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CHAPTER ELEVEN

J enn didn’t know how long they sat there in the damp dirt next to Margie’s lifeless body.

She cried in Doug’s arms until there were no more tears.

Her chest burned, and her head throbbed.

If she had the option, she would climb onto a soft bed somewhere with Doug beside her, holding her tightly until she fell asleep, praying the past twelve hours were only a nightmare and Margie was still alive.

That everyone in the village of Anjama was still alive.

She inhaled deeply. Despite the dirt and salty sweat coating his skin, Doug still smelled like himself.

There was no hint of the cologne he occasionally wore, but she recognized his unique scent.

It was all masculine—leather and musk with a hint of spice—wrapping around her, like a warm coat in the dead of winter.

The scruff of his jaw rasped against her cheek. She would give anything to be in his arms, at another time and place, filled with happiness and bliss instead of grief. She felt safe with him. Comforted. Connected. Loved.

She knew Doug didn’t feel the same way about her—he’d told her that several times—but in that moment, she belonged to him.

His soothing voice, his caring touch, the sound of his heart beating as her ear rested against his chest, her head rising and falling with every breath he took—all combined—felt like home to her.

“?Por favor ayuda a mi esposa!” a man yelled. “?Socorro!”

Shifting, Doug cupped Jenn’s face in his hands and gently kissed her forehead. “I think that’s the pregnant woman’s husband. We have to help her. Let’s take care of the survivors, and then we’ll make sure Margie is returned home to her family.”

She pulled away from him and wiped her eyes. “She didn’t have any children, and her husband passed away last year. She mentioned two brothers and some nieces and nephews.”

“We’ll get her back to them.” He stood, picked up the canvas knapsack, and held out his hand. “C’mon. They need our help.”

Swallowing hard, she let him help her stand, then glanced down at Margie. Doug must have reached over at some point and closed the woman’s eyes. Notwithstanding the blood and dirt, Margie looked at peace, and Jenn prayed she was. “Can we—can we cover her?”

“Yeah. I’ll bring something back when we’re done.”

With his assistance, she climbed over the tree and then the next one, trying to keep her mind from falling back down a well of grief.

Her hands and legs shook as the adrenaline seeped from her body, but she pushed onward.

Injured people still needed their help, and that’s who she would concentrate on.

She reminded herself of the thought she had earlier—there would be plenty of time to mourn the dead later.

The sounds of the mountain forest returned to normal. Birds sang. The village’s animals were still skittish but had calmed somewhat. Dogs barked, but not in alarm like they had before the landslide. A few goats and a cow called out to their herds.

The man whose wife was in labor grasped Jenn’s arm and pulled her toward one of several huts that were still standing on that end of the village. “?Date prisa, por favor! ”

Doug caught up to them, and the three ran inside, where a heavily pregnant woman in her late teens or early twenties writhed in agony on an old metal full-size bed with only a thin mattress and a sheet under her.

A scratchy-looking brown blanket covered her.

Her eyes were wide with fear and pain. Drenched in sweat, she panted as she cried out and clenched the blanket in both fists.

Jenn reached out to her but quickly pulled her hands back—they were caked in blood and dirt.

She looked at the woman’s husband and showed him her hands. “ Um. ?Agua?”

“ Si. ” He gestured to a pitcher and basin on a nearby metal and cracked, green linoleum table that looked like it’d been salvaged from the 1970s.

Jenn and Doug quickly washed their hands in the water, then again in sanitizer from the first aid kit in the emergency bag, before pulling on sterile gloves.

Jenn glanced around. The floor was made of concrete, with a few scattered, handmade-looking woven rugs.

The walls were constructed with wooden slats, and the roof was metal.

Her eyes widened when a mouse ran across the floor and out the door.

Thank God she wasn’t afraid of them—her third-grade class had two pet mice and three gerbils.

She used to love holding them whenever she got the chance.

“Have you ever delivered a baby?” she asked Doug, trying to get her mind focused on what they were about to do.

“Once. Sort of. In a village similar to this in Iraq. My medic did the actual delivery, but I helped.”

“Well, then, you’ve got more experience than I. When all my nieces and nephews were born, I was in the waiting room. Although they did cover it in a health class I took in high school. But that was years ago and very basic.”

“The mother-to-be will do most of the work.” He pulled some supplies from the bag, including a white package labeled "OB- KIT" on the front. Hopefully, it had everything they would need. “Ready?”

“You and she are doing the hard part. I should be asking you that.”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s do this.”

They moved toward the bed, Doug at the foot and Jenn beside the woman, taking her hand. Doug set the OB kit on the mattress, grabbed the corner of the blanket, and then paused. “Again, your Spanish is more advanced than mine. I need you to translate as best you can.”

“Okay.”

“Ask what her name is and tell her I’m going to take a look and see if the baby is crowning.”

Jenn squeezed the woman’s hand. “ ?Cómo te llamas?”

“M-Maria.”

She glanced at the woman’s husband as he sat by her head, on the opposite side of the bed from Jenn, holding Maria’s hand and stroking her damp forehead and hair. Jenn repeated her question to him.

“Diego.”

“Hola. Mi nombre es Jenn y este es Doug. Vamos a ayudarte, ?vale?”

Panting, the woman glanced at Doug before her gaze returned to Jenn. “Si.”

She explained to Maria what Doug was going to do, keeping her words simple because she couldn’t think of a word that meant crowning in Spanish.

Maria nodded and then yelled in pain as another contraction took hold.

Doug lifted the blanket, peered between the woman’s legs, and cursed.

“Shit. We’re doing this right now. The baby’s coming. ”

Doug grabbed a disposable blanket from the kit and spread it out, tucking it as best he could under Maria’s buttocks. There was no time to do anything else. “Tell her to push.”

“Um...uh…” Fuck, what was the word for push? Jenn struggled for a moment before it popped into her head. “ Empujar! Empujar. ”

Maria bore down and shrieked, her body trembling.

“That’s good,” Doug said. “ Bueno. Otra vez. Empujar.”

The woman pushed again at his order, screaming as she did so.

The pain and fear in her eyes increased tenfold, and she squeezed Jenn’s hand so tightly that Jenn thought she would break some bones, but she held on, encouraging Maria.

If something good could come out of this disaster, with all the death and destruction, nothing would be better than the birth of a healthy child.

It took a few more contractions before Doug yelled, “That’s it! That’s it!” He grinned, and Jenn peered down to see the wet, slippery infant in his hands. “It’s a girl!”

As he turned the baby onto her side, an exhausted Maria collapsed on the bed, completely spent and relieved.

Doug used his gloved fingers to clean the remnants of the amniotic sac from the baby’s tiny mouth, and suddenly, she took a deep breath and wailed.

Her face was red and scrunched up as she announced her arrival into the world for everyone to hear.

It was the most beautiful sound Jenn had ever heard.

“Jenn, hand me that blue suction bulb. I also need the clamps and scissors for the umbilical cord. There should be a blanket to wipe her down with and another to wrap her in.”

She removed the sterile packaging from the blue bulb and handed it to him, then dug through the contents of the rest of the kit to find the other items. After he suctioned the remaining amniotic fluid from the baby’s mouth, he laid her between Maria’s spread knees.

He then took the clamps from Jenn and applied them to two points on the umbilical cord, closer to the baby’s abdomen.

Using the sterile scissors, he cut the cord, making sure the clamps held and that neither end leaked any blood.

A white sheet was used to clean the baby as best as possible.

As Jenn held the swaddling blanket, Doug picked the newborn up and placed her in Jenn’s outstretched hands.

Other than her nieces and nephews, she’d never seen such a beautiful baby before.

Her heart ached at the thought of the little one growing up in an impoverished area, but a single glance at her parents made it clear that she would be loved. She already was.

Would Jenn look like that after giving birth one day? Like she’d been blessed with the most heavenly creature on Earth?

Her gaze shifted to Doug, whose eyes were locked on the baby, as if he still couldn’t believe he’d played a part in bringing a tiny miracle into the world amid all the chaos. What Jenn wouldn’t give to have him look at their child like that someday.

With her eyes welling up with emotion, unfulfilled dreams, and desperate wishes, she swaddled the infant in the blanket before placing her into her mother’s arms. Maria and Diego stared at their child in awe, tears of happiness flowing down their cheeks.

Doug stood and gestured for Jenn to follow him as he moved over to the table again. They took off their gloves and washed their hands while giving the new family a private moment.

Because the hut was not that big, Jenn heard when Maria gave the baby her name, and she choked up a bit.

“I didn’t catch what she said,” Doug murmured in a low voice.

“They named her Esperanza.” She swiped at the tears that threatened to leak onto her face. She didn’t know how there were any left after the past hour. “It means hope.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Perfect name. It’s just what we all need right now.”

A few minutes later, two older women hurried into the hut and sighed in relief when they saw the healthy baby nursing at her mother’s breast. From what Jenn gathered from their rapid-fire Spanish, they were Maria’s aunts and would take over for Doug and Jenn, not that there was much left to do at that point except deliver the placenta when it was time.

As the two Americans headed for the door, Diego rushed over to them, shaking their hands. “ ?Gracias! ?Gracias! Que Dios esté contigo.”

While Jenn was baptized as a Catholic, she’d rarely attended Mass after her parents’ funeral.

Stepping into a church only dredged up painful memories—the moment she was forced to accept that she would never see her mother or father again.

But it was nice for Diego to wish God would bless them for helping his family.

Outside, the normal sounds of the surrounding forest were interspersed with the voices of adults and children talking or crying, dogs barking, and the roar of chainsaws in action on the other side of the mudslide.

Jenn glanced around the nearly annihilated village, her gaze settling on an approximate point of where they’d left Margie.

It was difficult to tell amid all the wreckage.

She shook her head, displacing the thoughts of the friend she’d lost. Nothing could be done for the older woman now.

After things calmed down and it was possible, they would recover her body. “Now what?”

“Let me check in with Romeo.” Doug stood beside her and pulled the radio from his pocket. “We can’t risk trying to cross that mess to get to them—not yet anyway. If another slide starts, we’ll go with it.”

The thought chilled her to the bone. Some villagers were probably buried under the dirt and trees, while others may have been swept down the mountain and killed that way. How she and Doug had survived when others hadn’t was beyond her comprehension, but she was grateful they were both still alive.

“Romeo, you there?”

A long pause was followed by a squelch and then, “Yeah, I’m here. Sit-rep.”

“We helped deliver a baby—a healthy little girl, so that’s good news.

The bad news is we lost Margie. She was pinned under a tree, and we couldn’t get her out.

” He eyed their surroundings. Several people comforted each other, while others gathered what supplies they could salvage.

“Things are relatively quiet over here now. From what I can see, we’ve got a few injuries, but nothing critical yet.

We’ll try to locate everyone on this end and get a head count and list of injuries.

We might have lost some villagers in the slide, but I don’t know for sure.

Unfortunately, we can’t risk poking around. ”

“Copy that. And we’ve got the same issues here—not going to risk anyone digging in that mess without backup, but we still have buildings that need to be searched for survivors.

Parsons got through to emergency services.

They’re sending a military unit up to us, but it’s going to take time.

The heavy equipment won’t reach us until at least tomorrow morning, so you’re stuck over there tonight. Do you have shelter?”

“We’ll find something. Not sure about food and water, though.”

“Got something you can use to make a visible target? A helicopter is en route with supplies. We’ll tell them to drop what they can on both sides of the slide.”

He bent over and opened the large canvas knapsack on the ground by his feet. “Roadside flares are in the emergency kit. I’ll use those.”

“Copy that. Stay safe, and we’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks.”

Doug stuck the radio back into his pocket, then pulled a wrapped silver blanket out of the emergency kit.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A survival blanket. You use it in cold weather to stay warm. We have three of them, so I thought I’d use this one for...” He gestured toward the massive pile of trees, dirt, and rocks.

Margie. He hadn’t forgotten her or Jenn’s request to cover her. She inhaled a sharp breath and nodded, trying to keep from breaking down again. “Thank you.”

He reached out and briefly rubbed her upper arm. “I’ll be right back.”

“Be careful.”