by Amanda Heger
“Sorry,” he said. “I am not making sense.”
Annie crouched beside him. “Tell me what to do as I go, okay?”
He nodded.
She reached into the birth canal without an ounce of fear in her features. “I feel the neck, I think. Yes, definitely the neck.”
“Good. Reach further.”
“And the chin…I think.”
“Find the baby’s nose. You will have to reach past the cervix.”
“Its nose?” Her lips set in a thin, harsh line, and her eyelids snapped shut. “What will it feel like?”
He racked his brain, but everything was so damn foggy. “Like a nose.”
She opened her eyes to scowl at him, nostrils flaring. “Okay, thanks.”
“No, I did not mean…It will be on the underside. See how the baby’s toes are pointing at the ground?” He pulled back the blankets to show her.
She nodded and closed her eyes again. A handful of seconds passed in silence except for Angela’s intermittent moans, and his heart hammered against his ribs.
“Got it. I think.” Annie twisted her shoulder, reaching a bit further as Angela let out a wail. “Definitely. I feel the nose.”
Relief washed through him, neither he nor the midwife had been able to squeeze past the infant’s chin. “I am going to have her push. Keep your fingers around the nose so the head does not move.”
“But don’t we want it to move?”
“I mean, do not let it turn to the side. Keep it straight, yes?” She nodded, and he went on. “Guide the face down with your hand. I will work on the rest of the body.”
Angela whimpered. Felipe looked into her slack face and then into her mother’s tear-streaked one. He’d never seen a midwife cry. They were steely, solid, unshakable. They had to be, dealing with this kind of work every day. But this wasn’t everyday work.
“One more push,” he said. “Angela,” he waited until the girl opened her eyes and stared at him, “push with everything you have.”
She let out a deep, guttural moan. Annie must have realized what was happening, because he didn’t have to translate for her. Her eyes snapped shut, and the infant’s body moved downward a fraction of an inch.
Angela slumped against her mother, taking a portion of the progress they’d made with her. Both he and the midwife began talking at once, throwing ideas and fearful, barbed words at one another.
Annie’s knee brushed his as she stood. Her jaw set and her gloved fingers squeezed into balls. “Stop it,” she shouted over them. “I can’t think.” Everyone fell into silence, and she squatted next to Angela, dipping her head low to force the girl to meet her eyes. “Tell her I felt the baby’s face.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
He did.
“Tell her that her baby has fat little cheeks.”
He did.
“Tell her it’s a boy.”
Felipe glanced at the infant between his hands. She was right. He’d hadn’t stopped to look. “Es un niño,” he said.
“Now tell her we need her to push one more time. Tell her she can do it. For her baby boy.”
He translated the words. Angela’s features stayed slack and loose, but she gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Okay.” Annie lowered herself to the ground beneath the girl’s legs. “I’ve got the nose,” she said a few seconds later. “Let’s do this.”
Angela groaned and grunted as her mother chanted in her ear. Annie’s eyes clamped shut, the freckles across her cheeks and nose scrunching in concentration.
One minute later, the baby boy let out his first cry.
Day Eleven
The sun sizzled Annie’s already-sunburned neck, and the constant whir of the boat motor and the distant call of birds lulled her to the edge of sleep. But Phillip pelted her with question after question about yesterday’s events, and the memory of delivering that baby kept Annie awake, her body buzzing as if she’d downed three espresso shots and chased them with one of those chalky energy drinks.
“Man. I can’t believe you got to deliver a baby,” he said.
“It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.” She’d replayed the labor and delivery dozens of times since yesterday, first mentally, then to Marisol, and then to her journal—pouring every last detail into the pages. And as she lay in the hammock, too keyed up to sleep, she went over it again, her breath still catching as she remembered the moment the baby began to move.
“It’d be hard to top that,” Phillip said. “I mean, I’ve had my hands in a few honeypots, and it’s pretty awesome.”
“Honeypots?” Annie scrunched her forehead, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “What? No. Honeypots? Who says that?” The laughter bubbled over. “Honeypots. I think you just ruined Winnie the Pooh for me. Forever.”
After three long hours in the boat, they arrived in the same village where they’d put on their first clinic, and the sights brought a rush of memories—the strange looks, being overwhelmed with the language, the mud pit, Felipe’s bad jokes. It all stared back at her in the winding dirt road and the smattering of houses. She shouldered her pack and followed the group to the edge of the village. On their way, people waved from windows and stilted front porches. The truck sat untouched, still encased in a crust of mud.
Air conditioning. Giddiness bubbled inside her, and she closed her eyes, imagining her face in front of the vent. “Can I ride inside with you?” she asked Juan. He frowned. “Um, puedo paseo inside?” She pointed at the front passenger seat.
“Sí, sí.”
Annie scrambled into the cab. Juan opened the driver’s door, and Marisol squeezed between them. He jammed the key in the ignition, and Annie waited, ready for the roar of the engine and the blast of hot air that signaled the air conditioner coming to life. But the truck only hacked and sputtered before it gave up altogether.
Juan turned the key again, and this time there was nothing. Not even a sickly cough from the engine. He popped the hood, muttering and smacking his palm on the wheel. She didn’t need advanced Spanish to get the gist of it. Juan got out, and Annie opened her door to let in fresh air, her legs sticking to the seat as she moved.
“So…” Marisol raised one side of her mouth in a lopsided, trouble-making smile.
“So, what? I guess the truck is broken?”
“So you and Felipe have made up, yes?” The other corner of her mouth lifted, and Marisol’s grin consumed half her face.
“Uh, yeah. I guess. I tried to apologize, but…” She shrugged. He didn’t seem angry about the Pink Stringer incident anymore, but there was still a wall there. One that hadn’t been there a few days before.
“You are blushing.” Marisol made the last word a song, drawing it out over several unbearable moments.
The heat simmering below the surface of Annie’s skin caught, and fire burned in her face. “It’s…I just…He…”
“Spit it.”
The inside of the truck seemed to grow even hotter, and Annie poked her head out of the open door and gulped in the ever-so-slightly cooler air. “I thought there was something there, you know? But—”
Marisol threw her hands to her mouth, and a deep cackle escaped between her fingers. “I knew it!”
“Knew what?”
Marisol sat up as tall as her tiny frame would let her. “That you would not be able to stay away from each other. I knew it since the day I told him you were coming to Nicaragua.”
Annie’s heart ping-ponged through her chest, shooting between elation and dread, once in a while hitting a little bit of fear on its way.
“What is wrong?” Marisol fanned herself. “You look like…Oh no. Are you going to be sick again? It is very hot in this—”
“No. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
Her friend raised both eyebrows and tucked her chin toward her chest. Trying to sneak a lie past Marisol had always been like trying to sneak past a bloodhound while wearing a ball gown made from sirloin steaks.<
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Annie sighed. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea. My boyfriend and I broke up a few weeks ago, and…” she sighed. I’m not ready for this, is what she wanted to tell her friend. Definitely not ready. But the words wouldn’t come.
“You did not tell me this.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it. It was easier to try to forget.” And she had managed to forget. Not Mike necessarily, but in the midst of everything that had happened, she’d forgotten to be sad. Worrying about who her ex was hooking up with in her absence didn’t even make it into her top ten list of problems—not when she was dealing with things like helping a woman give birth or staring down the barrel of a rifle. Or the way her world shifted when Felipe smiled at her. “It doesn’t matter. I obviously misinterpreted things. Besides, I’m leaving soon anyway.”
“Mi Anita, you will be here for,” Marisol counted on her fingers, “seventeen more days.”
“Exactly.”
“Seventeen days is enough to make some very good memories. Trust me. I am the Cupid of Nicaragua.”
“Vamos.” Juan stood at the door, waving them out of the truck.
Annie slid out and smoothed her sticky clothes, grateful to be out from under Marisol’s microscope. “What’s going on?”
“Muerto,” Juan said.
“Dead?”
“What do we do?” Phillip asked. He stood with his head ducked under the hood and his hands behind his back, like a child afraid of breaking his mother’s fine china.
Annie felt Felipe’s presence behind her even before he spoke. It made her legs restless and her mouth dry.
“We will get a ride,” he said.
“From who?” she asked. Other than their truck, there wasn’t a single motor vehicle in sight.
“Someone will come.”
“You mean hitchhike?” Her mind flew to the hold-up—those angry boys with their guns and threats. She wouldn’t do that again. Couldn’t.
“Sí.”
Marisol patted her arm and gave a small nod. “It is okay, not like in the States.”
“I think it’s better if we don’t.” Phillip slammed the hood.
Juan shot him a glare before turning to Annie. “You still have your electric gun, no?” He made a buzzing sound before jerking his limbs in every direction.
She smiled despite the tightness in her chest. “No. Muerto.”
Marisol looped an arm through Annie’s and led the group down the dirt path to the rutted, unpaved highway. Tiny gnats swarmed their faces, and the road curved far into the distance—empty and barren.
The five of them sat, then stood, then sat some more. Marisol dug a paperback out of her bag and leaned against Phillip, devouring the pages. Annie had forgotten how much her friend loved to read. When they were in high school, Marisol read every piece of fiction in Annie’s house—including the box of musty Babysitter’s Club books they’d unearthed in the basement.
She turned away from them and closed her eyes, letting the breeze rush across her sweaty skin. The grass tickled her arms and legs as she forced her attention to the most pressing of her problems: hitchhiking. Cold fear settled into her belly as she composed a mental list of every self-defense move she’d ever read about, learned, or seen on television. It stalled out around number four.
“What are you doing?” Felipe sat next to her, resting his elbows on his knees.
Annie looked at her hands. At some point in her self-defense review, she’d straightened her fingers into firm lines, Karate Kid style. “Nothing.” She stuffed her hands underneath her legs.
“Annie, yesterday I—”
“Thank you. For yesterday. For trusting me.”
He shook his head. “I am the one saying thank you. You saved them.”
“How about this?” She took a stab at knocking down that wall. “You forgive me for the whole electrocution thing, and we’ll call it even?”
“Deal.” He rolled forward as if to stand, the wall still clearly intact.
“What do you do when you aren’t on these trips? Do you work at a hospital?” The words ran from her mouth, quick and nearly unintelligible.
“Ahora has a clinic outside of Managua,” he said, sitting back down. “I work there. Marisol too.”
“Juan?”
“No, he is a voluntario.” They both looked over. Juan lay on his back with his hands folded across his chest, eyes closed. “Do not tell him you know,” Felipe said. “His head gets big.”
Annie smiled. “I won’t.”
Something rumbled, and she tensed, waiting for a vehicle to come tearing down the road.
“Thunder.”
“Do you think it’s going to rain?” The sky was a thin gray blue, but there were no clouds.
“Maybe.”
She took a deep breath and let the exhale rush through her teeth. “Tell me something else about you.”
“Like what?” He looked at the grass then at her.
“What do you do when you aren’t working?”
“Baseball,” he said, the dimple coming out. “I coach a team. They are terrible.”
“They can’t be that bad.”
“They are.” He rolled onto his back. “But they are five and six years old, so no one minds very much. You?” he asked.
She lay beside him, letting the grass tickle the back of her neck. “I don’t play baseball.”
“No, what do you do? Besides school and spending time with your boyfriend.”
For a fleeting moment, she considered making something up. Something that would put her in the same league as a gorgeous doctor who hikes out into the rainforest to save people and spends his free time coaching pee-wee baseball. “No boyfriend. I’m in a sorority. Treasurer. I handle all the money.” So basically nothing.
“But your photo album.”
“What about it?” There was nothing exciting in there. Random photos of her dad and her cat. A sorority formal or two.
A lumpy, foreign sound hummed among the buzz of insects and muted conversation. In the distance, a dirty canvas-covered flatbed truck rumbled along, and two women and a man already hung from the steel poles tenting the fabric. The mud-coated monstrosity lumbered toward them, and she jolted up, not giving Felipe a chance to confirm the paltriness of her accomplishments.
• • •
The vehicle rolled toward them in a cloud of dust. After a nod from the portly driver, Felipe stepped onto the rail and pulled Annie up next to him. No boyfriend. “Come on, Americana.”
She gripped a pole with both hands, and her fingers slid in the mix of grime and sweat. She wiped them on her shorts and tried again.
“¿Bien?” He put a hand above hers.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I think so.”
Phillip and Marisol managed to squeeze in the bed, perched on a tower of hay. Juan grabbed a free spot on the other side of the truck bed.
The driver hit the gas, and Annie wound both arms around the pole, pulling her body and face close to the dirty metal.
Felipe tried not to laugh. “If you relax your muscles, it will be easier.”
She shook her head, plastering herself to the pole.
“Annie?” He leaned in closer, struggling to be heard over the purr of the engine. “This is going to be a very long ride. Do you want me to ask someone to trade places with you?”
She stared straight ahead, and even her lips barely moved. “No.”
She will deliver a baby without blinking but cannot ride on the back of a truck. He shifted into his own space, but Annie’s hand darted behind her and grabbed his. With one stilted movement, she wrapped his free arm around her waist, turning him into a human seatbelt.
The truck picked up speed, and the air made her hair whip against his face. He shuffled forward and slid his body behind hers. Annie’s heart pounded so hard, he could feel it in his chest, and the pace of it nearly met his own—although it wasn’t the hitchhiking that made his blood race.
One glorious hour later, they a
rrived in Sahsa. Felipe peeled himself from the curve of her hip and the softness of her hair.
“Where are we going? Is there, like, a hotel here?” Phillip ran a hand through his windblown hair as they crossed the road.
“We will stay here.” Felipe pointed to the building in front of them. A two-room building made of cinder blocks and topped with tin. Sahsa, the town where both he and Marisol had been born, had a few stores, one clinic staffed by a rotation of three local nurses, and a handful of bars. But no hotels.
“This is the casa materna. No one uses it,” Marisol said, unlocking the door. “Except us.”
“Casa de materna? Who’s Materna?” Phillip asked.
Beside him, Annie laughed. “It’s like a maternity home,” she said.
A rush of hot, stale air hit Felipe’s face as he stepped into the building. A layer of grit coated the thin, plastic mattresses in the front room, all the beds clearly unused since the last time they’d stayed. He walked through the narrow space between the beds and pulled back the threadbare white sheet separating the two rooms.
Sweat rolled down his back. “Open the windows,” he said as he turned and collided with Annie.
Her pink cheeks glistened with sweat. “So this is where we’re staying for the next few nights?” She stared at a cracked porcelain sink along the wall. “And there’s running water? What if someone wants to use the home while we’re here?”
Felipe could practically see her salivating.
“Would we get to help?” she asked.
“Relax, Doctora,” Marisol called out. “No one is due this week.”
“Good.” Phillip plopped down on the mattress closest to the door. “I can’t wait to sleep in a real bed.”
“I did not know you did much sleeping.” Juan’s mustache twitched.
“Careful, old man.” Marisol wagged a finger at him. “If you are not nice, I will set a swarm of horseflies loose under your sheets.”
Felipe turned to the corner, where an oblong table brimmed with boxes and other supplies. He dug through them as Juan and Marisol threw harmless threats at one another. “Your supplies.” He handed a box to Annie.
