His voice was quiet. “She might also still be alive.” He let out the biggest sigh. “An angry Helen I could have lived with. It’s the dead Helen I can’t take.”
Everything was silent round about them. There was no one else around, it was just her and him.
In the heart of Africa even the insects seemed to have become quiet.
Tears prickled in Violet’s eyes. The horrible realization that Evan might be right. If he’d asked Helen if she could be pregnant, would she have checked the calendar? Would she have stopped for a minute to consider it?
Might it have saved her life?
There were so many ifs and buts. There was nothing definite here. Just a world full of possibilities.
Possibilities that neither of them would ever know about, because the time had passed.
It was over. There was no time machine. There was no way to turn back the clock. How many other people felt like that? How many mothers whose child’s hands had slipped from theirs moments before a car had appeared? How many doctors who had sent a patient home, only for them to come back later and die?
And for her, how many women who couldn’t remember the last time they felt their baby move?
A never-ending list. A whole world of don’t-knows. A whole lifetime of what-ifs.
Evan turned to face her, his hands hanging by his sides. Even with his large, broad frame he looked broken. “How can I live with this, Violet? How can I live with knowing if I’d done a better job Helen might still be here?”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t find the words she should be saying to comfort him, to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. That it hadn’t been his responsibility.
It would be so easy to apportion him the blame. But, then, that’s what he’d done to her brother. He spent the past six years blaming her brother for this. Thinking that he’d known about his wife’s condition and had let her go on the mission with them.
He’d turned his anger on her brother rather than on himself.
How wrong. How unfair. As if Sawyer didn’t have enough to live with.
Now he was blaming himself. Finally.
And in her heart of hearts she wanted to blame him too.
But she understood better than anyone what it was like to feel saddled with blame. Every moment in the last three years she’d wondered if she’d done something wrong. Something that had affected her pregnancy and stolen the life of her baby.
She’d interrogated her life to the point of not being able to move forward. Every thing that had crossed her lips during her pregnancy, every tiny twinge, every action she’d taken, every time she hadn’t slept well or felt grumpy.
Anything that she could have changed that would have let her baby live.
Let her baby be born the living, breathing daughter she’d dreamed of.
But she’d had to let it all go.
Because no matter what she analyzed it didn’t change the outcome.
It didn’t change the results of the autopsy by the medical examiner. It didn’t give her a reason for her daughter’s death.
Because there had been no reason. Or none that could be found.
And no matter how hard it was, putting it behind her was the only way to start to move on.
Sometimes there just was no one to blame.
Her throat was dry. The dust in the air around her was stifling, or maybe that was just how she was feeling, as if the whole world was closing in on her again.
She tried to find some words. It didn’t matter how much of a struggle it was to say them.
“You have to realize that Helen was a professional. You have to realize she was responsible for her own well-being. You have to let it go.” Her voice was breaking now.
“But how? How can I let it go?” He reached toward her hand. She didn’t want him to touch her. She wanted him to leave her alone. “Can you forgive me?”
His eyes were pleading with her. She could see how much this had destroyed him. She could see how much this had been eating away at him.
But she was so mixed up right now. Feelings of guilt and responsibility were rushing to the surface and she didn’t feel equipped to deal with them.
There was no one out here to talk to. No one who understood.
She couldn’t deal with his feelings as well as her own.
She felt as if she’d just jumped back a dozen steps.
She needed time. She needed space.
She raised her eyes to meet his. “It’s not my forgiveness you need, Evan. It’s your own.”
And she turned and walked away before he could see her tears start to fall.
CHAPTER TEN
VIOLET LOOKED AROUND the village they’d just been arrived at. It was the third one they’d visited that day. She was trying to ensure all the local midwives were enrolled in the midwife service scheme and the oral polio vaccine pre-placed in delivery rooms to ensure administration immediately following birth.
She’d barely been in Evan’s company since that fateful night two weeks ago. She just couldn’t find the time and space to deal with him.
Because he’d brought so much to the surface again she was finding this task harder than she’d first thought. She was feeling raw and exposed.
And dodging Evan Hunter had become her number one priority.
She looked around. This was one of the bigger villages, with over two thousand residents and a mixture of midwives and traditional birth attendants. The birth rate was high, as very little form of contraception was used in the village and some of the expectant mothers from neighboring villages even came here to give birth.
Violet could hear some noise coming from the delivery room that was used in the village. She walked over hesitantly, unwilling to disturb the midwife if she was dealing with an expectant mother. Many of the births were attended by female family friends as well as the midwife or birth attendant, so Violet’s presence might be considered intrusive.
As she approached the doorway the first thing she noticed was that, apart from Urbi, the midwife, only one other person was with the expectant mother. She was obviously in hard labor and her moans could be heard from the road, but what Violet hadn’t heard was the fact she was also weeping quietly.
A horrible sense of dread came over her straight away.
Urbi looked up. She was using a traditional midwife’s Pinard to listen to the baby’s heart and waved her hand at Violet to come inside.
“Ah, Dr. Violet. Can you listen for me?”
Violet tried her best to remain calm. “Is there a problem? Where are the rest of the family?”
Urbi shook her head. “I sent them away. Hasana has been in labor for more than twelve hours. I haven’t been able to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the last hour.”
No. Violet felt a shiver go down her spine. She wanted to turn and run away. She wasn’t specially trained in obstetrics. Her fundamental knowledge was basic at best. How much use could she really be?
But the look on poor Hasana’s face was desperate. And V
iolet’s heart went out to her. She would be hoping, praying that Urbi had made a mistake. With every breath she would be willing that Violet would be the person to find her child’s heartbeat.
The coiled-up feeling in Violet’s stomach made her feel sick. She had to do her duty as a doctor. This birthing room wasn’t equipped with the latest technology. There was no sonogram. No fetal Doppler, no fetal monitor. The only piece of equipment was the Pinard horn, the most fundamental listening device to detect a baby’s heart.
Violet took a deep breath. There was no running away from this. She couldn’t find any suitable excuse not to do the task she’d been asked to. As a doctor, she had a duty of care. “Is there any possibility that the baby has turned into an awkward position?”
Urbi had her hands on the mother’s stomach. Her eyes were sad. She was one of the most experienced midwives that Violet had met since she’d arrived in Natumba state.
Violet was grasping at straws here and she knew it.
But she knew this situation better than anyone. She’d had the experience of being that mother. It took all her strength and self-resolve not to run and hide away in a corner. She really didn’t know if she could go through this again.
Urbi spoke a few words in Hausa to the expectant mother. She looked back at Violet. “She felt her baby move last night when her labor started. The movement continued for the first few hours. There’s been nothing since.”
Violet pulled her ordinary stethoscope from her bag. She already knew this would be a futile exercise. “Let me try both of these,” she said, taking the Pinard from Urbi’s hands.
Hasana was tightly grasping the midwife’s hand as Violet placed her hands on her stomach. The tightness of the grasp turned her knuckles pale.
Violet felt Hasana’s tight abdomen first to determine the position of the baby. She’d used to do this to herself on a regular basis. It felt good to know which way her baby was lying at different points in the day.