McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [145]
Heddy rushed up the back stairs, bent on fulfilling her own errand.
Lorelei hardly felt the shock of that hot water, plunging her hands into it the way she did.
“I’m scared, Lorelei,” Melina confessed, gasping, visibly bracing herself for another of the ferocious contractions she’d been enduring for so many hours. “I want Gabe.”
“You’ve got us,” Lorelei said, kindly but firmly, drying her hands and face. “For right now, that’s going to have to do.”
Another pain seized Melina then; she bared her teeth, and her small hips rose high off the cot. Heddy had stripped her down earlier, put one of John’s shirts on her to serve as a gown. The garment fell open as she screamed, revealing her belly, hard and round and knotted, burgeoning with the elemental struggle of a child breaking through the last barrier to life.
“Can’t you do something?” Lorelei pleaded, in a whisper, as Dr. Brown supported the small of Melina’s back with one hand and peered between her legs.
“Yes,” the doctor said, with terse efficiency, “I can get this baby out, and the sooner, the better. Open my bag. You’ll find a bottle of ether inside. Give me that first, then get out the carbolic acid and that small leather case. My scalpels are inside—pour the rest of the water from that teakettle over them, if there’s any left, and for Jove’s sake, be careful when you handle them. They’re sharp.”
Lorelei did as she was told, and then washed again.
Heddy returned with an old sheet, worn thin by time and use but clean.
“Tear it into strips,” the Doc said. He’d doused his handkerchief in the ether Lorelei had taken from his bag, and the pungent scent of it filled that steamy kitchen.
Lorelei watched, almost paralyzed with fear, as he pressed it gently over Melina’s nose and mouth.
“Hold this,” he commanded, and Lorelei realized he was referring to the cloth and moved to obey.
Melina’s feverish eyes rolled back in her head, then closed, and her body, tormented for so long, went limp.
Dr. Brown reached for one of the scalpels, fished from the boiling hot water with a pair of tongs, and grasped the handle. Lorelei looked on, wide-eyed, as he swabbed Melina’s belly with carbolic acid, paused to take a deep breath, as if centering himself in that small, misshapen body of his, and then cut through Melina’s distended flesh with one long, continuous stroke of the blade.
Blood spurted, and Lorelei swayed on her feet, stunned by the metallic smell, so strong that it reached her taste buds. She steadied herself by sheer force of will. Heddy was busy at the hazy edge of her vision, but Lorelei could not look away from the doctor and that hideous incision.
Melina groaned.
“Add another drop or two of that ether to the cloth,” Dr. Brown barked, deepening the first incision with another deft motion of his scalpel.
Bile scalded the back of Lorelei’s throat, and her knees turned to jelly, but she groped for the bottle. Her hand shook as she gripped it.
“Just a little, now,” the doctor warned, without looking up. “Too much will kill her.”
A cry of despairing terror rose up within Lorelei, but she choked it down, wrestled to hold it inside. Carefully squeezed a minimal amount of ether from the glass dropper onto the cloth covering Melina’s face.
Doc suddenly gave a hoot of exultant laughter, both hands deep inside Melina’s belly. “There’s the little cuss now,” he said jubilantly, and raised up a tiny, bloody human being, waving its arms and legs as if trying to climb the cord attaching it to Melina. “Got ourselves a strapping boy, here.” With that, he hooked a finger inside the baby’s mouth, then held him upside down by his ankles and gave the infant a light swat on the bottom.
Melina and Gabe’s newborn son squalled with outraged effrontery.
“Glory be,” Heddy breathed from somewhere in the shivering blur surrounding Melina, that cot, the baby and the doctor up to his elbows in blood.
Lorelei’s knees buckled again. She stiffened them, again by an act of will, watching