by Morris, Jacy
"I don't think so… but I had an epidural so…" Katie left the words hanging.
There would be no epidural here. This was to be a natural birth. She hoped it would be smooth, but Tammy's screaming was getting to her.
"Talk to me, Tammy," Joan said.
"Oh, fuck. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die," she said, her eyes looking feverish.
"You're not going to die," Joan said. But she didn't know.
Mort came in with fresh sheets and towels, though they reeked of wood smoke from drying next to the fire. They slid Tammy onto her side and pushed the sheets under her, pulling them out the other side.
Tammy bellowed in pain once again, and Mort jumped.
"Jesus," he said amid the screaming. "Is she going to be ok?"
"She'll be fine."
Mort stepped up to Tammy's side and grabbed her by the hand, squeezing it. "When it hurts too bad," he said, "you grab my hand, and you take that pain and you squeeze it into me. I'll take some of yours. Ok?"
Tammy nodded her head. Katie wiped Tammy's forehead down with a towel. Tammy bit her lower lip, and tears came from her eyes.
"Have you thought of a name yet?" Joan asked, filling the time between contractions.
Tammy shook her head.
They took the time to come up with names, some comical, some too formal. But Joan knew they wouldn't be able to keep up the game for long.
****
Theresa flinched every time the screams came. They cut through the night like a knife. Then there was another sound, a small thump from outside the compound.
She stopped stirring a sheet in the boiling water and listened again. Tammy's scream had died down, and then she heard it again, the sound of something thumping against the sides of one of the metal trailers.
"I think we got dead," Theresa said.
Liz looked at her, her eyes big and round. "Should we take care of it?" she asked.
"It's only one, I think. We can let it be for now."
The snow fell harder now, adding to the water in the big pot. A snowflake caught in her eyelash, and she had to blink to make it go away.
"You think we're going to scream like that?" Liz asked.
"I don't know."
****
Mort didn't know what it would be like to give birth to a baby, but based upon how much pain Tammy was in, he wouldn't ever want to be pregnant if he was a woman. Tammy squeezed his hand with all of her might, but it wasn't as painful as it had been at first. She was tired now. Sweat pooled in the hollow between her collarbones.
Tammy wasn't there, not fully anyway. The pain was too great for her to concentrate on being who she really was. Right now, she was just a ball of pain, trying to catch her breath.
He tried to calm her down and let her know he was there for her. He didn't even know if she was listening, but he kept up a solid stream of positive thoughts and soothing words, hoping in his head that the whole thing would be over any second.
****
Katie watched the entire affair with an impassionate face. She remembered her own pregnancy and how hard it had been. She remembered the relief at delivering a living son into the world and her complete and total love for the being that had lived inside her for nine months.
She wondered if it would be the same with her next baby? Would she have that feeling again, or would it be like having a tumor removed? The baby stirred inside of her. It would be another month, maybe a month-and-a-half until she would be on that bed, Joan peeping at her cooter. At least she knew Joan. That made it better, she supposed.
She looked at Mort and suppressed a smile. She could see the anxiety on his face. He was trying so hard, but she could tell that he was terrified. He had a big heart, possibly the biggest out of all of them. She hoped that didn't come back to bite him— or get him bit.
Tammy screamed on the bed, the tendon in her wrist popping as she squeezed Mort's hand.
Katie wiped Joan's sweating forehead with the towel. Hours, they had been in this room for hours, and still, there was no sight of the baby. How much longer could this go on?
Tammy's screams were becoming louder, and her grunts and groans steadier. Was something wrong? One thing was for certain, she would be glad when the screaming stopped. It was getting on her nerves. The baby kicked inside of her, and she knew the child within felt the same way.
****
Joan was trying to keep her doctor face on. Be confident. Don't show the worry. Don't show the concern. Just keep coaching. The word "Caesarian" floated across the calm surface of her mind, sending little ripples throughout her brain.
The baby was lined up. It was coming out head first. The umbilical cord was as it should be, which had honestly been her biggest concern. The issue was Tammy's frame. She was small down there; her dilation wasn't where it needed to be to give birth to the baby.
She would give this as long of a chance as she could… that word floated across her mind again, an unmanned pontoon filled with all sorts of complications. Making the incision, pulling the baby free, and then maybe infection. No, there was still time. This could happen the natural way.
Another contraction hit Tammy, and she screamed. Joan didn't know what to do. It finally hit her. I'm out of my league here. With a manual, a textbook, a fucking youtube tutorial, any of those things, and she would have felt more confident. But all she had at her disposal was her own knowledge, the things she remembered from medical school. She was not a surgeon and had never wanted to be a surgeon. She'd never wanted to be a fucking obstetrician either, but here she was.
Keep cool. Keep your doctor face on.
"Katie, I need you to run outside and tell Theresa and Liz to find our sharpest knife. Boil it, and bring it in here."
She thought about the equipment she carried in her bag, some scavenged antibiotics, some Advil. She had one set of sutures, but they weren't designed for something like a Caesarian section. God, if I do this, how am I going to keep her alive. Oh, God.
Keep cool. Keep your doctor face on. You can do this.
Katie ran from the room.
Tammy screamed again, the head of her child pressing to get out. But Tammy was too small. If that baby came out the natural way, it would rip Tammy apart.
She knew the truth of it. She'd been fighting it for an hour. She was going to have to cut her open, or else Tammy would die.
Joan didn't know how she kept sweating; she thought that by now, her body would have run through all of the water in her body. Joan stood up straight and put a hand on Tammy's knee. "Like a Band-Aid," her old instructor had told her. Don't beat around the bush; just get the news out there.
"Tammy, I think we're going to have to do a Caesarian birth."
"A what?" Tammy groaned through clenched teeth.
"A c-section."
Mort looked at Tammy, confused. "What's that?" he asked.
"I'm going to have to operate on her to get the baby out."
"No, no, no, no…" Tammy chanted.
"It's the only way," she said firmly, leaving no room for any doubt.
"No, no, no, no," Tammy repeated.
"It's going to hurt. You might still die, but for you and the baby, it's the best shot you both have to be together. You do want to be there for this baby, don't you, Tammy?"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes," Tammy chanted before another contraction seized her body.
****
Theresa brushed the flat of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. A layer of SPAM grease still resided there. She had hated SPAM as a child. It was too salty, and the smell of it fried in a pan hung in the air forever. But her parents had been poor, and SPAM was cheap. They had SPAM for breakfast. They ate SPAMburgers instead of hamburgers to save money. On the rare occasions that her mother had made salad, she would throw cubes of cut-up SPAM in there with it to class it up a bit. She had grown to detest the meat. But now, with the growing baby inside of her, it tasted like a slice of salted heaven.
Katie came out, duckwalking from t
he ranger station. She was in a hurry. "We need your sharpest knife," Katie said.
"What for?" Liz asked.
"I think Joan's going to do a c-section."
Theresa fell silent, as did Liz. For Theresa, the silence wasn't so much that she was afraid for Tammy; it was that she imagined herself in Tammy's position. Poor Tammy must be scared out of her mind.
"I'll get one," Theresa said.
She waddled off to the trailer. In the small kitchenette, she pulled open the drawers. In truth, most of their knives needed sharpening; they had been dull well before they had come out to the ranger station. Now they were used all the time to cut the bear steaks, which, even though she tenderized the shit out of them, were still kind of tough. She pushed the bulky butcher knife to the side. It was probably the dullest of the bunch, its size useful for everything from slicing onions to hacking off chunks of bear meat for steaks. She didn't think the serrated steak knives would do either. She shuddered at the thought of the serrated edges catching and ripping the flesh of her abdomen. That left the paring knife. Small, mostly useless. She didn't remember a time when she had ever really used it. She hadn't ever pared anything, but they had the knife anyways. She thought it was about the size of a scalpel, at least the ones she had seen on the TV. It was maybe a little larger.
She carried it outside along with a pair of tongs.
The other ladies looked at the knife like it was a live snake. She felt her own pregnant belly quiver with fear just thinking about Joan slicing through her skin with that thing.
She held the knife in the water, letting the hot water boil away any germs that might be lingering on the blade.
"You think Joan knows what she's doing?" Liz asked Katie.
"I don't know," Katie said.
"We must all be fools for letting those men knock us up. We didn't even think about the complications of birth. Just threw our legs up to the sky and said Hallelujah, Jesus, get me pregnant."
"She can do it," Katie said. "If anyone can, she can."
"Ain't that the truth," Liz said.
"Well, I'm glad we got her," Theresa said.
Death was on all of their minds. They lapsed into silence as the snow fell, and the dead banged on the side of the trailers. There were more bangs now. Tammy's shrieks were drawing them.
"How many do you think are out there?" Katie asked.
"I don't want to know. There'll be plenty of time for that tomorrow. We'll get Mort up there to clear 'em out," Liz said.
Theresa nodded her agreement. They had both discussed going up on top of the trailers. But it felt too dangerous at night. Even during the day, they were starting to become wary of the process of climbing up on top of the trailers. Layers of snow and ice made the tops of the trailers more treacherous than they appeared, and neither woman's balance was all that great at the moment with their round bellies growing.
When the handle of the metal tongs warmed up from transferred heat, she knew that the paring knife was ready. She handed the tongs to Katie, and the metal cooled instantly. "Now, don't touch that blade," she said.
Katie, normally quick with a comeback for anything that resembled a command or gentle advice, said nothing. She carried the paring knife into the ranger station with the concentration of an overly competitive child in an egg race.
Though Theresa knew that God had forsaken her a long time ago, she sent up a small prayer for Tammy. It couldn't hurt nothin'.
****
Tammy screamed as the blade bit through her skin. Oh, lord. Oh, Jesus. These were the words that went through her head. This is really happening.
She thought back to the day that she had lain with Keith. It had been a warm day, sweaty. She remembered how the trailer rocked as they had fucked. She had known it hadn't been love. There wasn't anything particularly romantic between the two of them. Keith had been no looker, but he wasn't ugly. Just plain. But it had felt great.
She had listened as Chad had talked to her about procreation and repopulating the world. It had even made sense at the time.
Another slice from the blade sent hot fire through her brain, and she screamed and clutched Mort's hand.
Now it made no sense. With Joan down there carving her up like a turkey, she cursed the day she had ever laid eyes on Chad Mauer. She cursed the day she had ever agreed to fuck Keith Hill, a plain man with next to nothing between the ears. She wasn't glad that he was dead; he hadn't deserved that, and she thought he would have been a good father. He didn't have anything else going on. He would have raised the kid right, to be gentle, to be kind. Keith had always been that, at least. He had showered and tried to comb his hair on the day that they had set for the deed. She thanked him for that.
Another wave of pain shot through her, from the blade or from her own contractions, she didn't know.
She should have never listened to Chad Mauer, but he had been so confident, so sure of himself. He had told her that he would protect her, keep her and her baby safe from the dead. And he had. So she had believed him about the need to repopulate. That's what he called it. Repopulating, like a scientist. She was doing her good for the world.
But now, she might die for her ignorance, her blind belief in a man that she had only barely known from seeing him around the trailer park.
Her teeth ached from her jaw clamping down every time the pain surged. The muscles in her jaw were tired. Her whole body was exhausted, from her jaw to her arms and legs, all the way down to her toes and fingertips. On top of this, she struggled to stay awake. She struggled to stay conscious, though her vision swam as Joan did something else that pulled a scream from her lungs.
She worried that if she lost consciousness, she might never wake up. She worried that she wouldn't be able to lay eyes on the child that she had carried for so long, that she wouldn't even be able to give it a name. So she fought the blackness. She fought the void that pushed in on the edges of her consciousness.
They said words, the people in the room, Katie, Joan, and Mort. They were a soft buzz, their words only occasionally registering in her mind. She just wanted it to be over, but in a good way. Her head swam, the room tilting from side-to-side. No! No! No. No. No…
The pain was too much. The edges of the room went black, closing in on her. There was another slice from Joan, and she felt the pain, but she didn't know what to do with it. Then she was gone.
****
Dez cocked her head to the side. The screaming had stopped. She had listened to the steady stream of cursing and screams for hours, shutting it out by carving more swear words into the walls of the cabin.
The knife she held in her hand had been a gift from him, from the bastard that had knocked her up. She didn't want the baby, but she had been able to mostly put the concept of it out of her mind, even as her belly swelled, and her body began to change. She had been able to ignore it. The truth was, she was scared of what would happen, and all the screaming from the room across the hall had broken through her defenses, tearing them down and leaving them in a wreck at her feet.
That could be her in the other room. That would be her, screaming nonstop for hours on end. She chewed the inside of her lip, wondering why the screaming had stopped. Was Tammy dead? She held the knife in her hand, turning it over and over, focusing on it so her mind wouldn't run away to a different place. It needed sharpening. The way she had been using it had dulled the knife to the point of near worthlessness. It might as well be a butter knife.
She knew there was a whetstone in some of Chad's things. They were still bundled in the corner, Chad's things. She had yet to go through them. She thought that touching his possessions would drive her insane. She jammed the knife into the wooden wall of the ranger station. The wood shuddered from the force. A howling wind shot through the night, or was it morning now? Either way, it was still dark out.
She pulled the knife from the wood. That could be her in there. Suddenly, she had to see. She folded the knife and put it in her pocket. There would be time to sharpen
it later. She stood at the closed door of her room for a heartbeat, and then she threw it open. She crossed the narrow hallway and peeked into the room. She could smell the blood, the shit, the piss.
On the bed, Tammy's head lolled to the side, and she wondered if she had died. Oh, God. She could die. Dez didn't want to die giving birth. She could think of no worse way to go. It would be like running a marathon, only to have your heart burst within sight of the finish line.
Joan stood with her back to her, bending over Tammy's unconscious body. Blood soaked the sheets, and Dez's hand went to her mouth involuntarily. Tammy was dead. There was no doubt about that.
Katie hunched over with a towel in her hands, wiping the sweat away from Joan's forehead, concern and concentration etched on Joan's face in equal parts. Mort stood to Joan's right, holding Tammy's limp hand. He whispered words softly, tears running from his eyes.
Dez slipped the knife from her pocket. It was dull, but it could be of use. If Tammy woke, she would stop her. She was toying with moving to the head of the bed to finish Tammy off when Joan stood up, a wet, wriggling thing in her hands. It was a baby, normal looking. Joan slapped it on its bottom, and then there was a wet cry.
Dez backed away from the room, the shock of new life driving her away. It was a boy. She forgot about Tammy and ran from the cabin.
****
Outside, snow fell audibly, dropping from a thousand feet in the air to land with the tiniest of thuds on the ice-crusted surface of the snow. The cloud above had a million such flakes, a steady bombardment that it could keep up for hours.
Outside the compound, the snow piled up, flake by flake, minute by minute. Cold feet, frozen like blocks of ice, paced outside the compound, smashing the snow, smashing the snowflakes, compacting them, and with each step, those cold feet trod higher and higher.
Hands like frozen steaks pounded on the thin metal of the trailers, producing a dull bang that traveled throughout the forest, passing through leafless branches and branches covered in pine needles, until the bang found its way into the rotten earlobes of a dead thing. The dead thing rocked in a circle, focusing on the bang.
