Hummingbird Lake Page 0,102
you both not to interrupt me. Rose doesn’t know the beginning of the story, so first I need to bring her up to speed.”
Besides, she’d told this part of the story before. She knew she could do it. It’ll be a good lead-in to the rest of it. In a quiet, steady tone, she recited the events of the day she had dug the bullet out of Ban Ntaganda, thus saving his life. When she finished, she said, “Would you two come sit beside me?”
“Sure, honey,” Rose said, her voice heavy with emotion. She gave Sage’s right shoulder a squeeze and took a seat beside her. Sage noticed then that she wore flip-flops decorated with silk sunflowers. That was a new look for her sister.
Colt didn’t speak, but he took a seat on her left. He had removed his shoes at some point, and now he allowed his feet to dangle in the cold waters of Hummingbird Lake. Sage let out the breath she’d been holding. He’d come this far. Maybe he would listen to her later, too, when she explained that she had at least tried to join him in Texas.
The scent of wood smoke swirled in the air as Sage clasped her sister’s hand, then hesitantly offered her other hand to Colt. When after a moment he took it, she closed her eyes, and something within her relaxed. He was here. Despite everything, he was here for her. I just might be able to do this.
Then, for the first time ever, Sage consciously returned her thoughts to that violent day that had changed her life forever.
“It was our second day in the village. We’d arrived shortly before dark the previous day, Peter and me and three nurses, two men and a woman from England. We set up shop in the two-room missionary school and were working before the sun was fully up. We treated cuts and colds and infections. Midmorning, a man ran in and told us his wife was in labor and having trouble. They lived in another village, but once he heard we were there, the husband had borrowed a truck and brought her to us. She’d been in labor three days and was weakening.”
Sage took a deep breath and allowed herself to remember.
Shimmering waves of heat rose from the dusty, parched earth and danced to the tune of “This Little Light of Mine” sung by children in the mission school as Sage slipped her arm around the laboring woman, supporting her through the pain of her labor. The summer sun beat down upon them, cruel and unrelenting. Sweat rolled down Sage’s face, stinging her eyes as she said to the newcomers, “Let’s get into the building and I’ll take a look.”
If the situation was as the father claimed, she’d be prepping this woman for a C-section within minutes. She’d prefer to avoid it if possible, but if this labor truly had lasted three days, it needed to end.
Blankets draped over a rope stretched between two beams shielded the laboring mother as Sage performed a quick examination. This baby was in the breech position and in distress, and the mother was fading. “I have to do a C-section here,” she called out to the other medical professionals in the room. “Can one of you assist me?”
Peter joined her and they went about preparing the setting to be as clean as possible. This was, she thought, man versus nature at its most basic. If left to nature, both this baby and her mother would die. They might yet—infections in this part of the world were common and brutal—but at least with her help, they had a fighting chance.
This was why she’d become a doctor, why she volunteered with DWB. Her calling, her passion, her joy was to save lives.
In some part of her subconscious, amidst the sound of children now singing “Jesus Loves Me” next door, she noted the noise of arriving vehicles, though she remained focused on the task at hand. Peter administered anesthetic to her patient and she picked up her scalpel.
“Yes, Jesus loves me.”
The procedure itself would take but a few minutes. She placed the scalpel against the skin and made the cut.
Shouting. Angry voices. Echoes of an argument, she surmised, paying them little mind.
“Yes, Jesus loves me.”
As a surgeon at work, she dared not allow her attention to wander. If she stopped, they’d die.
“Yes, Jesus loves me.”
“What’s that?” Peter asked as his big, tanned hand dabbed the seeping blood away with white gauze.