The baby’s position moves.
Closing my eyes so I can concentrate, I join the effort as well, but I am going in, not out. More of my fingertips make contact with the tiny skull, and I know what has happened. The baby is not face down. It’s oriented to the side. So the shoulders are not passing through the wide part of the hips, but rather they are stuck on the pelvic bone.
“Harder!” I have to yell over Lena’s growling. “Harder—”
The woman lets out a horrible scream, but it’s not about pain. It’s anger. It’s a warrior’s howl of fight.
“That’s it, that’s what we need!”
Another round of growling from her starts up, low at first, growing in volume. And then she screams again as her husband abruptly repositions himself, straightens his arms, and tilts all of his body weight into the downward thrust of his palms.
And then nothing happens.
No matter the effort we all do, no matter the woman’s heroic straining or her husband’s determined force, the baby stays where it is. Even as a fresh wash of blood hits my hands, and I begin to shake from the force I am putting into trying to grab on to the slick head, nothing seems to help—
The infant explodes out of the blockage with such velocity that its warm, slippery little body skates up my arms. I catch it in time, and immediately drag some of the sheets over to cover the tiny thing.
There is no cry. There is only floppy limbs and a still body.
I am not gentle. I rub the sheeting over the fresh skin with vigor.
“My baby…” Lena says weakly, her head lolling to the side.
“What is wrong?” the husband begs. As if he’s confusing the question with a prayer. Or maybe for him, it’s both.
“My baby, my—”
The piercing cry of the bairn is so loud, my ears ring, and yet never, ever, have I heard such a beautiful sound in all my years.
Life has won. Death has lost. And neither were my doing.
Instantly, the gray flesh becomes flush with a pink, healthy glow.
Tears come to my eyes as I turn to the woman and her husband, and lay the gift upon her breast.
“Here she is,” I choke out. “Here… is your daughter.”
Forty-FourSunshine at Night.
As I watch Ronl and Lena marvel at what they created together, and what she brought into the world with his help, I fall back and catch my breath. When I go to wipe a strand of hair out of my face, I catch sight of the blood on my hands and glance down. The afterbirth has been passed—but the bleeding is like a faucet running out of her.
We are not finished, and we still have no time.
After I quickly cut the cord with the knife by the basin, I scramble off the bed, and plunge my hands back into the basin. When the husband looks up with grateful tears, I hold my palm out to stop the emotion so clearly welling within him.
“You must trust me to get the herbs she needs.”
As I nod sharply between her legs, he looks down at the red sheets and shudders with fear.
“Go,” he croaks. “Anything, take anything.”
I’m nodding as I hit the floor running. Breaking out of the bedroom, I’m only vaguely aware of Merc standing in their little kitchen, as out of place as any mountain would be indoors. As his eyes pass over me, he mutters something under his breath, and I can guess my clothes are covered with blood.
“I don’t have time to explain.” I rush past him, and push my way out into the shop. “I need, I need…”
My eyes bounce around at all the jars, and instead of seeing what’s in them, the signs in the foreign language are the only things that register. Panic tightens a grip on my throat as I blink and remember all the blood on that bed. This is not a success if the bairn lives, and the mother dies—
“What can I do?”
