Chapter 0064
“Gaaahh!”
“I’m sorry I startled you.” Ever heard of a domineering voice try to sound gentle and harmless? Tempest has in the movies, but it doesn’t fit with their character. There is an incongruity that makes the person seem like a mafia thug or a hitman. A better description would be a man with a girly voice, but in this case it is a woman with a deep masculine voice.
Was it Mike Tyson who has a buff body but sounded like a girl? Tempest though it was him. The media always makes fun of him.
Ah well.
Tempest doesn’t remember the celebrities and she doesn’t have google to look it up.
A pink haired woman with striking violet eyes, dressed in a homespun coarse woolen tunic and trousers, would have looked beautiful by Western standards if her face wasn’t smeared with blood and other body fluids Tempest doesn’t want to think about but has to because it is there.
The disguise — because in a place where children are giving birth in squalor being beautiful is more dangerous than being plain or ugly, a woman has to hide her face — looks natural.
Tempest knew it was a disguise simply because the area around the red haired girl's eyes was not smudged with um… stuff. The contrast between the pale white skin and muck doesn’t give the girl away unless one was a keen observer, which Tempest wasn’t but the clear direct gaze of the red haired girl caused Tempest to notice the contrast.
“Ah it’s nothing.”
The pink haired girl turned her attention back to the young mother, all but ignoring Tempest’s hovering. Abrupt much?
“Although I am grateful for her help, you shouldn’t have brought her here.”
“The little girl says she can help. Whether or not she can help can be determined at a later time.” The plain girl answered the red haired girl in the dead monotone voice Tempest heard in the movie D-War with Jason Behr. CGI was excellent. Korean actors were great. American actors… they should have been recast, especially the female lead. If she didn’t die in the end, then the audience should have killed her for her horrible acting.
The pink haired girl turned to Tempest, looking expectantly. Tempest repeated verbatim the reports relayed by Ventus, “The child mother was bleeding internally, but it has stopped, however the contractions can not be stopped. The child has to be born today or they both die. The child is healthy in the mother’s womb and is ready to be born as long as the mother has the strength to give birth.”
Tempest tried to copy the calm, cool manner of the other occupants in the room. Even though they don’t care about the life or death of the mother or child, they did their job proficiently.
The room was silent except for the panting of the young mother. Throughout the entire conversation, she said nothing, trying to save her strength to give birth to her child. After hearing her labor was induced through medications, she began to panic.
“I don’t care about my life. Whatever you do, save the child.” the young mother begged.
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Amidst all the cries and begging, Tempest and the others made no move to assure the young mother. Tempest don’t know about the other two, but she doesn’t have the expertise to choose who to save when the time comes.
“Save your strength to give birth to the child.” the pink haired girl ordered in a no nonsense tone.
“Please, save the child.” the young mother ignored the command and continued to beg. The picture of the desperate mother trying to save her child touched a chord in Tempest’s heart. She’d like to think her mother was like this young mother, trying her hardest to ensure the life her unborn child.
Of course, this was all in Tempest’s head. She knew her mother would not go to this extent to save her. She even got an abortion because she felt she couldn’t take care of the child.
She doesn’t have the strength to give birth.
“What do we do? I want to save both the mother and child but I’m not a midwife!” Tempest began to panic. For the first time she realized she was in way over her head. At first, Tempest wanted to look towards the plain girl but she was standing in the corner of the room trying to be as invisible as possible. Tempest turned towards the only competent person in the room, the red haired girl, for instructions.
“We will do what we can. You need to do your part as well. Save your strength. You will need it when the time comes.” the red haired girl calms down the mother and began to check her condition. Judging by her expression, she came to the same conclusion as Ventus; the young mother doesn’t have the strength to give birth.
Tempest knew the red haired girl made the decision to kill the mother and save the child. Tempest couldn’t fault her reasoning but she couldn’t accept the red haired girl’s decision.
“Do a Caesarian.” Tempest blurted without thought.
“What is a Cesarian?” The plain girl inquired.
“A Cesarean birth is the delivery of a baby through an incision made in the mother’s abdomen and uterus.”
“Won’t that kill the mother?”
“Not if the wound is sewn shut. The mother would suffer some blood loss. The greatest danger lies in the incision. If the cut is too deep, it might kill the child.”
“How do you know about this ‘Cesarian’?” the red haired girl asks without looking up from her work. She proceeded to prop the young mother’s legs apart and used a weird contraption to open the vagina in an attempt to see the dilation of the cervix.
“I’ve seen it done before.” Tempest didn’t add the on television part. She was locked up in the psych ward, not the OB-GYN Ward. Ahemm, she was treated in the mentally disabled ward.
“Good, then you can perform the cut.” the pink haired girl said in an authoritative manner.
“What?! I said I had seen it done, not that I have ever done it before.” Tempest exclaimed in surprise. She never hated authority as she did right now. Tempest was never one to obey the law in the first place, so when an authoritative person gives her an order, her first instinct is to ignore it.
“You’ve at least seen it before. Compared to us, you are an expert in the field.” Sound reasoning and logic be damned.
“I…”
“Tell us what you need.”
Tempest bit her lip. She looked at the desperate mother then looked at the pink haired girl looking back at her with a glimmer of hope. Tempest closed her eyes, took a deep breath to fortify her courage and started giving out instructions.
“I need a needle and thread, a very sharp knife at least 5 cm long, scissors, clean clothes and lots of hot water.”
“I’ll get it.” the plain girl said and rushed outside.
The pink haired girl moves to the side, giving Tempest enough room to assess the young mother.
Tempest was grateful for their confidence in her. Aside from them, very few people gave their trust to Tempest, and fewer people receive her trust in return. She didn’t want to disappoint either of them.
About ten minutes later the plain girl came back with the necessary supplies. Tempest immediately got to work, ordering the spirits to monitor the young mother’s vital signs and to alert her if there is a sudden change.
Tempest held the knife with shaking hands. She truly envied the experienced surgeons back on Earth and regretted her interest lies more towards romance and comedy with a splash of horror tossed in rather than the medical drama every network was airing every hour of every day. With all their episodes, surely there was one where a Cesarean was performed.
In one of those episodes, they always have an EKG machine to monitor the heart, ultrasound to see the baby and a portable oxygen concentrator nearby just in case the mother panics and hyperventilates.
Ultrasound…
“Ventus, is there a spell that mimics an ultrasound?” Tempest asked. If she can’t have an ultrasound machine, she will find a way to get the same effect through magic.
It is a wind and water combination spells.
“Your meaning?”
It requires a lot of focus and once you lose the focus you lose the image.
“That’s fine. I just need to see the position of the baby when I make the incision.”
Ventus paused then came to a decision. You can’t cast the spell right, but we can. We can’t give you continuous feed back like the machine but it should be enough.
“It will be enough.”
Suddenly the image of the baby in the young mother’s womb was projected in Tempest’s mind.
Understanding an ultrasound image requires training, training Tempest doesn’t have. Luckily the image in Tempest’s mind was clearer than the image provided by an ultrasound machine.
Tempest can see the child in the womb as if she was watching a high definition black and white tv.
When she saw she had enough space to make the incision, Tempest decisively cut.