Close Pursuit. Cindy Dees

      It was Alex’s turn to swear. He unceremoniously shoved the girl onto her back to examine her. “Baby’s trying to crown,” he muttered. “Tell her to push with the next contraction.”

      Katie was so relieved she could cry as she relayed the instruction to the girl. The contraction came, and the girl strained, bearing down in the age-old way as Katie supported her shoulders from behind.

      “Again,” Alex ordered.

      “Again.”

      After several more contractions, Alex fumbled in the rucksack and pulled out a flashlight. Covering himself with the girl’s burka, he took a quick look at affairs. When he emerged, he spoke so calmly in English, Katie’s blood ran cold before she even comprehended his words.

      “Tell her to rest for a while and just try to breathe through the contractions.”

      He’d never told a woman to take a break in the middle of a delivery before. Just the opposite in fact. He always had her give the women pep talks and tell them at all costs to keep pushing until it was over.

      She relayed the instruction and then murmured, “What’s up?”

      “This kid’s head is too big to pass through the pelvic opening. The baby can’t be born.”

      “What do we do now?” she asked as calmly as her exploding alarm would let her.

      “Two choices. Leave the girl and her baby here to die. Or do a C-section and save the kid.”

      “And the mother?”

      “It’s a major surgery. If blood loss doesn’t get her, shock and hypothermia may. And then there’s the problem of noise. If I cut her open without anesthesia, she’s likely to scream her head off and get us all killed.”

      Katie stared at the shadows wreathing his face. How in the hell were they supposed to choose between those options?

      He stared back. At length, he muttered, “Welcome to playing God.”

      A barrage of gunfire below them made her jump. For a minute there she’d forgotten about the war raging outside. The girl lying on the ground beside her panted fast and hard as another contraction gripped her.

      “What would you do?” Alex asked quietly.

      Katie shook her head, horrified to the core of her being. “Ask the mother. It’s her baby. Her life.”

      “How very pro-choice of you,” Alex replied wryly. Then he said more sharply, “So do it. Ask her.”

      Katie was shocked that he had declined to make a unilateral decision. It was so very...human...of him. She turned to the mother and waited out the end of the contraction.

      Holding the girl’s hand, she said quietly, “Your baby is too big to be born this way. Doctor Alex can cut the baby from your belly, but he has no medicine for the pain. If you make any noise, we will all die.” She took a deep breath and added reluctantly, “You may die from the surgery.”

      “If I have no surgery?” the girl asked.

      Katie relayed the question, and Alex outlined the answer sentence by sentence as she translated.

      “You will become exhausted eventually. The placenta will separate from your uterus. Your baby will suffocate and die, and you will begin to hemorrhage. That means you will bleed inside your body. You will die from blood loss.”

      The girl was silent, considering her options. “I hate this baby. I do not care if it lives. But I want to live.”

      Alex nodded briskly. “Then the baby must come out of you.”

      Katie watched as he pulled out a scalpel, clamps and what she recognized as suture materials. He spread a towel on the ground under the girl and another beside himself.

      “How are we going to keep her quiet?” she asked.

      “If we’re lucky, she’ll pass out fast.”

      “That’s not encouraging.”

      “Since we’re being so democratic about this, ask her,” he suggested. “I’ll try to time the incision for during an artillery barrage. She’ll have to do the rest.”

      Katie spoke briefly to the girl. Determination entered the girl’s eyes, and Katie thought that she was more scared than the girl at this point. The girl twisted a length of her burka and told Katie to hold it in her mouth for her when the time came.

      “Ready?” Alex murmured from his crouched position between the girl’s legs. The girl’s grotesquely distended belly, now bared to the cold air, was pale in the darkness. How on earth was Alex going to do a C-section in these conditions?

      The girl put the gag in her mouth, and Katie grasped the ends of it, her entire body shaking with terror. The girl wasn’t shaking much less.

      “Next explosion,” Alex murmured, scalpel poised.

      Kaboom!

      Alex slashed. The girl screamed. The night lit up and blood spouted black and wet from the girl’s belly. A second slash, and the girl thrashed wildly.

      “Hold her down,” Alex ground out. “Placenta’s separating. She’s hemorrhaging.”

      Katie leaned on the cloth gag, pinning the girl’s head to the ground. A knee across the girl’s shoulders helped hold her in place, while Alex knelt on the girl’s thighs. He worked fast, and Katie did her level best not to look at the gore unfolding.

      Instead, she stared into the girl’s panicked, animalistic eyes. All humanity drained out of the girl as she screamed against the gag again and again. And then, just like that, the girl went limp. Her eyes glazed over.

      Is she dead? Katie fumbled under the girl’s jaw for a pulse.

      “Thank God,” Alex breathed. He worked even faster, hacking the baby free of its mother’s body.

      Katie was shocked at how fast Alex had the baby out. Thirty seconds, maybe, all told. A lifetime for that poor girl, though.

      “I can’t find a pulse,” she told him frantically.

      “First things first,” he snapped. “Gotta get the kid breathing.”

      The baby let out a wail that he quickly muffled with a hand over its mouth. Alex shoved the baby at her fast. “Keep it quiet.”

      Like she had the first idea how to silence a newborn infant? The baby was slippery with blood and white, greasy gook. Quickly, she wrapped the child in the spare towel Alex had laid out and slipped the child down inside her coat for warmth, which was a trick while keeping a hand over the crying child’s mouth. She hoped she wasn’t suffocating the poor thing. What a hell of a way to be born.

      “Hold the flashlight,” Alex ordered.

      She didn’t have three hands, for crying out loud. But he was probably doing the work of three surgeons right now, so she didn’t complain. Kneeling awkwardly, she kept the baby’s mouth covered as it slid farther down in her coat and held the flashlight in her free hand where Alex pointed it.

      He worked frantically on the mother, his hands flying.

      “How’s she doing?”

      “Bleeding all over the place. I’m losing her,” he gritted out.

      Another round of gunfire from nearby made Katie jump and the baby cry even louder. She made hushing noises into her coat even though she doubted they would have any effect on the squalling infant.

      Alex started to swear in a steady stream under his breath, and in the light of the next mortar, his face looked gray. She risked a glance down. There was blood everywhere. A huge pool of it lay under the girl. The formerly white towel was now black with it. And where Alex’s hands worked inside the girl, his fingers disappeared in a flowing puddle of it. Streams of blood trickled down the girl’s belly