Two centimeters. Her cervix had opened only enough for him to slide one fingertip in. Delivery would occur at about ten centimeters. Delilah's labor would continue for some time. Sylvia recorded the information.
'Where are the fetal monitors?' Lindsay asked.
'We have no monitors, no sonograms, no incubators, no epidurals-'
'What do these women rely on?'
'Us. And prayer. Right, Sister Sylvia?'
She crossed herself again. They repeated the procedure with the other women. Rosie Ochoa was seventeen and having her second child; she was saying a rosary and was dilated six centimeters. Griselda Guzman was nineteen, dilated five centimeters, and crying silently through the contractions; this would be her first child. Marcela Vasquez was twenty-one, six centimeters, and having her third; her eyes were closed and an iPod was plugged into her ears. Luisa Chavez was twenty-eight and five centimeters; this was her sixth child. And Ruby Morales was thirty-seven and about to deliver her fifth child-soon. She was dilated eight centimeters.
'Okay,' Jesse said, 'Ruby will deliver first, and then Rosie, Griselda, Marcela, and Luisa will deliver close together, so let us move them to one side, in case we are delivering four babies at once. Delilah, she will be last and the most difficult.'
'Why?' Lindsay said.
'Big baby and small hips.' He blew out a breath. 'It will be a long day.'
They pushed Rosie and Griselda to the other side of the room and swapped them out with Ruby.
'No, no, no!' Delilah said. 'Do not put my mother next to me. I do not want to listen to her.'
'If you had listened to me, you would not be pregnant at fourteen.'
Delilah groaned with a contraction.
'Remember the pain, child.'
'Ladies,' Jesse said in mock reproach. 'Sister Sylvia, you watch that side, Nurse Byrne will watch this side. Let us eat lunch.'
The promise of new life seemed to lift Jesse's spirits. He went to the small refrigerator at the back.
'Sister Sylvia, did you bring me shrimp poor-boys?'
'Of course. Six, in case we are here into the night. With the red sauce you like.'
They checked that the mothers were comfortable then sat and ate lunch.
'Oh, Doctor,' Sister Sylvia said, 'Alexa Hinojosa, the newspaper reporter, she stopped in and asked me to have you call her the next time you are here. She is very pretty. She and you would make beautiful babies together.'
The moment turned awkward, so Lindsay changed the subject.
'Where are the husbands?' she asked in a low voice.
'Not husbands,' Sister Sylvia said. 'Fathers. Except Ruby, she is married.'
'The others aren't?'
'No. I am afraid that marriage is no longer a prerequisite to parenthood, in Hollywood or the colonias.'
Two thousand miles north, Bode, Jim Bob, and Ranger Hank stood on a sidewalk in Manhattan. They had flown into New York that morning and checked in at the Plaza. After lunch, Mandy took the campaign credit card and the kids to Macy's. Jim Bob, Bode, and Hank took a cab. The Professor now spread his arms to the building rising in front of them as if it were a cathedral.
'The country was on the brink of disaster, we faced the same fate as the Roman Empire, but this place single-handedly saved America.'
They were standing out front of the Fox News building.
'Tea party TV, Bode. Don't fuck it up.'
'Ruby, you were born to have children,' Jesse said.
'Yes, all you must do is catch. I have the wide hips. My mother, she also had such hips. Together, we have now made twelve children. And no epistle.'
'Episiotomy.'
' Si. We are baby factories…' She grunted. 'Let me push this bebe out.'
She did. Jesse sat on a rolling stool at the foot of her bed. Lindsay stood next to him. The baby's head crowned and emerged from the birth canal.
'Catch my baby!'
He did. He held the baby's head with his left hand. Lindsay handed him a rubber syringe. He inserted the syringe into the baby's mouth and suctioned mucous and water. The baby's shoulder emerged next, and then the baby just fell into Jesse's waiting hands. Lindsay held a sterile towel out, and Jesse placed the baby on the towel. He suctioned the baby's mouth and nostrils. The baby took his first breath of air and cried. His voice and the smell of new life filled the clinic.
'Ruby, you have a fine new son,' Jesse said.
Lindsay wiped the baby while Jesse clamped and cut the umbilical cord. Sister Sylvia came over with a warm blanket and took the baby. She wrapped him like a papoose and placed him in his mother's arms.
Three hundred fifty miles north, Eddie Jones sat slouched on the couch in Jim Bob's office in the Governor's Mansion, drinking a beer and watching the governor on a cable talk show on Fox News. Ranger Roy drank a root beer, the kind without caffeine. What a boy scout.
On the television, the boss was saying, 'If you subsidize corn, you'll get more corn. If you subsidize Mexicans, you'll get more Mexicans. If you tell Mexicans that babies born in the U.S. will be American citizens, you'll get more anchor babies. And we have-six hundred thousand in Texas the last decade.'
'So you were a merc in Iraq?' Ranger Roy said.
Roy was wide-eyed, like a kid talking to his baseball hero.
Eddie nodded and gestured at the television. 'Hank's in New York guarding the governor-why aren't you there guarding the governor's wife?'
'She's not in New York.'
'She stayed here?'
'She's not here, either.'
'You're here, and you're her bodyguard.'
Roy now looked like he might cry.
'She ran off.'
'Whoops.'
Roy drank his root beer like a man drinking whiskey to drown his sorrows. He swiped a Texas Ranger sleeve across his mouth.
'Guess you weren't around much, before she left.'
'Nope.' Eddie drank his beer. 'She got another man?'
Roy shook his head.
'She wants to be useful.'
' Useful? What the hell does that mean?'
Roy threw up his hands.
'How should I know? I've never been married.'
'Hell, I've been married, and I don't know.'
'Where's your wife?'
'Living with another man. I went to Iraq, she went to divorce court.'
Eddie Jones was ex-special forces when he had hired on as a 'private contractor' to the CIA in Iraq, which sounded better on the evening news than 'mercenary.' The pay was great, the work fit his skill set, and the independence refreshing after twenty years in the army. But one incident involving civilians, and Eddie found himself unemployed and unemployable. Hard to explain that sort of thing on a resume.
'I'm worried about her,' Roy said.
'My ex-wife?'
'The governor's wife. I don't want nothing bad to happen to her.'
On the television: 'Governor, you're not at all worried that that Mexican drug cartel might seek revenge?'
Eddie pointed at the TV.
