She spoke slowly in order to be understood.
‘All right.’
‘Good. You had food?’
‘Yes.’
Kristina again looked around at the people sprawled on the hard deck, hunger, fear, worry in every pair of eyes watching her. If only she could fix everything for all of them. Back to Zala. ‘Can you help me talk to a woman who needs a doctor to examine...? To look at her baby.’
‘I...’ Zala tapped her chest. ‘I say what you say my way?’
‘Yes.’ Kristina nodded. ‘I’ll keep it simple.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘That’s all right.’ She reached for the girl’s hand, hesitated. Touching didn’t always mean the same thing to people from the Sudan as it did to Westerners. Retracting her hand, she said, ‘Come with me.’
Back in the treatment room, persistent Chase had returned to his pregnant patient, holding out a water bottle and talking softly, even though not a word was being understood. Around here it was all about the tone of voice and not the words. ‘I think we’re in labour,’ he told Kristina.
‘How do you know?’
‘The way her body stiffens every three minutes.’
Yea, she got her first smile of the morning. He should do that more often, it lightened the green of his eyes to that of a summer’s day in the fields. And set her heart dancing. Damn.
‘She’s not going to want you here.’ Kristina focused on the woman, avoiding getting tangled up in Chase’s searching looks and that blood-warming smile. ‘Do we know of any problems that could make delivery difficult?’
The woman caught her breath and pushed around the tightening in her extended belly.
‘Minor fever. Exhaustion that’s probably due to the pregnancy.’
‘Fingers crossed the baby hasn’t been infected with anything.’ Kristina indicated to Zala to move closer. ‘This woman’s having a baby.’
Zala nodded as if to say, So what? Seeing a birth was probably part of everyday life for her. There’d be no racing off to a hospital or calling out the midwife where she came from.
‘I’m clearing all male staff to the other side of the room,’ Chase said. ‘Call me if you need anything.’
‘I don’t think I’ve got much of a role here either,’ she said, before turning to the woman Zala said was called Marjali. Light stretch marks on the skin covering the extended abdomen confirmed this was not her first pregnancy. ‘She’ll know what to do as much as I do.’ More than I do.
Sweat shone on the woman’s forehead as she pushed and groaned. Zala sat at her other side and chattered in short, sharp sentences before telling Kristina, ‘Four babies. Two alive. On boat with her and father.’
‘Are they all right?’ What had happened to the other children? Kristina’s heart squeezed. She’d never get used to the despair these people faced daily. There were times she felt so inadequate she wondered if it would be better to leave them to what they were used to and not offer promises through medicine. But she hadn’t become a doctor only to turn her back on anyone needing her skills.
When her twelve weeks with Medicine For All were up she’d head back to England. She wouldn’t do another stint on the ship. It was too distressing. Many of the medical people who worked in the organisation coped well with—or managed to hide—their emotions. She struggled to do either.
A sharp cry brought Kristina back to the marvel that lay before her. The baby’s head was crowning while Zala chattered, excitement filling her dark eyes.
Kristina smiled as she watched the baby inching its way into the world. What was it like to give birth? To have a baby of your own? To hold him or her in your arms for the first time? She never gave much thought to it, afraid she wasn’t capable of being a good mother. Her own mother had taken her to Los Angeles when she’d left her father, but had been quick to hand her back when the new man in her life said he’d marry her as long as Kris wasn’t part of the package.
The man’s wealth spoke strongly to her mother’s lifelong fear of ever being poor again, and Kristina had been returned to England and her other parent, who’d immediately deposited her in boarding school because he’d been too busy to be there for her.
A sharp cry from Marjali and a tiny new life with the cutest face and a smattering of tight curls was delivered with one final push.
‘Oh, he’s beautiful.’ Kristina’s eyes moistened as she cut the cord and took the baby to check his temperature and general appearance before placing him on the scales attached to the nearby wall. Back home, with a weight of two kilograms, he’d have been admitted to the neonatal unit. Here all they could do was get nutrients into him so he might put on a gram or two before leaving. It could’ve been worse given the circumstances. Laying baby across his mother’s tummy, she said, ‘You made it look easy.’
Zala looked perplexed. ‘Women have babies. It’s normal.’
‘You’re right.’ Again she wondered about the odds of having her own baby. Strange how she was thinking about this. She hadn’t found a man to love her no matter what, let alone have a baby with, a man who wouldn’t leave her to fend for herself while he went off to follow his own dreams. That should be enough to knock her attraction to Chase out of the paddock. Since joining this ship she’d seen him playing with some of the youngsters who came on board, laughing with them, chasing a football and making sure each kid had a turn at scoring a goal. He understood them, enjoyed them, so why not want a family?
Crossing to a cupboard for cloths to clean Marjali, she passed Chase. ‘All done. One new little man has arrived in the world.’
‘That was fast. Does the baby appear healthy? In as much as you can tell without doing tests?’
‘A bit underweight.’
‘We’ll keep an eye on him while he’s with us.’ That was Chase-speak for making sure there were extra rations for Marjali over the coming days. What happened after she left the ship was out of their hands. Their job was to deal with these people for the time they were in their care, and then move on to the next intake.
‘Life’s so complex, yet Marjali makes this seem simple,’ she sighed, watching the woman cradling her son. Zala sat cross-legged, still talking non-stop, reaching out to touch the tiny bundle pushing into his mother’s breast, not knowing what to do when he found a nipple. But his mother did. Soon he was suckling. Whether he was getting anything nutritious was unlikely given Marjali’s malnourished condition.
‘Very unlucky for some,’ Chase said. Then looked directly at her, stealing her breath. ‘Sorry if that sounds simplistic.’
‘A lot of how our lives turn out comes down to where we are born, doesn’t it?’ There were the wild cards that life dealt when a person wasn’t looking but luck did contribute to how and where he or she sorted out those problems.
‘You think?’ His eyes sparkled and his mouth lifted into a weary smile.
‘I
