Dree asked him, “Where’s the nearest larger town with a hospital?”
“It’s still Chandannath, I would think. Where are my maps?” He started digging through his backpack on the floor, throwing paper with notes and clothes onto the cement floor.
Isaak was plastered against the front door of the house, his hands spread on the thick wood like he was keeping the monsters of the afternoon out. “We’ve been riding the motorcycles for weeks. It has to be twelve or fourteen hours away.”
Batsa said, “We’ve been making a loop around Chandannath. There might be a road straight back down. I just need to find—”
He retrieved a folded paper from his backpack and pressed the wide sheet onto the floor. Thick black and blue marker streaks colored the roads on the map.
Using one finger, he traced lines until he found what he was looking for. “There’s a direct route. We could be back in Chandannath in less than three hours, but we don’t have a car.”
Isaak peeled himself off the door. “We can take the baby to the hospital on the motorcycles. Batsa and I can carry some of the baby’s relatives on the backs of ours.”
The mother cried out again, though not as loudly. She arched her back, and Dree caught the baby’s placenta. She held the placenta aloft before clamping off the umbilical cord, cleaning the area with super-premium vodka from Isaak’s flask, and cutting between the two clamps with the instruments Max had sterilized.
Dree stripped off her gloves. “The reason we put premature babies in incubators is to keep them warm. Premature babies lose heat, and they die of hypothermia in minutes. That’s why I covered her with a warm towel on her mother’s tummy. We’re in the Himalayas in December. It’s freaking freezing outside. There’s no way any baby would survive a motorcycle ride of even two minutes in this weather, let alone over two hours.”
Maxence said, “I can hold her. We can put her under my leather motorcycle jacket.”
His skin was warm, as she’d discovered a few nights before. “We have those hand-warmer packs Father Moses sent from Paris, too. We can pack those around her. And he sent that shiny space blanket. That thing reflects heat, and it’s waterproof. It must be windproof.”
Dree started digging through her backpack, throwing materials on the floor. “And we can use the pashmina the lady gave me between the baby and the hand warmers. We can fashion an incubator around her and you.”
Isaak walked over and crouched beside her. “That’s ingenious.”
Dree laid out the supplies. “That’s how we country folk do it. If you don’t have a thing you need, you make do. You wear it out, use it up, repurpose it, and make one out of spare parts. If we had time, I’d quilt all these things into a little isolette for her and make it pretty. I’m thinking some nice applique with a touch of turkey-trot red cotton for the home and hearth, and for luck.”
Isaak smiled at her, a spark lighting in his blue eyes. “It’s like a wearable incubator.”
She twisted around from her work. “Batsa, explain to them what we want to try and how risky it is. Tell them it might not work, and the baby might not survive the trip.”
Batsa explained to the family about their plan to get the baby to the hospital.
The mother was nodding and crying.
The mother-in-law must have said something negative because the other woman started berating her and then turned and said something insistent to Batsa.
Batsa translated, “This woman is our new mother’s oldest sister, and thus she makes decisions for their family. She will go with the baby to the hospital until the mother can recover and arrive. They’re very aware of how few tiny preemies survive.”
Dree started ripping open hand-warmer packs and told Maxence, “Strip.”
Maxence hadn’t bothered to put on his leather pants before they’d made the emergency ride over to deliver the baby, so he did that, and then he stripped down to his tee-shirt. He laid down on the floor.
Dree scooped the baby up with the warm towel, dried her off, and wrapped her in the lovely pashmina like a tiny little burrito, careful to fold a tiny hood over the baby’s head but not her face.
In the pashmina’s outside layer, Dree inserted the hand-warmer packs, which were already getting toasty to the touch. She tied the space blanket around Maxence’s waist and shoulder, fashioning it into a shiny baby sling.
Isaak watched her construction closely. “Insulation, warming gels, and then an outer protective layer. Got it.”
Maxence carefully zipped his black leather motorcycle jacket around himself and the baby while Dree, Batsa, and Isaak yanked on their outerwear, and they started walking out to the bikes.
“I can’t believe you fit her inside your jacket,” Dree said to Max. “I didn’t think there was room.”
He whispered, “I’m not breathing much because I don’t want to squish her. Let’s get to the hospital as soon as we can.”
The afternoon sun was wan but strong enough to warm Dree’s ski suit. Shadows slithered from the mountains into the valley.
Batsa took point, as always, because he had memorized the map and could read the signs.
