Chapter 28

28

H e stared at her as though he didn’t know who she was. Then he blinked and nodded his head. Standing, he dropped the napkin that had been on his lap onto the table and stepped away from the bench. Walking around the end of the table, he took her hand and followed her back the way she’d come. She stopped outside the hall and faced him.

“We will need the rest of yer tools,” she explained. “Do ye hiv them here?”

“Someone is injured?” He turned back to the stairs.

“Someone is dying and I need yer help to save them.”

He stopped and waited for her to explain but there was no time. “Please hurry. Beitris can’t hold out much longer.”

A smattering of talking began in the hall behind her and pretty soon everyone was back to the business of eating. She stood impatiently tapping her foot on the stone floor waiting for Douglas. He was Beitris’s last hope.

“I’m ready,” he said, racing down the last few steps with his canvas bag under his arm. “Lead the way.”

She trotted just ahead of him, leading him back to Aindreas’ cottage where Beitris fought for her life. When they reached it, she stopped outside and stood before him. He needed to know what awaited him inside.

“Aindreas’ wife is in labor.”

“I’m not an obstetrician, Caitlin.”

She didn’t know what that word meant; another one of his strange-sounding words from the future. Shaking her head at him, she asked, “What is that, that you’re no’? ”

“An obstetrician,” he said again, “is a doctor who delivers babies. It’s not my specialty.”

“Douglas, my friend is in there, losing her verra life trying to hiv this babe for her husband. I dinna need ye to deliver anything; I need ye to cut the babe out so I can heal her afore she dies.”

She thought she’d been clear in her meaning but he scrunched up his face and then stared wide-eyed at her words.

“Cut the babe out? Are you crazy?”

“Douglas, the babe willna come out. Mam haes turned it twice and still the stubborn little thing slips back to where it wants to be. Beitris is losing her strength and soon will no’ survive the babe being removed. Ye must hurry or I willna be able to help her.”

“You want me to cut her open and take the baby? A Caesarian section without any medical equipment or support? Caitlin, I’m afraid this won’t work.”

He stood by the door of the cottage shaking his head. He looked confused by her request but she could see he was thinking it over.

“Please, Douglas. ’Tis her only chance. Otherwise, we must wait for her to be near or at death’s door and take the babe then. She willna survive that and the babe may no’ either. Yer skills can get the babe now while she can still fight.”

She was about to say something else when the door opened and Aindreas stood in the doorway.

“Good, yer back,” he said. Reaching out and grabbing Douglas by the back of his neck, the large man dragged him into the cottage giving him no chance to argue. “My wife haes need of ye now.”

She watched as Douglas went to Beitris and spoke to her in quiet whispers. He was quite a sight to watch when he finally accepted his role in this. He felt her friend’s belly and then asked if he could check her elsewhere as well. Beitris was so far gone in pain that she wouldn’t have known but her bulky husband was watching everything now.

“Aindreas, I need to check your wife—” he started.

“Then he should leave,” Moira interrupted. “He doesna do well in these times.”

“On the contrary, he should be right here,” Douglas pointed at the spot next to him. “This is his babe and his wife will need his strength in what’s to come.”

She almost laughed as Aindreas turned a nasty shade of green. But, as Douglas had asked, the man swallowed several times deeply and then went to his wife’s side and took her hand in his. Douglas washed his hands in a nearby basin and then pulled a covering over Beitris’s legs and lower belly. Quickly, he did the examination he needed to do and then washed again before leaving the woman’s side.

“The babe is butt down and settled tightly,” he reported to her and her mother. “I’m afraid the placenta is separating from the wall of the womb.”

Caitlin didn’t know what a placenta was but it sounded important.

“She is bleeding now from inside.”

“Bleeding? Oh, God, no’ that.” Despair began to build, there was no more time. “What will ye do then, Douglas?”

“I have no choice—we have to remove the babe and we have to do it now.” He began looking around the room. “I’ll need her up higher, on that table if it will hold her.” He walked over and tested the table with his weight. “Can you cover this while I tell them what we need to do? Moira, more candles?”

Caitlin found the pile of linens she’d gathered and covered the table with some, placing several layers and one of the clean sheets on top. Then she went to wash her hands again. She knew she would do this with Douglas and wanted to be ready. Her mother started gathering as many candles as she could find in the small house to light them near the table.

She watched as Aindreas and Beitris calmly accepted Douglas’s words and agreed. Aindreas lifted his wife up onto the table and stood by her head. Caitlin felt tears beginning to swell as she saw Aindreas lovingly caress Beitris’s face and kiss her forehead. Blinking rapidly to clear them, she waited for Douglas to tell her how they would proceed.

“Caitlin, I am sorry I hesitated. I was back to thinking about being a healer rather than just being one.” He looked at her and smiled. “I forgot what you’ve taught me since I’ve been here.”

Her own heart pounded at his words. He spoke to her with so much love in his voice that she wanted to cry. But she could do that after they were done here.

“We cannot wait for something like poppy juice or take the chance of using henbane since a babe is involved, so I will have to start and hope she passes out from the pain. It’s not how I want to do this but we have so little time.”

Caitlin looked at her mother and saw her nodding in agreement with Douglas’s assessment.

“I need another very strong man or two to help hold her down and maybe even control Aindreas during this. Is there someone nearby ye can get to quickly?”

“Ramsey and Kenneth are close by. I could get them,” her mother offered.

“Mam, no’ Kenneth. His wife died in just this way. ’Twould no’ be good to put him through this.”

Douglas looked startled, almost disbelieving, at her words. “Does every woman here die in childbirth?” he asked incredulously.

“Many do, Douglas. ’Tis the most dangerous thing we do as women,” her mother answered. “Well, I will find whoever I can and be right back.”

“Quickly, Moira,” Douglas called out but her mother was out the door already. “Now, here’s how we will do this.” As he laid out his surgical tools, he explained in a few words what he would do.

Within minutes, her mother was back with Ramsey and another large man, Tavis, in tow. He pointed out where they needed to stand and made the last of his arrangements. With a last look at each of them, Douglas was ready to begin. Beitris started to cry and Caitlin found it hard to breathe as she listened to Aindreas comfort his wife. After a few moments, the man nodded at Douglas to start.

The first touch of his blade on her belly was met with a loud, keening wail. Moira had placed a thick strip of leather between her friend’s teeth and she could see Beitris clenching it as the pain and scalpel sliced into her. Her bucking was controlled by the many hands on her. A moment later she did faint, leaving the room in silence. Only the heavy breathing of those surrounding the table could be heard.

As she watched, Douglas deepened and widened the cut over her belly from top to bottom. She blotted the incision, trying to give him a clear path in his work. He went in deeper still through all those layers he’d spoken of until he reached a large dark mass that moved under his hands. This was where the babe was? This was what a woman’s womb looked like? Amazed, she watched as he cleared his path and prepared to free the babe.

Again he paused to look around at his assistants. “Are we ready?”

“Aye,” came Aindreas’ reply. He knelt with his head on Beitris’s shoulder and her hands clasped tightly in his.

“She may rouse because of the pain. Be ready.” Ramsey and Tavis placed their hands lightly on the woman’s thighs and ankles.

She followed his movements again as he cut into the womb and within moments, a babe appeared within view.

Tightly curled and frail-looking, it seemed to be tucked inside its mother, waiting to be freed. Douglas did just that, lifting the precious bundle up and out, pausing for a moment before handing it, him, to Moira for cleaning.

“’Tis a boy, Aindreas, a very big boy that yer wife haes given ye this day.” Moira wrapped the babe immediately and rubbed his face clean of the fluids coating it. Soon a raspy cry echoed through the room as the babe took his first breaths and found this outer world not so hospitable as the one he’d left behind.

Aindreas lifted his head to look at his new and first son. She could see his mouth moving near Beitris’s ear. Caitlin looked at Douglas and for a moment let herself wonder what it would be like to have his child—to see that love and caring on his face as he told her the name chosen for their first son.

’Twas not to be, so Caitlin shook off the sadness and leaned over to help her friend once more .

“This is the placenta, it feeds the babe while in the womb,” Douglas said as he pointed to the place inside where the long cord began; its other end was still attached to the babe. He took his surgical knife and cut it close to the babe’s belly. “Now, we’ll wait a few minutes for it to release completely.”

“’Tis the afterbirth,” she said. “I didna recognize it from the inside.”

“This is how it attaches to the womb,” he explained as he tugged gently on it. “It comes free within a short time after the babe is delivered and then the womb shuts itself off, contracting and shrinking slowly.”

“We knead the belly after the babe comes to help it get hard.”

“You do? I didn’t realize that was known...,” he stopped as he noticed the others listening. “Here. I didn’t know you did that here... as we do in ... the university.”

“Aye, Douglas,” she said with a smile at his discomfort, “we do that here in the little villages, too.”

“How is the baby, Moira?” He looked over to where Moira stood, holding and cooing to the newly born little boy.

“Ramsey and Tavis, we thank ye for yer help in this,” she said, ignoring Douglas’s look.

Both men released Beitris and moved away. Aindreas murmured his thanks and the men left, looking very relieved to be going.

“Cait? We’re not finished yet. I still have to repair her. And it looks like there are a few tears in the wall of the uterus.” He lifted his hands from Beitris’s belly and carried the afterbirth over to a pail on the smaller table they were using to hold his instruments.

“Would ye stay or go, Aindreas? I need to finish this birth.”

“Is she... will she... die?” He could hardly force the words out. “She haesna even seen the bairn.”

“With God’s blessing and if the Fates are wi’ us this night, she will hold her bairn by morning.”

“Cait, what are you doing?” Douglas reached out and took her by the hand. “I need to cauterize those vessels and suture this incision. Won’t you help me?”

“Douglas, please close her belly and let me... heal her.”

His face went blank and then the deepest frown replaced that dumbfounded expression. “You cannot think to...” He couldn’t say the word.

“My gift will complete this, Douglas. Can ye hiv faith in me? In the gift I was given?”

“Cait, I can remove her uterus, her womb. She won’t have any other children but she’ll live. Let me do that.” He started to pick up one of the tools but Aindreas stopped him.

“The lass haes a gift, Douglas. Let her tend to Beitris.”

Douglas looked as though he would object but then he stopped. Love shone in his eyes. And faith.

“What can I do for you then, Cait?”

She took a deep breath to clear her thoughts. “Can ye catch me if I fall?”

Douglas smiled tenderly and moved away from the table where his work had just done such good. A bairn, alive and healthy. The boy that her friend wanted for her husband. Now she would try to save her friend’s life so that she could share in that joy.

Aindreas released his wife’s hands and stepped away, leaving Caitlin by herself but watching from a few paces back. She placed her hands over Beitris’s belly and began breathing slow and deep. In and out, in and out, in and out. Thinking of nothing but the air moving in and out of her, she cleared her thoughts and sought the black, empty place where the healing came from inside of her.

Moving her hands over her friend’s body, she found a certain spot and rested her hands there. With her eyes closed, she waited for the healing to begin. As the tingling and burning started in her hands, her mind looked deeper and deeper within, and soon she lost all awareness of everything but the healing.