“Yes, I have!” she wailed as the contraction peaked and started to fade away. “I don’t deserve healthy babies.”
Emmy watched the tears pour down Dory’s face. She had been in hard labor for more than half the day was worn out. She was obviously nearing delirium. She would never have the strength to push for hours if necessary when the time came. And oddly where most women blamed a husband for getting them in such a condition by this point, Dory appeared determined to point the blame on herself. That wasn’t going to help at all. The moment Dory felt defeated was the moment they lost the entire battle.
Making the decision, Emmy moved to the woman’s side. “Dory, I want to perform a caesarean section birthing, do you know what that is?” Emmy spoke in her most professional voice.
“You want to cut them out,” Dory panted and moaned. She nodded. “It’s alright; I know I don’t deserve to live. Save my babies any way you can.”
“Well, I don’t plan on you dying,” Emmy corrected sternly. “So stop thinking that way, will you please? I have never lost a mother during delivery and you won’t be the first. I will deliver your babies and you will be around to see them when I’m done. Understood?”
Dory’s eyes focused on her face and frowned. “I’ve never heard of a woman surviving a birth that way.”
“Well, we do it all this time where I come from so you’ll just have to trust me. Can you do that?” Emmy asked.
Dory hesitated but nodded through her pain. “This is God’s punishments for my sins,” she wailed as another pain assailed her. “I have sinned against Him and He is taking His revenge on me,” she rasped out near exhaustion.
“Dory!” Emmy patted her cheeks and got her attention. “A little positive thinking wouldn’t be amiss at this point. Stop thinking about yourself and focus on your babies, okay?” She turned to Margo and Susan who hovered nearby to help her. “I’ll be right back; I need to talk to Ian. Take this and these,” she pulled a scalpel, a needle and some clamps from the medical bag. “Boil them while I’m gone and get some freshly washed bandages, too.”
Emmy found Connor and Ian in the study. Ian was pacing frantically in front of the fireplace, his hair standing on end. Wary of approaching such a hysterical looking father with the news that she was about to cut his wife open, she lured Connor out of the room with a wave of her hand.
“Are the bairns delivered?” he asked but frowned when she shook her head and told Connor what she planned to do. He nodded gravely. She had spoken about the possibility before and promised to keep Ian away. “This is it then? What ye think Donell was speaking of?
“I knew it was going to happen,” she confessed.
“How is Dory?”
“She’s a trooper but she’s loosing it, I think. Keeps trying to beat herself up about something she thinks she’s done.” Emmy embraced Connor and turned to go back to her patient.
“I wish I could give you something for the pain, Dory,” Emmy said, her voice muffled by the cloth she had tied across her mouth. Susan and Margo had done with same though they did not understand why and Emmy had little time for explanations. “It’s going to hurt.”
“It already hurts!” Dory moaned weakly.
“I know,” Emmy patted her hand and looked about her making sure she had everything she needed. She was nervous and sweating herself. Emmy didn’t want to have to do this but knew there was no choice. “Ready?”
“I need a priest,” Dory gasped bracing herself.
“You don’t need a priest,” she nodded to Margo and Susan, who took Dory by the shoulders and legs to keep her still, and cut.
Mercifully, Dory fainted.
Emmy looked down at the two infant boys unable to stifle a smile. One was bright red all over from screaming while the other stared up at her with as much fascination as she gazed back at him. Two wonderful, healthy – and fully developed – babies were a fair trade for any amount of pain suffered, she thought. She reached and caressed a downy cheek. Perfect, each one, with heads of thick dark hair. Emmy was certain that Dory had been a bit off in her calculations. These boys were no preemies.
If Donell’s hints about second chances were the true reasons for her time travel and her interpretation of them were right, her work here was done. She had saved Dory’s life and that of her boys. There was little doubt in Emmy’s mind that Dory would have died without the surgery. It may have taken a day or more, but the babies would never have delivered naturally and all three would have perished. If she had been brought here to save them, then she was finished and could return home.
Since nothing had happened as yet, Emmy was left wondering. Damn! Where had Donell disappeared to?
Ian came into the room and rushed to his sons with a joyful holler. He stroked their cheeks and hands but looked terrified at the thought of scooping one into his arms though the two nursemaids Dory had hired encouraged him to do so. Instead he just looked down at them with awe and wonder.
Turning, Emmy went back to her main patient and checked Dory’s pulse as she slept the sleep of the exhausted. Dory had roused herself not long after her faint and had gone on and on as though she were in a confessional, begging forgiveness for her sins and such. It had gotten to the point that Emmy could barely make out her words so incomprehensible were they. She had concentrated on delivering the babies handing them off in turn to Susan and Margo to bathe and wrap. As she had been stitching her incisions though, she thought Dory had said something in her semi-conscious delirium that had stopped Emmy
