Page 22 of Close Pursuit

Katie watched as he pulled out a scalpel, clamps, and 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.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“Since we’re being so democratic about this, ask her,” he suggested. “I’ll time the incision for during an artillery barrage. She’ll have to do the rest.”

Katie spoke briefly to the girl. Determination entered the girl’s eyes, and Katie thought she was more scared than the girl at this point. The girl twisted a length of her burka and told Katie to hold it in her mouth for her when the time came.

“Ready?” Alex murmured, from his crouched position between the girl’s legs. The girl’s grotesquely distended belly, now bared to the cold air, was pale in the darkness. How on earth was Alex going to do a C-section in these conditions?

The girl put the cloth between her teeth and Katie grasped the ends of it, her entire body shaking with terror. The girl wasn’t shaking as much.

“Next explosion,” Alex murmured, scalpel poised.

Kaboom!

Alex slashed. The girl screamed. The night lit up and blood spouted black and wet from the girl’s belly. A second slash to open the uterus, and the girl thrashed wildly.

“Hold her down,” Alex ground out. “Placenta’s separating. She’s hemorrhaging.”

Katie leaned on the cloth gag, pinning the girl’s head to the ground. A knee across the girl’s shoulders helped hold her in place, while Alex knelt on the girl’s thighs. He worked fast and Katie did her level best not to look at the gore unfolding.

Instead, she stared into the girl’s panicked, animalistic eyes. All humanity drained out of the girl as she screamed against the gag again and again. And then, just like that, the girl went limp. Her eyes glazed over.

Was she dead?Katie fumbled under the girl’s jaw, looking for a pulse.

“Thank God,” Alex breathed. He worked even faster, hacking the baby free of its mother’s body.

Katie was shocked at how fast Alex had the baby out. Thirty seconds, maybe, all told. A lifetime for that poor girl, though.

“I can’t find a pulse,” she told him frantically.

“First things first,” he snapped. “Get the kid breathing. I’ll work on mom.”

The baby let out a wail that he quickly muffled with a hand over its mouth. Alex shoved the baby at her fast. “Keep it quiet.”

The baby was slippery with blood and white grease. Quickly, she wrapped the infant in the towel Alex had laid out and slipped the child inside her coat for warmth, which was a trick while keeping a hand over the crying newborn’s mouth. God, she hoped she wasn’t suffocating the poor thing. What a hell of a way to be born.

“Hold the flashlight,” Alex ordered.

She didn’t have three hands, for crying out loud. But he was probably doing the work of three surgeons, right now, so she didn’t complain. Kneeling awkwardly, she kept the baby’s mouth covered as it slid further down in her coat, and she held the flashlight in her free hand where Alex pointed it.

He worked frantically on the mother, his hands flying.

“How’s she doing?”

“Bleeding all over the place. I’m losing her,” he gritted out.

Another round of gunfire from nearby made Katie jump and the baby cry even louder. She made hushing noises into her coat even though she doubted they would have any effect on the squalling infant.

Alex started to swear in a steady stream under his breath, and in the light of the next mortar, his face looked gray. She risked a glance down. There was blood everywhere. A huge pool of it laid under the girl. The formerly white towel was now black with it. And where Alex’s hands worked inside the girl, his fingers disappeared in a puddle of it. Streams of blood trickled down the girl’s sides. Katie had never seen so much blood. But she’d also never seen a surgery without a full, modern surgical theater around it and a team of medical professionals to manage it.

“Listen for a heartbeat,” he ordered.

She laid her head on the girl’s chest. The ribcage did not rise, and she heard only the swish of her own blood in her ear. God, she hated silence. But then a barrage of gunfire made it too loud for her to hear a thing, and that was worse. She hunted again, frantically, for a pulse under the girl’s jaw.Nothing.

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