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‘Right, well, you go and immunise or screen. I’m going to see if I can’t find some liquid gold.’ He tapped the survey map in front of him.
‘Okay.’ She laughed. Surprisingly happy. ‘See you later.’
Like they were a couple. And the strangest thing about it was that Hayden didn’t react to it at all. He merely shot her a smile and lifted his hand.
Her heart stuttered, though she told herself she didn’t know why that would be.
‘What is it?’ he asked, as if reading her mind.
‘Nothing,’ she lied, her mind racing. ‘Just, maybe, take some of the local builders with you and see if you can’t teach them about gradients and gravity-fed soakaways.’
‘Say again? I don’t want to be patronising.’
‘That isn’t being patronising.’ She frowned. ‘It’s acknowledging a reality. There are things they build or make out here that we wouldn’t have a clue about, at least I wouldn’t. Like baking their own bricks for construction, or the way they build those beautifully crafted tukuls. In the same way, whilst we understand water and gradients, it’s currently new to them.’
‘I see.’ Hayden looked thoughtful but unconvinced.
With anyone else she might have left it there, not wanting to press her point. So what did it mean that she barely thought twice about explaining herself to this particular man?
‘Listen, you and I might think putting a gradient on a pipe is intuitive, but it isn’t, it’s a learned technique and out here people haven’t yet had a chance to learn it. They just think that because water flows, it won’t matter in which direction, up or down. Our water, sanitation and hygiene expert has spent the last few days explaining the importance of putting a gradient on pipes or drainage channels but the simple truth is that she’s a woman so they find it hard to believe her.’
‘Will your WSH expert really want me taking over, then?’ Hayden looked sceptical. ‘Won’t that just make it worse for her?’
Bridget offered a light shrug.
‘Don’t take over, then. Work with her instead. Whether we like it or not, it’s just the way it is out here at the moment and we’re here to help, not to judge or tell them they need to change. Change can happen in its own time—we can’t force it.’
‘I see.’ Hayden looked thoughtful again. ‘Okay, I might have a few experiments I can use to highlight the point. Leave it with me, I want to run it by your WSH expert first.’
It was all she could to stifle the broad smile that suddenly threatened to spill over her face. She really needed to stop reading so much into so little.
It was all she could do not to skip back to the medical tent. But as she stepped through the flap, expecting everything set up ready for the immunisations, she was confronted with a grim-faced colleague and a local woman at the end, blood all over the bed.
‘What’s going on?’ Bridget hurried forward.
‘Emergency.’ Her colleague lifted her hands into the air. ‘Her family brought her. We told them she couldn’t come in here, but they carried her in anyway. She gave birth quite a few hours ago but the placenta still hasn’t come out.’
‘Okay.’ Bridget nodded. ‘She’s going to need manual removal.’
It wasn’t ideal as the place had been set up for measles vaccinations and there was no way they could use it now. But these women were well accustomed to giving birth at home, so if she’d come here then there had to be a real issue.
‘Can you bring me long-sleeved gloves?’ she asked, reaching into the boxes for a gown. ‘Damn, no long gown.’
‘No long-sleeved gloves either,’ her colleague apologised, handing her a pair that covered hand and wrist only. ‘These are all we have.’
Bridget fought to keep her expression neutral in front of the already worried family, but there was no denying it was an issue. She would need to insert her arm into the woman’s uterus, sweeping the blade of her hand around the side in order to find the plane where the placenta met the uterine wall. Then try to manually work the two apart. But that meant inserting her arm right up to the elbow, and without latex gloves that was going to be a problem.
‘What if we cut up several pairs of gloves and kind of arrange them around my arm in overlapping rings?’
‘We can try.’ Her team looked dubious as one of them lowered her voice. ‘Do you think I should get her family out? They’re here to donate blood if it’s needed to keep her alive, because if she dies, she would not only leave her beautiful newborn an orphan but also its four siblings. And the family, as much as they might care, simply wouldn’t have the means to take on four young children.’
It was an added pressure, but one that was painfully familiar.
‘We’ll do our best.’ Bridget nodded without looking up, her focus solely on cutting the fingers out of the gloves. ‘But get the family outside and take their blood for cross-matching.’
A few minutes later the family was safely outside whilst Bridget slid her arm into the uterus and felt around for the placenta.
‘I’ve got it,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s free at the back but still attached anteriorly... Wait... There.’
