Hawaii - James Michener [164]
Hewlett, stabilized after his sickness, wiped his watery blue eyes and made his way back into the hut, demanding, "When will the child be born?"
"Brother Hewlett!" Abner cried in exasperation. "Unless you can make yourself to be of service, you will have to remain outside."
"When will the child be born?" the distraught man begged. Once more Abner went to the door and called for the midwives, who recovered Abraham and made him stay with them.
The pains now came at constant intervals, and Abner, checking his book constantly, found occasion to say, "Sister Urania, it does seem as if God were supervising us tonight."
"I am now in your hands, Brother Abner," the weak woman replied. "You must do with me as you require."
Later, Abner recalled that she had said these words with marked lassitude, and shortly thereafter he looked at her with horror and realized that she had not experienced a pain for some time and that she was still. Panic captured him, and he felt her wrists, but they seemed cold, and he ran to the door, shouting, "Brother Abraham! Come quickly!" And when the husband stumbled into the room, Abner reported, in a ghostly voice, "I fear she is dying."
Abraham Hewlett uttered a low sob and knelt at the bed, holding his wife's hand, and this unexpected movement caused Urania to shift her shoulders, and Abner in amazement cried, "Can she be sleeping?"
Outside, the midwives, listening intently, had already told the crowd, "She's sleeping. She'll probably stay that way for an hour or more. Then when she wakens, she'll begin all over again."
"Is it a good sign when a woman already in labor sleeps?" the crowd asked.
"No," said the midwives.
"Why not?" a man asked.
"It means she's weak," the woman said.
"What should they do ... in there?" the man asked.
"They ought to be gathering herbs," the midwives explained.
"Why herbs?"
“To stop the bleeding, later on ... since she is a weak woman."
Inside the shadowy house Abner and Abraham went frantically through their handbooks and could find nothing about sleeping at the eighteenth hour of delivery, and Abner began to experience an overpowering trembling and fear. "Somewhere in here there must be an explanation," he muttered, but his awkward fingers could not find it. "Brother Abraham, do you find anything?"
Then, mysteriously, the labor pains started again, rhythmically and in full force, but they gave Abner little help, for it was not Urania who was experiencing them, but her husband Abraham. It was pathetic to see the undernourished missionary grip at his stomach, following the exact course of a woman’s pain, and for the third time Abner had to run to the door and beg the Hawaiians to take his assistant away. "And keep him away!" Abner snapped.
At two o'clock in the morning Urania Hewlett wakened and at five she had diminished her cycle of pain to intervals of a minute and half, whereupon the listening women outside predicted, "The birth will be soon." Abner, still fumbling with his book, his eyes bleary, came to the same conclusion, but his next half hour was one of special trial, for not knowing that Urania was undergoing typical labor, he had leafed through the diagrams in the back of the book where unusual births were explained, with black-lettered titles, and he was possessed by one diagram: "Abnormal Birth: Shoulder and Arm Presentation." Turning rapidly to the associated text, he discovered how difficult his immediate task was going to be if he was, indeed, raced by such a presentation. It was therefore absolutely essential that he prepare for the actual birth, if only to anticipate an abnormality; but this he could not do, because Urania still lay swathed in bedclothes and tapa, and he could not in propriety either remove them himself or ask her to do so. So he went to the door, where streaks of morning light were beginning to penetrate the palm