The two other women started speaking again, and Batsa retreated up by the woman’s head, grabbing hold of her hand.
The younger of the two women clambered over the bed and grabbed the new mother’s other hand, encouraging her.
When Dree caught a glimpse of the other woman’s eyes, the woman was plainly terrified.
Batsa told Dree, “Her mother-in-law, who is the older woman on that side of the bed, said she fell while trying to reach something in an upper cabinet this morning, and that brought on the labor.”
Maxence came back. “The stove has a fire in it, so I put water on to boil. I should have sterilized towels in a few minutes.”
Dree dug through her backpack and handed him her few rudimentary surgical instruments, including two clamps and a pair of medical scissors. “Boil these, too. Keep them in a sterile towel.
Dree counted between the mother’s contractions, and they were about a minute apart. She and Batsa caught a glance at each other over the woman’s heaving abdomen, and he had obviously been timing them too. He held the woman’s hand in both of his and murmured to her.
Maxence came back, holding steaming towels. “I twisted them out as well as I could. They’re still pretty hot.”
Dree asked him, “You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”
“No, I have about an inch of calluses on my palms and fingers.”
Dree shoved her sleeve up her arm and checked the temperature of the towels. Warmth rose from the thin cloths, but in just a few minutes they wouldn’t be too hot if the baby landed on them, not that Dree intended to drop it. She spread the towels on the bed beneath the woman, just as she screamed and strained again.
Batsa murmured soothingly to her again, but he muttered to Dree, “She’s calling me curse words in Nepali I’ve never heard before.”
The top of the baby’s head appeared.
Dree said, “Crowning.”
Batsa said, “Hopefully, the baby will be face up. Support the head, and then you’ll get one shoulder and then the other. Just tilt the baby up, and the rest of it will come right out. It’s best to lay a baby directly on the mother’s abdomen, but I’m not sure what to do with a preemie.”
Dree nodded. “That’s what we did at the hospital.”
Batsa said, “My cousin was our OB. She said that women have been giving birth for all of time. She’s against medical intervention.”
Dree chanted what they had been told in nursing school and doctors had told her when she worked in the hospital. “Before 1900, almost all babies were born at home. It’s only been since 1969 that most babies have been born in hospitals. We can do this. She can do this.”
Dree prayed they could do this. She also knew the statistics of women and babies dying before 1900, and they were wretched.
With the woman’s next push, the baby’s head became visible, and the rest of the birth proceeded as Batsa had described within a few minutes.
The baby was tiny, though, so very tiny, where she lay on her mother’s stomach. She was hardly longer than Dree’s hand. Her pitiful cry was too soft, not the lusty wail of a full-term newborn. A fine layer of down covered her dark red skin.
Dree used one of the cloths Max had sterilized to wipe blood and mucus off the baby’s face and then covered the child with another cloth that felt just the slightest bit warmer than her body temperature, leaving room around her face for her to breathe. “You’re okay,” she whispered to the mewling infant. “You’re okay, baby girl.”
The baby wasn’t okay. She was far,fartoo small to survive.
Eighty percent died, Alfonso had said.
Batsa shook his head. “She is smaller than my third-born, who was just under four pounds and in an isolette in the NICU for a month.”
“There isn’t a NICU here.” Dree’s eyes stung with tears.
Maxence growled, “We need one of Alfonso’s damned micro-clinics right here, right now, not a year from now.”
The older woman said something else.
Batsa, the baby’s mother, and the other woman at the bedside said something harsh back to her. The woman looked angry instead of chastised.
Batsa said, “The mother-in-law has asked why the baby has fur. I’ve explained that it’s because she was born too early and it will disappear, but she said something superstitious. I am concerned about the child’s safety.”
