The Reanimates (Book 3): The Escape (17 page)

The Birth of Charity

March finally arrived again, and with its return, the snow melted away. The tulips came back to life and another batch of chickens hatched from their eggs. To our surprise, another goat was born in our group. I felt bad that I didn't even notice that Jane was pregnant until the end. I had been so wrapped up in all the other life chaos, that I overlooked her weight gain. I was relieved that she gave birth without complication to Rose. While we were sitting next to Jane and Rose, giggling over the small bleats that came from this curly-haired newborn, Trisha pointed out that the next one to give birth was going to be Shayla, and she was right. Shayla was at the end of her second trimester and was due late June.

March was also the month where my baby went from a child to a teenager. I cried. My little boy was growing faster than I ever thought was possible. It was time for Trent to start taking him on serious hunting trips and teach him how to do runs once his hunting practice and smaller outside-of-the-wall zombie-slaying trips proved he was able to do his part in protecting not only himself, but the group as a whole. His birthday seemed to prove that this zombie life really continued going. He had just turned ten when this whole thing started, and here he was; turning thirteen. A lifetime and just yesterday folded over on itself, existing together at the same point.

With the melting snow, our respite from zombies was over. The cold months gave us a chance to do repairs in the walls where we could, and the guys were able to swap some of the wood and debris that were used as fence filler with actual shipping containers that were discovered on a run a few months ago. I loved how safe the containers made me feel. As long as we made sure we did a controlled burn, we didn't have the concern that the bodies would build up for them to use as a ramp. Trent still wanted to put in a moat, like we had in the complex, but there weren't any tractors that would do the job. Heck, it was hard enough to make a narrow canal to route some water to the field from the stream. I don't know what we would have done had it not been for the wells that provided water to the houses here.

With Shayla's due date approaching fast, it was time to start the process of teaching Trisha how to help in a delivery. I wanted to know that if I was away for any reason, that she could handle it. I also began to take her on trade runs to help the first-aid booth. I had the hope that if I got her to the point where she was comfortable handling the medical station booth at the meets, then I'd be able to stay home on some of the trips.

The booth idea came from wanting to assess a person that came up to me at a meet. He needed to be examined and treated and all I had was a folding table and a duffel bag. Now we were more ready. The booth was now one of those little tear drop shaped trailers that I stocked with supplies, and it resembled a mobile doctor's office. On the way out to the next meet, with our trailer attached to the truck, I talked Trent into taking a detour with Trisha and me so we could maybe load more supplies in the trailer and be as ready as possible, and we always could use more.
We found a few little mom and pop pharmacies that hadn't been completely ransacked, so we added those supplies to the stash. We found a store that sold nutritional supplements and I felt like I won the lottery when there were more herbal supplements than I imagined that I would find. I think a lot of people saw herbal supplements as snake oil, but we learned that there was more to herbal medications than I ever would have imagined. I was so excited to find the back of the bottles had instructions on doses and what it treated, taking a lot of guess work out of the process of deciding what and how much to give.

With a full trailer and a bolstered sense of optimism, we went to the meet. We put a folding table up to display the stuff that we commonly traded, mostly bandages and salves, and scored some supplies like yeast and bags of flour, and even a few bags of sugar for them. In the trailer, I set a couple of broken bones, fixed a dislocated shoulder, and checked a young kid with a rash that looked like poison oak. It felt good to actually be able to help them, and it was fun to have Trisha learning and helping. There were a couple of times that I would have been lost without her being able to treat issues while I was in the middle of something else.

Someone set up Ham radio for everyone to be able to get in contact with their town in the event of an emergency. When I was called from the medical station to take a call, I knew that there was something frighteningly wrong. It was Tyreese, letting me know that Shayla had gone into labor, but his voice told me there was more to it. He told me she started having heavy bleeding, something he didn't remember happening when Tanya had their two kids. My heart raced because it was too soon for the baby to be born, and the blood he described was very much not a normal part of having a baby. I ran from the radio area to the medical station, which was blissfully empty of patients. I hated to break the news to Trisha that her sister-in-law was having issues, but she handled it well and went into immediate action. Trent ran over to the meet organizers and told them that there was an emergency in our camp and we needed to go. When he came back, we had already loaded our stuff in the trailer and were locking up.

Trent drove as fast as he could, but it didn't feel fast enough. The entire ride home I was going over the various problems that could be happening with this delivery. I tried to maintain a confident tone when I talked to Trisha about the upcoming delivery, going over the finer points of a vaginal birth: how to clamp the cord, and how to suction airways on a newborn if they need it. Justin was at the gate and he slid down to the pulleys and had it open by the time we were at the opening. He called out that Shayla was at her house. Trent drove straight to DaWayne's, where Tyreese was standing out on the porch waving urgently. We came to a stop and I jumped out of the truck with my pink medical bag in my hand. I kept it in the extended cab, after I had put it together for baby delivery, and I started to run into the house. DaWayne came out from the bedroom, eyes wide in fear that bordered panic, and yelled that she was inside the bedroom. I raced down the hall, following the sounds of chaos until I found them, and went in.

There was so much blood pooling under her, more blood than there should be. Shayla was pale, and a sheen of sweat was on her face, making her look almost wax-like. Her eyes were wide in fear. I went into nurse mode and took her vitals, and I was not happy with the results.

"Cali. Something is wrong, really wrong. I'm scared." Shayla said before another contraction gripped her in pain. The pool of blood grew as I pulled on my gloves. I lifted her skirt to check her cervix.

A loop of umbilical cord was out; what a labor and delivery team would call a prolapsed cord. We learned about them in school when we did our obstetrics rotation. They said that this was an emergency and the first thing that we were supposed to do was to put our hand inside them and push the baby up and off the cervix then yell for help. But I was the help. I pushed the baby off the cervix and called for Trisha. When she came in I told her to glove up so she could take my place. When she was in position I took DaWayne out to the living room. I guided him to the couch and sat down with him.

"I've always been straight with you, right?" I asked, my eyes locked with his. He nodded slowly, his jaw tense and locked, bracing for the worst. "She has a prolapsed cord. That means part of the umbilical cord is out. Every time she has a contraction, the baby gets squeezed into the cord and that cuts off oxygen to the baby. Now, this is the really scary part. All that blood tells me that the placenta is low, which is common with prolapsed cords. I am worried about the placenta placement because that makes for much harder deliveries. The bigger problem with the placenta is that it is already beginning to detach. When it totally detaches, which often happens before the baby comes out, she has a huge risk of bleeding to death. She needs a c-section, but if I do it, I'm pretty sure that I'll kill her. My first fear is that she would go into shock with the surgery since I have no anesthesia. My next fear is that I don't know where the placenta is in this, because it isn't where it's supposed to be. If I cut it, that is very dangerous. I have no experience with doing this sort of thing, anything I do will be based on something I read in a book."

"So if you do nothing she dies, if you do something, she probably dies. What about the baby?"

"The baby is very early. I don't know if it will survive without super specialized stuff. I need a baby warmer, a ventilator, stuff like that."

DaWayne put his hands on his face and groaned. "How long do I have before I have to tell you what way to go?"

"Soon. There's not a lot of time."

"I need to talk to her." DaWayne pulled his hands from his face revealing that his chocolate brown eyes were surrounded with red as his tears irritated his eyes. I nodded and stood up to offer a hand. He took it and when he stood I gave him a hug that he fell into and started crying again.

After a moment, he stepped back and wiped his face. I followed him into the room he shared with his wife. I took her vitals and noted that her blood pressure was going down as well as her pulse. He laid down in the bed with her and told her what we had discussed.

"Save the baby. Please save him." She said weakly.
Another contraction hit and she cried out in pain as it ripped through her. She continued to whimper after the contraction was over. "I don't feel good." She whispered. She turned her head and looked at DaWayne, then in a soft voice said, "I love you." I cringed inwardly. I learned a long time ago that when a person said that they didn't feel good and followed that up with an I love you, they were in trouble.

Trisha looked up at me with wide eyes, her expression confirmed that I had reason to be worried. I leaned over to see what Trisha was reacting to. Blood was pouring from her.

"Shayla?" I called. I looked up at her face and saw her eyes roll back in her head as she passed out. I reached up to feel for a pulse and found a very weak one before it disappeared altogether. She wasn't breathing. She was losing her entire blood volume in front of me and I had nothing to replace it with. She was gone.

“
Trisha! I need lights, now! DaWayne, out." I heard him start to protest and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trisha grab her brother by the shoulders and push him to the door, then close it behind her.

I dumped my bag and found a scalpel that I packed, thinking she would need an episiotomy to deliver, at the bottom of my stash. As I pulled the wrapper off, I saw Trisha going for the lamp. I pulled Shayla's skirt all the way up and took the scalpel blade and ran it down her skin from her belly button to the pubic bone. I exposed the dark shell of muscle that was her uterus as Trisha took a lamp shade off the light by the bed and put it over the area that I was working. I cut gently into the uterine wall, scared that I would cut the baby. I pulled open the uterus and saw the squirming baby inside. Part of me wanted to just stand there, and admire the wonder of this baby still in her mother, wrapped up in the once safe and ideal location. I heard Trisha gasp in amazement, taken by the sight in front of us. I had Trisha hold open the uterine walls as I lifted the baby out. Trisha had a stunned look on her face, and murmured something about how unbelievably tiny she was.

She really was tiny. I had seen premature infants. I've toured the neonatal ICU at a medical school hospital. It somehow was so much different now that this teeny little person was in my hands. It was a girl, an infinitesimally small girl. I clamped the cord in two places and cut between them. The baby's chest fit in one hand and I held her face down with her head lower than the rest of her while I located my bulb syringe. I flipped her over in my other hand and suctioned her nose and mouth. I blew a couple of gentle puffs of air in her lungs and that triggered her breathing. I told Trisha to find towels or blankets so we could wrap her up. When she brought the towels I swaddled the baby and handed her to Trisha.

"Alright auntie, take her to meet her daddy. Keep an eye on her breathing, and if she needs help, just give her a couple of gentle puffs, mouth to mouth."

Trisha took the bundle of towels with a look of awe that someone so miniscule could be alive at all. I was worried that she wouldn't have long to live, so I wanted to make sure her dad saw her before she died.

With everyone out of the area, I looked over the room. It looked like a murder scene. I thought about the people who loved her and I didn't want anyone to see her like this. I felt horrible that Trisha had to be with me to see her sister-in-law die like this, but I had to have her there; no one else had as much training as she did.

I taped up her abdomen with my medical fabric tape, the kind that was super strong and held together like a dream, then found a dark quilt to cover her up, and placed dark towels and any thing else I could find to disguise the blood on the floor. I wiped off her face and brushed her hair. This is what I could do for her and her family. I fought the tears that threatened to form, knowing that this was not the time or place for a breakdown. I stepped into the living room, and looked at DaWayne holding his new baby.

"We were going to name her Charity." DaWayne said softly. "She is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. She looks like a fairy. I always told her mom that that she was Tinkerbell, and now that I am holding this baby, I know what Tinkerbell really looks like." His eyes filled with tears and with a choked up and strained voice, he asked, "Can I see her? Can I tell my beautiful wife all about our daughter?"