Without Borders (11 page)

The two smaller boys took off into the trees, their bare feet smacking hard against the grass. Next to her, the boy in the Nike t-shirt scrambled away from Felipe, bloody and spitting. He glared at Annie one last time, then grabbed a handful of the things strewn on the ground before he followed his friends into the forest.

They’re gone.

She slid to the ground, and the rifle tumbled from her hands. Her vision narrowed, the edges of it turning a deep blue-black. Her entire existence felt precarious, and all of her muscles seemed too loose, like they were only attached to her body by the thin cover of her skin. There were words, but she couldn’t understand them. They were too muffled by the thumping of her heart in her ears and the rush of adrenaline leaving her body.

She tried to stand but couldn’t. She was being squeezed. Trapped.
Back. They’re back.
The words cartwheeled through her brain, even though a tiny, faraway voice told her the boys weren’t coming back. They’d be stupid to come back.
But they are stupid.
She pulled away, trying to breathe, but her arms stayed pinned to her sides by her attacker. She squirmed and fumbled until her fingers grasped the end of the Pink Stringer, and she found the nerve to jam it into her assailant’s thigh. She pushed the switch again, shoving it with every ounce of strength and desperation she could find.

Please work. Please work.

He stumbled and collapsed, freeing her arms and legs. Annie tore away, rushing up the hill, toward the boat, to safety.

The footsteps behind her grew louder, overtaking her before she could make it out of sight. “
Mira, muchacha. Mira. Es Juan
.”

She froze, her body soaked with sweat and her breath coming in shallow, raspy bursts. Juan came around to face her, his hands next to his face, palms to the sky. He spoke again, but his words were very fast and very Spanish. Annie looked over her shoulder. Marisol and Phillip squatted next to a flattened Felipe, making half-hearted attempts to tug him to his feet. The teens were nowhere in sight.

Juan moved to her side. “You are okay?” He kept his hands high.

She rubbed her eyes, blinking back dirt and fear. “They’re gone?”

“
Sí.
” He took a step toward the group and motioned for her to walk ahead.

Annie slid a hand under her shirt and pulled it away from her skin. The shrink of her sweaty clothes against her body made it harder to breathe. As they walked closer, Felipe sat up, both hands clamped on his left thigh. The Pink Stringer sat an arm’s length away, half-buried in the mud.

Shit
.

Felipe stood. “
¿Qué diablos, Annie?
” he asked through clenched teeth, his arms swept wide. “What were you thinking?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” The weight of what she’d done was still sinking in. “Are you okay? I panicked. I couldn’t see. I don’t—”

He shook his head and walked away, picking up the rifle from the ground.

“I think this one is yours.” Marisol held out a mud-soaked bra with one trembling hand.

Annie grabbed her friend and hugged her, squeezing as tightly as she could and sobbing into Marisol’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Annie asked.

Marisol nodded. “This has not happened in a long time.”

“It’s happened before?” Annie wiped her nose on her shirt sleeve as a flint of anger sparked inside her.

“Sometimes the people hear we are coming and set traps to steal drugs or money. It was in the papers you received. With the packing list.” Marisol’s voice wobbled and her features were all strained and tense, as if she expected Annie to lash out at her.

“I thought it was one of those things that never really happens. And I hate that you have to go through this. You’re doing so much good, risking so much, and people take advantage.”

“Yes, but it is only a few people. And this is the first time they carried a gun.” Marisol held her arms out again, and Annie wrapped her friend in a tight hug.

“Is your brother okay?” she asked when Marisol’s sniffles dried up.

Marisol clamped her lips together, but a small laugh still escaped between her tears. “I did not know your tampons were electric. Those were not on the packing list.”

The corners of Annie’s mouth tugged up, despite the terror and embarrassment still swirling inside her. “But you don’t think he’s really hurt or anything, right? Should I go check on him?”

“Only his pride,
mi Anita.
Give him some time to recover.”

Over her friend’s shoulder, Felipe stood motionless, his arms crossed tightly against his chest and the rifle slung over his shoulder. Everything about him screamed stay away.

Around them, Phillip and Juan repacked bags, plucking gauze pads and vials from the dirt. Annie took a deep breath and squatted next to her things, dividing them into four piles. Then two long lines. She merged them all into one and reached for her backpack.

“What are you doing?” Marisol raised an eyebrow.

“Packing,” Annie said. “It makes me feel better.”

“Oh yes. Your anal probl—”

“
¿Vamos?
” Juan’s voice was quiet.

Annie moved faster, trying to keep her mind and her belongings in order. “Will we take the boat all the way to the truck?” she asked, trying to shake torn blades of grass off a shirt. Even now, fifteen minutes after the boys had disappeared into the woods, her hands still trembled.

“What do you mean?” Marisol asked.

“We’re going back, right? So we can make a police report or something?”
And maybe I can call my dad about an emergency flight home.

Her friend shook her head and looped an arm around Annie’s shoulders. “We will keep going. It will be fine. You will see.”

The midwife fluttered around Felipe in a panic, pelting him with detail after detail about her patient’s progressing labor. Her face grew redder with every syllable, and she ran her sausage fingers up and down her stomach as she spoke. Around them, waiting patients stirred and mumbled, staring at the dirt beneath their feet. Felipe knew they were only pretending not to listen.

He put a hand on the woman’s fleshy forearm. “I will come as soon as I can get my things together,” he said. “You stay with her.”

She scurried out of the clinic, glancing over her shoulder every few steps, as if to be sure Felipe was packing up his things to follow her. She paused in the doorway and turned to face him. “It is my daughter.” Both her eyes and the pitch of her Spanish pleaded with him. “Please hurry.”

Felipe gave her a single nod and scoped out the line of patients. Four people waited, none of them bleeding, broken, or teetering on the brink of death. “I am very sorry, but there is an emergency. If you leave your names here, I will come to your homes tonight.”

He paused, anticipating an outcry. He knew some of these people had been waiting for days to see him, maybe even months—since the last time his team visited. But they all nodded and patted him on the back as he passed by. One man even promised to say a prayer for the baby’s safe delivery, and gratitude filled Felipe’s chest.

“Where is Marisol?” He dropped his supply bag on the bench next to Annie. She’d taken up residence there during the clinic, first as she handed out nets and then to entertain the children who came to stare and ask her questions. The kids froze and stared at him with scowls and narrowed eyes.

“Can you move that please?” Annie asked.

He lifted the bag over his shoulder. A smattering of scuffed metal jacks and a blue rubber ball clunked to the floor with the movement. “Sorry,” he said to the children. “It is important. Where is she?”

Annie cleared her throat and looked pointedly toward the door. “I think she and Phillip went off somewhere…”

Of course.
“I need help. Do you want to see a childbirth?”

She was on her feet and at his side in half a second, leaving the kids alone to their game of jacks. “Obviously. Also, about yesterday—”

He waved her off. There was no time. “This will be a complicated birth. I am not sure what will happen.” A flash of doubt ran through him. The mother, or the baby, or maybe both could die. And Annie would be forced to watch. “If you do not want—”

“I want.” She flipped open the notebook and held her pen over a blank page. “Tell me what’s going on.”

As they zipped along the path between the houses, Felipe told her everything he knew—the patient was young and pregnant for the first time. She wasn’t due for another four weeks, but her water broke that morning. And the midwife was certain the baby was breech. He told Annie how he would first try to turn the baby inside the mother’s womb and what he would do if the baby refused to move.

He didn’t tell her he’d never delivered a baby outside of a hospital.

“How do you know the baby’s breech?” she asked.

“The midwife told me.”

“Yeah, but how does she know? I’m assuming there aren’t any ultrasound machines out here.”

“It is possible to tell. I will show you.”

Her face lit with excitement, but the smile slid from Annie’s face as they stopped in front of the midwife’s house. Ten people gathered on the overgrown front lawn, their hushed voices unable to drown out the screams coming from within.

“
Buenas,
” he said.

The crowd descended on him like a flock of vultures on a carcass.

“She is in much pain,” one woman whispered to him in a mix of Miskito and Spanish.

A man with a scraggly beard shook his head. “This sounds very bad.”

The voices followed Felipe to the house, and by the time he and Annie reached the entrance, his heart thumped so hard he could feel his pulse in his toes.

“
Buenas
.” He pushed back the length of fabric over the door frame. A scream slashed through the air, and beside him Annie’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you want to stay?” he asked.

• • •

“Yes.” The word came out in a squeak, but Annie lifted her chin and tried to slow her breathing. “I want to stay.”

“Okay. Come.”

She followed him into the house. A rotund man with hound dog jowls greeted them in the front room. He clapped Felipe on the back and ushered them in. A barrage of hushed Spanish passed between the men, and Annie didn’t even try to follow. She shifted her weight and clicked her pen as the screams echoed off the thin walls. Each cry wound her insides further, and by the time Felipe pried himself away from the man, Annie’s whole body was a rubber band, pulled tightly enough to snap in half with the next scream.

“Okay?” Felipe asked.

“Sure.” She pushed a breath out between her teeth and followed him to a second room, separated from the rest of the house by thin plywood walls. A single, narrow window provided the only source of light, and the air inside the tiny room was at least fifteen degrees hotter than the rest of the house. Beads of sweat sprung up on every inch of Annie’s skin, rolling over the preexisting layer of perspiration and dirt.

On the floor, a girl about her age panted, her face screwed up in pain. Sweat plastered her thick black hair to her forehead. Beside her, a woman twice as round as the man in the front room stared at Annie as if she were an alien species.

“Felipe? Are you sure it’s okay that I’m here?”

“It is fine. This is the midwife of the village. And this—” he nodded toward the girl on the floor, “is her daughter, Angela. So there is some extra nervousness.” He turned to the woman and rattled off more Spanish. She stood, wrapping him in a hug. He squeezed the woman, then knelt next to her pregnant daughter.

“What do you want me to do?” Annie asked, kneeling beside him.

He took her hands in his and placed them on Angela’s stomach. “Here.” He pressed her fingers into the girl’s abdomen until they hit something hard and smooth. “This is the baby’s head.”

“Wow.” Annie kept pressing, even after he let go, searching for more body parts. She found what she suspected was an elbow, and her stomach jumped into her throat. “This is so cool. You’re going to flip the baby over?”

“We will try. But first you must stop pushing her stomach.” For the first time in days, he gave her one of those grins, the ones that brought out his dimple and turned her insides to mush.

“Sorry.”

Three hours, dozens of contractions, and two buckets of sweat later, Angela was fully dilated, and all Felipe’s attempts to turn the baby had failed. Resignation hung from the midwife’s cheeks, and even Annie’s earlier excitement was melting amid the humidity and failure.

“What now?” she asked.

“We will prepare for the breech birth.” He sighed and peeled off his gloves. “Go to the front room and ask the man to give you blankets.”

“How do you say blankets?” She pulled the neck of her t-shirt from her sticky skin and licked her dry lips. Salt lingered on her tongue, making her even thirstier.

Felipe glanced up from his supply bag, his features creased and heavy with worry. “
Mantas
.”

Stepping into the main part of the house felt like slipping into a cool bath. She’d forgotten how much hotter it was in that tiny bedroom. But the man was gone. Even the plastic chair where he’d sat earlier was missing. Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the hammock hanging in one corner and a single framed photograph sitting on a cracked table near the front door.

The girl in the photo was around ten with bright, playful eyes and a smile that stretched from ear to ear. It was miles from the pained grimaces Annie had seen in the back room, but the crooked nose told her it was Angela.

Angela. Blankets.

Annie jolted, shaking her head clear. It’d been hours since she’d had anything to eat or drink, and fog muddled her brain. “
¿Hola?
” she called out, her tongue tacky and dry in her mouth. She stuck her head outside the door, letting the fresh air cool the sweat on her cheeks.

“
Hola,
” the man said, eyes wide and hopeful. He sat outside among the crowd, which had doubled in size since they’d arrived. “
¿Bebé?
”

“Uh, no.” Annie shook her head. “No baby. I need
mantas
?”

The man turned to the crowd. “
Mantas
.” The people rushed from the yard, and Annie stared after them, her stomach knotting.
Where are they going? Maybe I said the wrong word. Shit. Did I tell them the baby died? Shit, shit, shit.