“I knowwhyyou did it.” He’d heard the girl’s cries, each one sending shivers down his spine. The screams of the injured and dying were nothing new to him, but the girl’s cries had gotten beneath his skin. “Whyyou did it doesn’t matter—not to those men. I spent the next twenty minutes talking them down. Some of them wanted to fetch the nearest Imam. You could have been dragged out by your headscarf and flogged. You put the other midwives, the students, the staff, including Farzad and his men, at risk.”
Her face paled, but her chin went up. “What was I supposed to do—watch her suffer for endless hours and then die? Do you have any idea how painful that would have been? Oh, wait, you’re a man, so you have no clue.”
“You haven’t had any babies—not that I know of, anyway. How can you have more personal insight into how painful it is than I do?”
“I’m amidwife! I hold their hands. I see the pain in their eyes every time they have a contraction. I see their despair when labor drags on.”
Against his better judgment, Derek reached over, cupped her cheek. “You can’t save everyone, Jenna.”
She drew away from his touch. “Are we done?”
“Farzad knows. I told him I would talk to you so that he wouldn’t have to.”
Without another word, she opened the door, hopped to the ground, and disappeared inside the compound.
* * *
“The head is out.The worst of your pain is over.” Jenna put her hands atop Lailoma’s, guiding her as she supported the baby’s head while the other students watched. “Check to see that the cord isn’t around its neck.”
With no cord, all the baby needed was another push.
“Take a deep breath and push,” Jenna said to the mother, a twenty-three-year-old who was about to give birth to her fourth baby.
The woman’s mother-in-law held her hand. “Push! Push!”
Jenna shifted Lailoma’s hands as the baby began to turn. “The baby will rotate so that the shoulders can be born. It doesn’t matter which direction it turns. Sometimes the shoulders can get stuck, and that’s an emergency.”
They had talked about shoulder dystocia in class, but Jenna could tell that it wasn’t going to be a problem this time.
The mother let out a shriek as first one shoulder and then the next emerged. The baby slipped from its mother’s body and into Lailoma’s hands in a rush of amniotic fluid, flinging its little arms out as if in surprise and letting out a lusty wail.
“It’s a boy!” Lailoma’s face lit up with a smile. “You have another son.”
Jenna let Lailoma take over, watching as she tucked the baby into a blanket and handed him to his mother. “It’s important to give her the oxytocin injection as soon as you can. If the baby weren’t breathing, you would need to treat him before giving the mother the injection. Those first few minutes are important for the baby’s survival.”
This little guy was already using his lungs to their full capacity, his healthy cries making everyone in the room smile.
Lailoma reached for the prepared syringe and injected the life-saving hormone into the mother’s thigh then went about clamping and cutting the cord.
Jenna’s phone buzzed, but she didn’t have time to check it. She hadn’t spoken to Derek since the day before yesterday in his Land Cruiser. He’d been so angry with her, as if she’d done something deliberately to endanger everyone.
Stop thinking about him.
“After the baby is safe and breathing and the afterbirth has been safely delivered, we will check the mother for birth injuries—vaginal tears, fistula, anything that might require treatment.”
Everything had gone as it should this time—no hemorrhaging, no retained placenta, no vaginal tears—giving Jenna time to focus on lessons about newborn care. Here, midwives were often the first and only people to screen new babies for problems. A proper neonatal evaluation could save a child’s life.
Under Jenna’s supervision, Lailoma checked for hip dysplasia, listened to his heart and lungs, and put ilotycin ointment in his eyes. Then she gave him an injection of vitamin K and a bath, and placed him, diapered and swaddled, in his grandmother’s waiting arms.
A toothless smile on her face, she carried the baby out to the waiting area so his father could see him—and whisper the name of God in his ear, a sweet tradition known as theazan kawal.
Jenna’s sat phone buzzed again. She peeled off her gloves, drew the phone from her pocket, and read his first message.
Do not come outside! A mullah is here to speak with Farzad about you.
Shit.
Pulse racing, she scrolled to the second.