“Well.” Xavier looks at the door, jiggles the knob. Nothing doing.
“Help, damn you!”
“We’re trying, lady! It’d be easier if you hadn’t locked your door!” X looks around. “Here, Abe, the kitchen window is just over the rail, and it’s open. It looks like you’d just about fit in.”
Abe looks at the little window dubiously. “It’s too small. Besides, it’s hanging out over the alley!”
“No it’s not. Give it a try, I’ll hold on to you.”
So Abe climbs over the flimsy black-iron railing, reaches inside and finds nothing to hold on to except the sink faucet. The window really is too small. But… he steps onto the railing and squirms inside. Powerful stench of garbage left under the sink too long. His shoulders just make it through, then it’s a matter of twisting over the sink and pulling his legs in. X gives him a final shove that catapults him onto a dirty kitchen floor. “Hey!”
“Help! Oh—oh—help!”
Abe gets to his feet and rushes into the little living room/ bedroom of the ap. A black-haired woman in a sweat-soaked long T-shirt is on her back on the floor. And unless she’s unfashionably fat—nope—pregnant woman here, gone into labor. Abe rushes to the door. “Hey!” the woman shouts. “Over here!”
“I know!”
He unlocks the door and Xavier hurries in. The woman jerks back awkwardly against an old green vinyl couch. “Hey! Who are you!”
“Rescue squad.” Xavier kneels beside her, holds her wrist and moves her hand off her belly. “Relax, lady—”
“Relax! Are you kidding? What took you so long? Ahh! ahh!” Her face is dripping with sweat, she rolls her head from side to side. “I wanted an ambulance!”
“We are the ambulance, lady. Try to relax.” Xavier checks her out. “Hey, how long have you been in labor?”
“Couple hours. I guess.”
“Say, you’re making awfully fast progress.”
“You’re telling me! Listen who the fuck are you?”
“Rescue squad.”
“I don’t want some spade playing around down there while I’m trying to—ahh!—have a baby!”
Xavier frowns at her. “I’ll try to refrain from molesting you till you’re done, all right? It’s a little too crowded in there to rape you just now.”
The woman takes a weak swing at him. “Get away from me! Leave me alone! Ah, God!”
“We’re the rescue squad, ma’am,” Abe tries to explain.
“Will you cut that ma’am shit! All I need is the ambulance!”
“We can do that too,” Xavier says. “Abe, run down quick and get the stretcher. I think we’ve got time to get her over to St. Joe’s.”
Abe runs down and grabs the furled stretcher, carries it back upstairs. Back in the ap Xavier and the woman are arguing loudly. “They can’t hold your kid hostage, woman! If you can’t pay, you can’t pay! You’re going too fast here, and it’s pretty sure to rip you up some. You’d best be in the hospital!”
The woman is hit by a severe contraction and can’t reply. Abe can see she wants to reply, her eyes are fixed on Xavier’s and she’s glaring fiercely, shaking her head. “Don’t—want—to go!”
“That’s tough. We’re not allowed to just let you bleed to death, are we.”
Abe finishes getting the stretcher unfurled and set up. As they lift the woman onto it she arches, sobbing with pain. “Try to push in a rhythm, will you?” Xavier says. “Don’t you know anything about how to do this?”
“Fuck you!” the woman cries, trying again to hit him. “Goddamned molesters! I didn’t even know—ahh!—didn’t know I was pregnant until two months ago.”
“Great. Here, Abe, hold her shoulders up for her. Push, woman, push!”
“No!” But push she does, an awful straining effort, the veins and tendons in her neck standing out like pencils under the skin. Abe finds that he’s a little freaked, here; paramedics are supposed to run into this situation all the time, but it’s a first for him, and the way that she’s writhing under his hands is disconcerting indeed. He isn’t so sure he doesn’t prefer them a little more comatose.
They’re about to pick up the stretcher when the contractions begin again, and Xavier stops to check her out once more. “Oops, top of its head is showing here, I don’t think we’ve got time anymore. Push, woman.”
“Can’t—”
“Yes, you can, here when I press on your belly. Legs up, hands down here. A big push, hold it, let off. Rest for a bit. Now again.”
“X, have you done this before?” Abe asks.
“Sure.”
“Are you going to do an, an episiotomy?”
“Are you kidding? This kid’s doing it himself.”
“Great!” the woman cries in a break between pushes. “Just what I want to hear! What kind of medic are you?”
“Army. Here, pay attention to what you’re doing.”
“As if I’ve—got any choice!”
The woman gasps, bears down again. She’s gasping for more air. Abe had no idea they had to work so hard at it. He jumps up and gets a grayed towel from the bathroom, wipes off her face. Her belly heaves again, she squeaks, teeth clamped, eyes squeezed shut so hard the lids are white in a bright red face. “Breathe in, push on the exhale,” Xavier says softly. “Okay, push. Push.”
“Fuck off.”
Suddenly Abe notices that the light has dimmed; there’s a big crowd of neighbors in the doorway! The woman notices them and curses between gasps. “Hey, get out of here!” Abe says. “Unless you’re a doctor or a midwife, go wait outside! And close the door!” He gets up and chases them off, having trouble with the smallest kids, who are fast. Mostly kids and teenagers, looking in round-eyed with curiosity.
“Push! Push, yeah! Here we go, head’s out. Now push those shoulders out right quick.” Xavier’s hands are busy at the woman’s crotch, Abe glances and sees a wet blood-and-mucus-streaked baby, rubbery-looking red in X’s black hands, just about clear of her, sliding out the last part of the way. Amazing. Xavier starts working on the umbilical cord and the placenta. He flicks the infant on the side and it wails. “Here, Abe, take it.” Abe crouches and is handed a baby. Wet, warm, sticky. It hardly weighs a thing, and its whole head fits in one hand easily.
“A little hemorrhaging,” Xavier remarks, frowning.
“Hey—when do I push!”
“You’re done, lady. The kid is born.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me!” The woman takes a weak swing at the air. “What kind of doctor are you, anyway? Hey! Boy or girl?”
“Umm…” Abe checks. “Boy, I think.”
“You think?” the woman demands. She and Xavier laugh. “What you got here, spade, some kind of medical student or something?”
“Come on,” Xavier says. “We’ve still got to get to the hospital. Lady, can you hold the kid on top of you while we carry you downstairs?”
She nods, and they arrange the little creature on the wet T-shirt, in her arms. It makes quite a picture—messy, but… good.
As they maneuver her down the stairs, however, shooing the neighborhood kids ahead of them, the woman fades a little. She lets the kid slip off to the side; they have to drop the stretcher and grab the baby fast before it goes over the railing and into the dumpsters. Thump, thump, the stretcher and the woman land half on Xavier, who almost falls down the stairs; he has to sit fast to avoid it. “Lady, what are you doing?”
“Who are you guys anyway! Trying to kill me! Give me my kid back!”
“Try holding on to it this time, okay?” X is disgusted. “Little tip for mothers, I give to you free—don’t drop your kid into trashbins when you can help it.”
They make it down the stairs and to the truck. Xavier jumps in back with her, Abe drives them off toward St. Joe’s.