Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [230]
"Not going to make it all the way," muttered Bothari. "Wait here." He disappeared up a side—alley? The passages all seemed alleys here, cold and stinking, much too narrow for groundcars. They had passed exactly two people in the maze, huddled to one side of a passage in a heap, and stepped carefully around them.
"Can you do anything to, like, hold back?" asked Kou, watching Lady Vorpatril double over again. "We ought to . . . try and get a doctor or something."
"That's what that idiot Padma went out for," Alys ground out. "I begged him not to go . . . oh, God!" After another moment she added, in a surprisingly conversational tone, "The next time you're vomiting your guts out, Kou, let me suggest you just close your mouth and swallow hard . . . it's not exactly a voluntary reflex!" She straightened again, shivering violently.
"She doesn't need a doctor, she needs a flat spot," Bothari spoke from the shadows. "This way."
He led them a short distance to a wooden door, formerly nailed shut in an ancient solid stuccoed wall. Judging from the fresh splinters, he'd just kicked it open. Once inside, with the door pulled tight-shut again, Droushnakovi at last dared pull a hand-light from the satchel. It illuminated a small, empty, dirty room. Bothari swiftly prowled its perimeters. Two inner doors had been broken open long ago, but beyond them all was soundless and lightless and apparently deserted. "It'll have to do," said Bothari.
Cordelia wondered what the hell to do next. She knew all about placental transfers and surgical sections now, but for so-called normal births she had only theory to go on. Alys Vorpatril probably had even less grasp of the biology, Drou less still, and Kou was downright useless. "Has anyone here ever actually been in on one of these, before?"
"Not I," muttered Alys. Their looks met in rather too clear an understanding.
"You're not alone," said Cordelia stoutly. Confidence should lead to relaxation, should lead to something. "We'll all help."
Bothari said—oddly reluctantly—"My mother used to do a spot of midwifery. Sometimes she'd drag me along to help. There's not that much to it."
Cordelia controlled her brows. That was the first time she'd heard the sergeant say word one about either of his parents.
The sergeant sighed, clearly realizing from their array of looks that he'd just put himself in charge. "Lend me your jacket, Kou."
Koudelka divested the garment gallantly, and made to wrap it around the shaking Lady Vorpatril. He looked a little more dismayed when the sergeant put his own jacket around Lady Vorpatril's shoulders, then made her lie down on the floor and spread Koudelka's jacket under her hips. She looked less pale, lying down, less like she was about to pass out. But her breath stopped, then she cried out, as her abdominal muscles locked again.
"Stay with me, Lady Vorkosigan," Bothari murmured to Cordelia. For what? Cordelia wondered, then realized why as he knelt and gently pushed up Alys Vorpatril's nightgown. He wants me for a control mechanism. But the killing seemed to have bled off that horrifying wave of lust that had so distorted his face, back in the street. His gaze now was only normally interested. Fortunately, Alys Vorpatril was too self-absorbed to notice that Bothari's attempt at an expression of medical coolness was not wholly successful.
"Baby's head's not showing yet," he reported. "But soon."
Another spasm, and he looked around vaguely and added, "I don't think you'd better scream, Lady Vorpatril. They'll be looking by now."
She nodded understanding, and waved a desperate hand; Drou, catching on, rolled up a bit of cloth into a rag rope, and gave it to her to bite.
And so the tableau hung, for spasm after uterine spasm. Alys looked utterly wrung, crying very quietly, unable to stop her body's repeated attempts to turn itself inside out long enough to catch either breath or balance. The baby's head crowned, dark haired, but seemed unable to go further.
"How long is this supposed to take?" asked Kou, in a voice that tried to sound measured, but came