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The night she’d told herself that if she was in love with Justin the way she thought she was, then she shouldn’t keep holding herself back from sleeping with him. The night she’d told herself that if she didn’t want to then perhaps she really was as frigid as her sisters and Justin mocked her for being.
She’d spent the years afterwards believing that was the only explanation. And then Myles had come along and she’d physically ached for him in a way she’d never known was possible. That night she hadn’t had to talk herself into anything with Myles. She’d wanted him with such a wanton intensity that surely no one could ever have felt before.
She should have been ashamed—living up to every last false image that had been told about her over the last decade. But Myles had made her feel so...alive, so free, so powerful. It had been like nothing else she had ever imagined. Nothing like Justin. How could she regret that?
So she’d spent the past few days here desperately ignoring him. She’d got away with it so far, but she couldn’t avoid him for ever. Not if she didn’t want the other volunteers to notice and start wondering. She and Myles had arrived together; it would be obvious if she avoided him for the entire month.
As she’d heard at least three times already thi
s shift, even in a place as hellish as this it couldn’t be all work, all the time. There had to be at least a few moments of snatched private time, or else one would go truly insane.
Which meant once her shift ended, she was going to have to go and find him and come up with a solution.
She told herself that it was purely apprehension that made her chest spin like the triple-axle she’d learned to execute as a youth champion ice-skater.
‘Machine’s free.’
Rae stared blankly for a moment, the words taking their time to sink in, to push away the unwanted thoughts of Myles. And then she was moving, grateful to be able to focus on her patient.
The ultrasound confirmed her suspicion, and since the baby was clearly intent on coming out that night, one way or another, there was nothing else for it but to carry out an emergency C-section.
As Clara translated all the information and gained consent from the mother, Rae looked around for one of the senior surgeons to brief.
‘I can join you, if you like,’ offered Janine, a sixth-time volunteer and one of Rae’s mentors. ‘I’ve just cleared a clinic of the usual diarrhoea and urinary tract infections. I have a free half-hour.’
‘That would be brilliant.’ Rae nodded gratefully. ‘I knew the lack of healthcare out here meant complicated pregnancies were more common than I was used to, but I don’t think I was prepared for sixty to seventy women giving birth in a twenty-four-hour period. And many of them to twins or triplets because of the unregulated fertility pills out here.’
‘No one is ready that first time.’ Janine laughed. ‘But you’ll get used to it and be a dab hand before you know it. And wait for a busy night when north of ninety women give birth and there are a couple of quadruplets thrown in for an added kick.’
‘Oh, well, thanks for that.’
‘Any time. Seriously though, Raevenne, you’ve already settled in well these last few days. You’ll be fine. Come on, you take the lead on this one, I’ll just assist.’
And then it was time.
Sucking in a steadying breath, Rae lifted the scalpel and began.
‘I’m going for a transverse abdominal incision, given the position of the baby.’ She cut carefully until she could see the uterus.
But it wasn’t what she’d expected and it didn’t make any sense. She stopped, frowning. A glance at her equally baffled mentor didn’t help. They began a quick set of checks.
‘It is the uterus,’ she breathed a few moments later. Half a statement, half a question.
‘It is,’ Janine concurred.
‘But it looks like a normal, non-pregnant uterus? Yet I felt the baby. I saw it on the ultrasound?’
‘Try extending the incision upwards. Until it’s T-shaped.’
Dutifully, Rae cut until she was where the gallbladder might usually be. Only it wasn’t a gallbladder.
‘It’s an abdominal pregnancy,’ they both gasped at once.
Rae shook her head in awe. How was it possible that this baby had developed entirely outside the uterus? Entirely inside the abdominal cavity?
Ectopic pregnancies might occur one or two per cent of the time, but in pretty much all those cases the pregnancy was usually in the fallopian tubes, and would be terminated because of the high risk to the mother. But to see a baby—an almost full-term baby—still alive, outside both the uterus and the fallopian tubes? Rae had been prepared for the high number of complications out here, but she could never have imagined she would ever see something like this.
‘I’ve only ever read about this in my medical journals back home,’ she marvelled. ‘And even then there was only a sketch to accompany the condition. It’s just extraordinary.’
