warmed them all.
Just after Max and the rest had gotten back to camp, the three women who had carried their postpartum friend into Dree’s clinic arrived, bringing food.
