Crispin's Army

In the wee small hours of the morning, the screaming began. Screaming of such intensity and duration that it might be scarcely credited that it was issuing from a human throat. A single such scream might be expected from a hunted animal as the fatal arrow found its mark, but such continuous screaming, denoting someone enduring unendurable agony, that was suffering of a different order altogether. It seemed almost continuous to those who heard it, and some among them wondered how it could be that the lungs which fuelled it could continue for so long to expel air without ever seeming to inhale.

The people of Vale had been expecting it for some time, so it came as no great surprise when it broke the silence of the night. It carried on the air, every scream, every groan, every gutteral moan, every curse and imprecation in language utterly foreign to the villagers, as audible as if it were being uttered within their own homes.

They also heard the slap of bare feet running through the village, shouted instructions being passed, and the occasional slight splash, as water was drawn from the river.

The men of Vale, with one exception, drew the bedclothes over their heads and sought to block out the noise. Many of the women rose from their beds and went to the source of the trouble, only to return shortly after, having been thanked politely and told their assistance was not required. They lay in their beds once more, listening to the anguished cries, and reaching out to the sufferer with their hearts.

Most of them knew what torture the screamer was going through, and those who didn’t knew that, sooner or later, in all likelihood, they would experience it for themselves. Yet they all knew that they had been better prepared for the pain than she who was suffering now, because they had all grown up in a society where pain was the norm.

For one woman in Vale, the situation had an ironical twist. That woman was Tana, and like every other woman in the village, she had grown up knowing that she would one day become pregnant, and would have to go through the rigours of childbirth in the simple surroundings of a cottage. But it had not been so. Among all the horrors of her time in Urbis, one of the small compensations had been that her daughter Frances had been born in a high-tech clinic, while Tana was under an anaesthetic, and consequently had felt no pain. The irony was that the woman she was now watching twisted on the rack of labour pains had, for her part, grown up in Urbis, where childbirth was expected to be painless. The pain she was now suffering was thus all the more of a shock.

Josie lay on her back, her feet slung in stirrups, swinging her head from side to side, grasping in turn at the framework of the bed and then at the hand of Crispin, who sat on a stool by her side, patient, silent and helpless, relaying instructions to push from the midwife squatting between Josie’s legs, and giving her a hand to squeeze when the pain increased in intensity.

The presence of the midwife was a further irony. Cath Vernon had been present at the birth of Crispin’s first child, Frances, back in Urbis, some seventeen months previously, when he had been ignorant that he even had a child, and she had raised , for much of the time single-handed. She had further become both friend and lover to Tana when she had no one else to turn to for solace. She had then spent weeks in a bunker in Urbis’ sector one, waiting for the level of radioactivity outside to drop to a comparatively safe level, watching over Frances with a brace of formidable laser weapons, before leaving the city through the sewer network, along with a party of other refugees, braving enormous danger passing through the battle zone, and then struggling over the mountains and through the wild country beyond, in order to reunite Tana, here in Vale, with both Frances and herself. And now, here she was, delivering Crispin’s second child in conditions vastly different to the first, and to a different mother.

Village women scuttled in and out, bringing blankets and cloths and cords and knives and endless pots of water, which they boiled on a fire in a corner of the room, sterilising the ligating and cutting implements in readiness.

From time to time, Josie was offered a bowl containing an infusion of the narcotic herb peacegrass and some other pain-killing ingredients. In its effectiveness it was in no way comparable to Urbian anaesthetics, but she accepted it gratefully, raising it with trembling hands to her lips.

In the hot, steamy atmosphere, Josie lay sweating, her hair plastered in streaks to her forehead and her flushed cheeks. Now and then, Crispin would wipe her face and neck with a cool damp cloth. She murmured her gratitude to him in the brief respites from the pain. It all seemed so primitive to her, she wondered how babies and mothers could possibly survive under such conditions, but she saw that they patently did. Crispin’s soothing words and Cath’s calm, unflustered professionalism and the way she coped without her usual battery of equipment all combined to allay Josie’s fears to some extent, but she nevertheless longed for it all to be over.

She shifted her position slightly on the folded blanket Cath had placed beneath her. The length of the contractions and the interval between them were about the same now. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. This was it. The climax of nine patient months.

“The perineum’s bulging,” Cath informed her. “There’s a good deal of bloody show.”

“Well,” said Josie. “Let’s get on with the bloody show!”

Josie, Cath and Tana all laughed. Crispin wondered if they had all gone mad.

A strong bond of friendship had developed between Josie and Cath over the months. They were both Urbians, far from the city they called home, similar in age and outlook, even though Cath, as it turned out, had come from a more privileged background by far than Josie had had, and despite the fact that they were worlds apart in their sexual orientation. Both expressed the feeling of being like fish out of water in the strange, technologically backward environment of Vale, and both looked forward to ultimately returning to Urbis.

“I feel it coming!” Josie gasped.

“Push, then,” Cath instructed her. She crouched again between Josie’s legs, while Tana hovered behind her with a lamp. Cath picked nervously at an invisible speck on the linen spread under Josie’s thighs to receive the infant. She had already delivered babies for two women in Vale and another in Upper Vale, and could still not get used to the lack of sterile equipment.

The crown of the infant’s head began to appear.

“Pant,” said Cath. “Pant, Josie, pant. Shallow breaths.”

Josie obeyed.

“That’s my girl,” said Cath. “That way the baby comes out nice and slowly.”

“Slowly!” Josie gasped. “I want it out of there double quick!”

“No you don’t,” said Cath with a smile. “Take it slowly, and there’ll be no mistakes.”

She put a clean cloth under Josie’s buttocks with her right hand, while applying gentle pressure to the baby’s head with her left to slow and control the delivery.

“It’s coming out nicely,” Cath observed. She found it hard to get used to calling the child an `it’, but with no way of knowing its sex in advance, she had no alternative.

Cath’s fingers slipped into the vagina once more, this time searching for the umbilical cord. She found it loosely circling the baby’s neck, and swiftly pulled it over the head.

“Give me another cloth, please, Tana,” Cath said to her lover, cradling the infant’s head in her hands. She looked at it with a sense of unease: the proportions seemed a little odd.

“The red of Crispin’s hair is there,” Tana noted, handing Cath the cloth. “But it’s more muted than in .”

Was that all Tana saw, Cath wondered, or had she too seen something strange in the shape of the head? She took the cloth and wiped mucus and amniotic fluid from the tiny nose and mouth.

“Bear down as you push,” Cath instructed, as she moved her hands to the sides of the baby’s head, supporting the neck. Pressing gently downwards, she freed the uppermost of its shoulders. “That’s good.” She then lifted the child slightly in order to deliver the lower shoulder. “That’s very good.”

The rest came quickly. Cath was careful to keep the head angled slightly downward to encourage the mucus to drain from the child’s mouth, nose and windpipe. The body was slippery with amniotic fluid and vernix, and she had to be careful to hold it firmly, yet without undue pressure.

“It’s a boy,” Cath announced.

Josie and Crispin exchanged smiles of delight. The expressions exchanged by Cath and Tana were of profound sadness, but they were not visible in the gloom to the happy parents.

Cath wiped further mucus from the baby’s face. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged. Cath gently stroked the soles of his feet, and he wriggled, but still gave no cry.

“Is he all right?” said Josie anxiously.

“I’ll just give him a little mouth to mouth,” Cath explained. “To ventilate his lungs a bit.”

She closed her own lips over the baby’s and breathed gently, released, and repeated the action.

And suddenly the baby was crying, telling the whole village of his arrival. With tears of joy streaming down her face, Josie reached out and put her arms round Crispin’s neck, drawing him down to her in a warm and loving embrace.

Cath wrapped the baby in a blanket and cradled him, holding him at the same level as the uterus while she waited for the pulsing in the umbilical cord to cease. When it had done so, she gently laid the child on its mother’s stomach for her to admire, while she turned her attention to ligating and cutting the umbilical cord.

When the physical bond between mother and child had been severed, and all appeared to be well, a sense of peace came over all those gathered in the room. Cath closed her eyes for a moment.

Josie removed the enveloping blanket and inspected the baby. In the dim light of the lamp, she saw the unnaturally protuberant shape of his head first. Then she inspected his hands, such as they were. The left consisted of two fingers and a thumb, like the claw of a newly hatched bird. The right hand had its full complement of fingers, but the middle, ring and little fingers were fused together into a single mass of tissue. Josie continued her examination. The only other abnormality was an extra toe on the child’s right foot. Her heart felt heavy, and she gave a low sigh. Crispin enfolded her tightly in his arms and comforted her, while Tana sat by, lost in silent thoughts.

Cath snapped her eyes open again, and looked round. She sensed at once that more than a moment had passed. Tana and Crispin were gathered around Josie, and Josie was gently caressing her baby as he lay beneath a blanket that was draped loosely over the two of them.

Cath looked at her watch and noted in alarm that nearly an hour had passed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have dozed off. I don’t know why. I’ve never done that before.”

“It’s been a long night,” Crispin replied sympathetically. “But don’t worry, everything’s all right. We’ve been admiring our son.”

“So you’ve seen what he’s like,” Cath said sourly.

“Of course,” said Josie, her throat dry. “But we were expecting something of the sort. In fact we were steeling ourselves for much worse.”

Cath shook her head vigorously, rousing herself, and stood up. “Okay,” she said, placing her hands on Josie’s abdomen and pressing gently. “Last bit of work for tonight. Let’s get the placenta out. All right. Push.”

And the placenta emerged. Cath examined it to assure herself that no part of it had been left behind.

When she was satisfied, she drew up a stool and sat down at Josie’s side, opposite Crispin.

“Thank you, Cath,” Josie grinned. “You did a wonderful job.”

Cath said nothing. She had never delivered, or even seen, a baby that was anything less than perfect, and she didn’t know quite how to cope with it. She wondered how Josie would cope.

Tenderly, she palpated Josie’s uterus to satisfy herself that it was firm. As Josie put her baby to her breast for the first time, Cath removed the bloodstained cloth from the bed and drew the blanket up over them. She walked quietly to the door.

“Cath,” said Josie softly.

“Yes?”

“Thank you. You did do a wonderful job.”