Another unfinished stroy

Note: Unfinished, contains somewhat explicit disturbing scenes.

« I quit! » I shrieked with a maniacal, defeated expression on my otherwise listless mug. However, my tantrum hardly stirred any drums amidst the cacophony of screeching, laboring women about. Before me lay another failure of mine: A failure to make do, a failure to do my makeshift job using makeshift tools as taught by makeshift mentors. A straight line on the scope shoots into and ebbs away from the monitor edges, the continuous buzzing tries to let me know what I already figured out. The protruded blue head looks at me with a bloodshot stare from the middle of its dead progenitor’s sprawled legs. I did what I could! Don’t look at me so.

Five hours earlier, I was on the verge of merging my epidermis with the coarse mattress cover when Gabor Szabo’s Another dream abruptly stung my gyri and pulled my abstract likeness from the warm embrace of gentle yet burly hands browsing my person. I dredged out my dead arm from beneath my torso and rested it on the side until my brain recalled it as its own.  I snuck into my olive-green scrubs as turtle would its shell. I loved scrubs; loose but not baggy, soft on the skin ad motility-friendly, they buffed cheeks ad spirit. Fresh and bolstered, I got in my car (Brand) and started for the hospital.

The streets were empty, bereft of life. I reveled in the lack of need for brakes, the slow sweet turns and the breeze shift that came with them. No profanity jumped from my mouth and none irked my ears; a “vibe” as they call it.

After about 30 minutes of serene driving, the silhouette of Kallis city hospital began looming in the distance, dimly lit by the lights scattered above its roof edges. It looked ominous, oppressive: Home.

I parked my car and made my way to the gynecology service, its admission door brimmed with mothers, husbands, fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters awaiting the arrival of a novel addition to their kin, or the subtraction of two, who could say? I greeted the security guard and the secretary then proceeded to walk through an enclosed corridor reminiscent of passage canals within nuclear plants. At the end of the corridor, I could almost make out a visible miasma current slowly tiding tangent to the exit. My nostrils knee-jerkedly fluttered in expectation. It’s one of those things you simply cannot fortify yourself enough for. The stench invaded my nasal cavities like a swarm of locusts happening upon an unconsumed wheat field. In a reckless bravado, I poised my stature and deeply inhaled the fetor's contents: pus, blood, previously trapped thrombus gas, urine, feces and most pungent of all: Amniotic fluid. Even worse when it’s hot and green like bile.

Vertigo almost took hold of my gait when I neared the service quarters, a dozen of women with spider rears for bellies were standing by in a line before the entry, moaning and screaming slurs and beseeching God for the curse or blessing cast into their wombs, probably wondering what has led them to so unkempt and disheveled a state. Being a woman myself, fertile and susceptible to be in the same position, I find it odd that I seldom ponder on my own Labor Day.

The gynecology ward was spacious enough to allow a constant inwards and outwards flux of prepartum and postpartum mothers, confederates aiming for the paraphernalia trolley, the occasional psychology ward fugitive who somehow got their hands on a very convincing disguise and other interesting intruders. In the center was the counter on which lay the service register where all the new lives or deaths were documented. Kallis hospital being the only “proper” healthcare facility in the renowned metropolis and its vicinity, and Kallis denizens being some of the most prolific and procreative populations documented, the register would have its fill of burned out, unintelligible handwriting by a week at most. The left section comprised of the newborn admission room, where the babies were given a quick check-up going from swift observational evaluation to orifice permeability evaluation via tubes and the such. The rest of the area was made of around ten cubicles where the birthing took place. Further through the hall was something of a recess annexed to a room where the mothers rested after stabilization and served as a safe space for students and residents alike to either take a breather or have an undisturbed mental breakdown.

I stopped before the anterior edge of the counter and knocked on the gloomy shifting resident’s skull. From the unnecessarily goofy surgical cap with decorative writings such as: “Sir, you’re purrobably going to need a catscan.”. I bristled for a second then shook off the hate. The poor, well-worn confederate looked at me with squinted, skeptic eyes and the squeezed lips of a nascent yawn.

“Had a rough day, love?” I asked with a smirk, knowing all too well the day was never otherwise.

The yawn bloomed, and with her exhale carried her already packed bag and proceeded to brief me on the state of affairs. “Hola, we had twenty NBs and five C-secs. There are ten pending NBs in the service. No Caesars. Have fun, Ciao. Oh yeah, I called Rob and Jackie, they’re on their way. Today’s med students are not too bad, just smooth talk them and they’ll run all the errands you want,” She swiftly explained while moonwalking away from my earshot.

I did a small overview of the service with the nurses and the cute medical student whose gag reflex resistance machismo I found oh, so endearing. By the time I was done, Dr. Robert appeared out of the blue behind me, as per usual. A tall, mulatto man with an encumbered voice and an unchanging expression of passiveness. He had the type of face that imposed respect, which made his unexpected jokes all the funnier. Dr. Jackie, on the other hand, was less furtive. Her arrival was signaled by the sound of a backpack violently hitting the floor behind the counter and the sound of her finger rubbing her nose and the mucus being sucked back into her cavum.

“Hey, Jackie honey,” I greeted, doing our unwritten “Shower me, I shower you.” covenant justice.

“Hey, babes,” She responded. She was short and sweet, the effort she made pre-shift was shown through her thoroughly straightened black short hair, even more incandescent under the lamp light. Her eyes fixed on mine, and she would, now and then, sneak out a little smile exposing the immaculate lower edges of her dentistry beneath her plump, pink-slathered lips. She loved thin, delicate jewelry resting on her skin, and I did too. The minute golden chain rested on the skin her scrubs allowed exposure, circling around her defined neck and slightly dangling off her collar bone; it looked pure, unalloyed. We hugged and got to work.

“Push! Push! There you go! Just a little more!” I yelled to the patient as I was propping the slippery occipital of her emerging infant. My heart jumped a beat when I got to the legs and I had yet to hear a cry. I held the little girl by the heel and gave her a flurry of loud spanks until she let out a euphorically deafening screech, signaling her welcome to the world. The medical student, Trish, who was standing above the mother’s head, previously pressing against her stomach at my signal, looked ecstatic and in awe of the miracle of birth. I, however, was at my wit’s end. This was our fifth birth and we still had a long night, Robbie and Jack had their hands full with the C-sections.

Just as I was about to rest my weary front on the counter, Trish stood next to me hesitantly and debated whether to engage me. “What is it?” I asked.

“5C looks a little blue, her EKG is hardly giving a signal.” She phlegmatically announced.

I jumped off and hurriedly checked on the patient in question. She was pale, covered in blue patches all over her skin. “Madam! Madam! Wake up!” I screamed at her while gently tapping on her cheek. No response honored my approach, her eyes remained motionless and her skin was cold. I fetched my stethoscope and listened for a beat. Nothing. The patient was dead, but I glimpsed through the corner of my eyes a vestige of motion on her abdomen. I sent the med student to bring a resident to assist me then I proceeded to cut away in an effort to save the child. As I’m running my scissors through the skin, the corpse enters Rigor Mortis and begins spastically convulsing. Suddenly, a bulge appeared in front of me, and I start cutting more carefully. The sight of the scalp bolstered my hope, but soon I would realize that the effort was all for naught. When the head was fully exteriorized, I saw it had a strong blue tinge. I inserted my finger and palpated a rope-like structure coiled around the baby’s neck: Its own umbilical cord.

Before the inanimate expression on the infant’s face as its head dangled down from its mother’s body. I sat motionless, welling up with despair.

“I quit! I fucking quit! I can’t do this anymore!” I wept.

I made the strongest fist of my life and threw it to the cubicle glass. Blood spurted like fountain water from my forearm, the all was black.

“Knock, knock.” A voice sounded.

I raised my head. Before me way the marble grey of the countertop. I tilted my neck upwards It was Jackie.

“Had a dream about quitting or something?” She said, noisily chewing on an exhausted piece of gum.