Hawaii - James Michener [163]
In the growing dusk Abner looked sickly at his companion, then started feverishly unpacking his handbook. Thumbing it awkwardly he found a section titled "The Dry Delivery," and as he read it hurriedly, he became quite ill in the stomach, for the news was ominous, but when he looked up and saw how hopeless Brother Abraham was, he gritted his teeth and said boldly, "I should like to see Sister Urania."
Hewlett led him toward a low grass hut in which the Englishman who traded at Wailuku lived, but both the man and his wife were absent in Honolulu, and the house was surrounded by fifty or sixty natives, sitting on the ground and watching the amazing white men. Abner made his way through them, and with his medical book under his arm, went into the mean house to greet the frail woman with whom he had shared the tiny stateroom on the Thetis. "Good evening, Sister Urania," he said solemnly, and she replied bravely, "It is so consoling to meet again one with whom we journeyed on the small ship." And for a moment they spoke of happier days.
Then Abner asked, "Sister Urania, when did your . . ." He paused in acute embarrassment, and then finished with a rush: "Your labor pains, how long have they been occurring?"
"They started at six this morning," Urania said. Abner stared at her blankly, but his mind thought fiercely: "Oh, God! That was when she was climbing the last gullies!"
He mopped his forehead and said slowly, "That was twelve hours ago. Presumably then, Sister Urania, the child will be born at midnight." He consulted his watch: six hours to go.
Aching with embarrassment, he asked, "Your pains. Have they been frequent?"
"I don't think so," she replied.
"Excuse me," he said, and fumbled for his book of instructions, but the light was so bad that he could not read, and he directed Brother Abraham to fetch a kukuinut lamp, and by its flickering, wavering light he picked out the words that would guide him. "Have we a sheet of tapa?" he asked, and when one was found, he cut it into halves, twisted them to make ropes, knotted one end and tied the other to the foot of the bed. "You must pull on these knots, Sister Urania," he instructed her. "In a dry delivery you will be called upon for extra work."
Instantly he was sorry he had said these words, for Urania looked up in terror and asked, "Have I done something wrong?"
"No, Sister Urania," he assured her. "With God's help we shall do well."
Instinctively, she took his hand and whispered, "My cherished husband and I are so glad that you came." But when Abner, blushing like a child, wanted to examine her stomach, as the handbook directed, both he and the Hewletts thought it proper that she first cover herself with all of her personal clothing plus a stout sheet of tapa. Feeling through the several layers, Abner gravely announced: "There seems nothing awry."
But his head was snapped back by a sudden scream from the bed and an automatic tightening of the ropes. He hurried to the sputtering lamp and studied his watch. In tour minutes another cry and another straining. Sweating, he leafed through his book and found reassuring news. Hurrying back to the bed, he announced happily: "Sister Urania, things are going well. Now time will work with us."
At this news Brother Abraham grew a ghastly white and it was obvious that he was going to be very sick, so Abner left the straining woman and ran to the door of the delivery room, crying in Hawaiian, "Somebody come in here and take care of Reverend Hewlett!" Two experienced midwives, who understood husbands, laughed hilariously and rescued the missionary, who was, as they had predicted in obscene asides to the gathering, conspicuously nauseated, but while the midwives comforted him other Hawaiians whispered, "Isn't this a strange way to do things? Our best midwives outside the hut caring for the husband, while a man who knows nothing is inside, caring for the mother."
"It’s the way they do it in America," a listener explained.
Suddenly the midwives dropped