LITMIR.BIZ

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something her mother had told her when she’d been very young and had probably been sighing about the unfairness of fate. ‘Why bother sighing, when you could be doing something about whatever is wrong? And if you can’t do anything about it, then again, why sigh? It doesn’t achieve anything.’

      ‘But it does release some tension or emotion, does it not?’

      ‘So does Tae Kwon Do, and it has the benefit of keeping you fit at the same time.’

      ‘But you can hardly kick out at your opponent in the operating theatre,’ Carlos said, and Marty, hearing something in his voice, turned to see a slight smile on his face.

      He was teasing her!

      And she didn’t like it one bit!

      Did she really never sigh, or had she simply been making conversation?

      Carlos studied his companion as she strode along, her eyes focussed on the path ahead of them, her thoughts who knew where?

      Her slight figure moved briskly—a no-nonsense woman, this Marty Cox—no-nonsense, like her name. No-nonsense hair, cut short to hide, he suspected, a tendency to curl. No-nonsense muddy blonde, not highlighted as so many women wore their hair these days. It feathered around her neat head, a lighter colour at the tips, where it brushed against the almost translucent skin on her temples.

      And though slim, she had curves in all the right places, and his body had already registered an attraction.

      Not that she’d respond!

      No-nonsense through and through would be his judgement, except that her eyes belied it. He remembered them slanting towards him as he’d asked a question—a greenish, bluish colour with gold pinpoints around the pupils. Dreamer’s eyes!

      He shook his head. The sleepless night could be blamed for this fantasy, although not for the attraction he felt towards this woman. Had Natalie’s princess-like beauty captured Marty’s imagination, prompting her deep compassion, her involvement? Was that why she’d taken so much interest in Natalie’s baby?

      Natalie’s baby?

      He hadn’t thought of the baby that way before.

      And wouldn’t again if he could help it—the idea distasteful somehow.

      As the forthright Marty Cox had pointed out, Emmaline was his baby.

      But Emmaline?

      A fantasy name from the forthright woman?

      She was indeed an odd mix.

      She was also unclipping her pager from the waist of her jeans.

      ‘Hospital—A and E,’ she said briefly, picking up the pace of their progress, taking strides that seemed too long for such a petite woman.

      He paced beside her.

      ‘What is your usual procedure with a page? Do you phone in?’

      ‘I would if I was at home, but we’re only minutes away now, so I’ll be there almost as soon as a phone call. The specialist on night duty must have his hands full for A and E to be paging me.’

      They crossed the road and she led the way through a back entrance into the emergency department, lobbing her small backpack onto a shelf behind a manned desk by the door and grabbing a folded scrub suit to pull on over her clothing.

      Then, as she thrust her arms into the sleeves, she turned towards him and smiled.

      ‘Well, get yourself ready. We’re on!’

      Her smile wasn’t at all forthright. It was sweet, and slightly shy, as if unrelated to her confident manner and brisk words.

      He glanced towards her, hoping she’d smile again, but she was talking to the nurse behind the desk, explaining about the page.

      ‘Oh, it must be the woman in the car they want you for,’ the nurse said. ‘Her husband’s driven into the laundry bay out the back. Let me check.’ She leafed through some notes on her desk then explained, ‘Full term, breech presentation, feet already out.’

      ‘At least someone had the sense not to try to move her,’ Marty replied, then she turned to Carlos. ‘Out this way. Have you delivered a breech? Normally it would have been picked up in prenatal care but a lot of women still don’t bother with it—or with much of it. When they present here in early labour and we realise it’s a breech, we’d do an ultrasound to work out foetal weight, a flat-plate abdomen X-ray to determine if the head is normally flexed or hyper-extended, and we’d do a clinical evaluation of the woman’s pelvis. Quite often, if there’s time, we can turn the baby. If the baby’s too big, or the pelvis is too small, or the head is in the wrong position, we’d consider a Caesar, but with the legs, and by now possibly the body, already delivered, we have to go ahead with a vaginal delivery.’

      ‘I remember the danger in a breech is in the delivery of the head, but you will do this in the car?’

      She was snapping on a pair of gloves, but she smiled again, as if pleased he knew that much.

      ‘I imagine if you’re doing it back in Sudan it could be in far worse circumstances than the back of a car.’

      ‘Sometimes,’ he conceded, ‘although where I work there is now a hospital of sorts—the people themselves built it for me, with a thatched roof and mud brick walls, and the people are accepting it and coming if they need help.’

      They reached the car and found a nurse kneeling at the open rear door, with a wheelchair, a gurney and several onlookers clustered nearby. The nurse stood up to make room for Marty.

      ‘FHR is strong, the feet showed then retracted but are well out now. I know theoretically about gentle traction on the feet, legs and pelvis in a breech delivery, but what’s gentle?’

      She introduced Marty to the woman and her husband.

      ‘You’ve done just fine,’ Marty assured the nurse, squatting down so she could say hello to the woman and introduce Carlos, explaining who they both were and what she had to do, then taking hold of the protruding legs and body and slipping the forefinger of her left hand along the baby’s back so she could rotate his torso while his shoulders came free.

      ‘It’s a gentle pressure,’ she explained to Carlos. ‘We wait for a contraction, then use a finger to get the shoulder blades free. You’re doing really well,’ she added to the mother. ‘This isn’t your first?’

      ‘It’s her fifth,’ the father replied. ‘We had all the others at home but this was a new midwife and she felt the baby was in the wrong position and couldn’t turn it so told us to come to the hospital, then, while we were stopped at traffic lights, this happened. My wife had to push and I saw the feet!’

      ‘They’ll both be fine,’ Marty assured the man, who had obviously been prepared to deliver his child head first but had panicked at seeing feet. She was also reassured herself. After four children the woman’s pelvimetry should be flexible enough to expand to release the head. She turned her attention back to the labouring woman. ‘You’re the boss, so we’ll wait until you’re ready to push again then rotate him so his arms follow each other out.’

      She turned to check the instrument tray, seeing the Piper forceps on it, should she need them to help deliver the head. She’d prefer not to, but if the baby’s head was hyper-extended, they’d definitely be needed.

      ‘Now,’ the woman gasped, while her husband, who was supporting her, leaned forward over her labouring body to see what was happening.

      The arms came free and Marty continued with her instructions to Carlos who stood, bent almost double, beside her.

      ‘Now, with two hands, the left one underneath, you use your forefinger again, only this time you slip it into his mouth to keep his head flexed. Then with the next contraction, we pull down, then lift and pull at the same time. Wait for the push, then—bingo! One brave little boy comes backwards into the world.’

      She

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