Close Pursuit

“Keep her quiet, or we’ll all die,” Alex bit out.

“I’m trying,” Katie retorted, panic climbing into her throat.

The girl’s contraction passed, and Katie heaved her to her feet. They made it only a dozen yards before the girl collapsed again, groaning into her hand pressed over her mouth.

Shouting erupted below them. Katie looked down as a burst of flame lit the night. The soldiers had just torched their tent. Cold terror washed over her. What if they hadn’t left when they did? They’d be dead right now. The rebels probably had mistaken it for a local headquarters of some kind. The more immediate problem, though, was the wash of firelight illuminating the entire hillside.

“Get down,” Alex ordered, yanking Katie and the girl down behind a waist-high boulder. A barrage of machine-gun fire raked the mountainside close enough to make Katie flatten herself to the ground.

Fear like she’d never known before roared through her. They were going to die. The three of them were not soldiers. They were barely armed, they had no gear and their only escape was up a forbidding mountain that only a seasoned climber—or a mountain goat—would attempt to scale.

Another drone flew past, barely higher than eye level, raking the ground with gunfire from a pair of machine guns mounted on its belly.

The girl’s hands clamped around Katie’s elbow just then and squeezed so tight the circulation in her hand felt entirely cut off. “Uh, Alex,” she whispered. “This girl’s going to deliver pretty soon.”

Alex had picked up a few phrases in the local dialect, and he used one now, biting it out succinctly. “Don’t push.”

“Can’t...stop...” the girl ground out from behind clenched teeth.

Katie translated grimly.

“We have to keep moving,” Alex whispered in English. “We’re not out of the line of fire, and the patrol will sweep the area looking for whoever was in that tent.”

They would never outrun highly mobile soldiers. Katie shook her head in disbelief and denial, but it made no difference. He was right. She told the panting girl, “Crawl if you have to, but keep moving. Do you understand me?”

“I can’t,” the girl wailed under her breath.

It was becoming a familiar refrain, but Katie replied fiercely, “Find a way. I’ll drag you if I have to.”

Katie had to give the girl credit. She pushed up to her knees, moved her burka aside and staggered up the hill after Alex, using her hands for support on the steep hillside before her. She fell twice, and each time Katie bodily lifted the girl back to her feet. The next time they dived for cover, though, the girl’s breathing changed. An element of really sharp pain entered her gasping breaths.

“She really can’t go on,” Katie told Alex. In a flash of mortar fire, Katie saw the frustration and futility that passed across his face. He nodded, though, and angled off to the right.

It was only a half-dozen yards to where he stopped and waved for them to join him, but Katie didn’t think she and the girl were ever going to make it to his side. Each step was a herculean effort for the girl, who was in so much pain she could not stand unaided. Only Katie’s arm around her kept her upright. Thankfully, Alex rejoined them and lifted the girl in his arms. He moved quickly into the shadows.

Katie made the mistake of glancing down and saw that they stood at the top of a nearly vertical cliff face. Only the narrowest of ledges kept her from plunging hundreds of feet to the valley floor below. Sick to her stomach with terror and vertigo, she plastered herself to the rock wall at her back and edged forward. Alex ducked into a low opening, and she fell to her knees beside him in relief.

The three of them were crouched in a tiny crevasse that didn’t rise to the exalted status of a cave. It was maybe eight feet deep at best and no more than three feet tall at the opening, narrowing to a few inches tall in the back. But it afforded them a little cover from the battle raging outside and a moment to catch their breaths.

The girl started swearing under her breath so colorfully that Katie felt an incongruous urge to laugh. Or maybe that was just hysteria threatening. Either way, the girl’s voice broke on what would have been a scream had she not jammed her burka in her mouth and bitten down for all she was worth.

It was Alex’s turn to swear. He unceremoniously shoved the girl onto her back to examine her. “Baby’s trying to crown,” he muttered. “Tell her to push with the next contraction.”

Katie was so relieved she could cry as she relayed the instruction to the girl. The contraction came, and the girl strained, bearing down in the age-old way as Katie supported her shoulders from behind.

“Again,” Alex ordered.

“Again.”

After several more contractions, Alex fumbled in the rucksack and pulled out a flashlight. Covering himself with the girl’s burka, he took a quick look at affairs. When he emerged, he spoke so calmly in English, Katie’s blood ran cold before she even comprehended his words.

“Tell her to rest for a while and just try to breathe through the contractions.”

He’d never told a woman to take a break in the middle of a delivery before. Just the opposite in fact. He always had her give the women pep talks and tell them at all costs to keep pushing until it was over.

She relayed the instruction and then murmured, “What’s up?”

“This kid’s head is too big to pass through the pelvic opening. The baby can’t be born.”

“What do we do now?” she asked as calmly as her exploding alarm would let her.

“Two choices. Leave the girl and her baby here to die. Or do a C-section and save the kid.”

“And the mother?”

“It’s a major surgery. If blood loss doesn’t get her, shock and hypothermia may. And then there’s the problem of noise. If I cut her open without anesthesia, she’s likely to scream her head off and get us all killed.”

Katie stared at the shadows wreathing his face. How in the hell were they supposed to choose between those options?

He stared back. At length, he muttered, “Welcome to playing God.”

A barrage of gunfire below them made her jump. For a minute there she’d forgotten about the war raging outside. The girl lying on the ground beside her panted fast and hard as another contraction gripped her.

“What would you do?” Alex asked quietly.

Katie shook her head, horrified to the core of her being. “Ask the mother. It’s her baby. Her life.”

“How very pro-choice of you,” Alex replied wryly. Then he said more sharply, “So do it. Ask her.”

Katie was shocked that he had declined to make a unilateral decision. It was so very...human...of him. She turned to the mother and waited out the end of the contraction.

Holding the girl’s hand, she said quietly, “Your baby is too big to be born this way. Doctor Alex can cut the baby from your belly, but he has no medicine for the pain. If you make any noise, we will all die.” She took a deep breath and added reluctantly, “You may die from the surgery.”

“If I have no surgery?” the girl asked.

Katie relayed the question, and Alex outlined the answer sentence by sentence as she translated.

“You will become exhausted eventually. The placenta will separate from your uterus. Your baby will suffocate and die, and you will begin to hemorrhage. That means you will bleed inside your body. You will die from blood loss.”

The girl was silent, considering her options. “I hate this baby. I do not care if it lives. But I want to live.”

Alex nodded briskly. “Then the baby must come out of you.”

Katie watched as he pulled out a scalpel, clamps and what she recognized as suture materials. He spread a towel on the ground under the girl and another beside himself.

“How are we going to keep her quiet?” she asked.

“If we’re lucky, she’ll pass out fast.”