Chapter 16: New life

Edwin cut a vertical line between the navel and the pubic hair of the woman. They were in the former healer's clinic; the mayor had let them in. The girl had nearly not made it there, but she had managed.

Everyone but Hadrian and the girl were outside the room, looking through the window. Edwin didn't like that. It made him nervous. But his hands were steady as he cut.

Once he was done with the abdomen cut, he did the uterus cut. The tube that was on the stand dripped medicine inside the girl's veins. The tube in her bladder still hadn't been used, but Edwin knew that it would happen too. The golems had always relieved themselves during a C-section.

"Ok, Hadrian. I need mana to clean the cut and widen it," Edwin said and Hadrian touched the girl's stomach, pouring mana in. Edwin strengthened her organs with the mana and then used it to open the cut on her stomach wider.

He could see it. A baby, its cord where it should be and not around its neck. It was in the right position too, head pointing down. Had the girl been older, this could have been a normal birth.

Edwin gently took the baby and pulled it out, cutting the cord with his scalpel. But there was something wrong with the child. It wasn't crying. Edwin saw blood squirt out of the mother's stomach, and he paled. He had cut too deep.

He had a choice to make. The mother needed her tears sealed with mana and did so immediately. But the child was not breathing. There was a technique to get the baby to breathe. But could he finish it in time to heal the mother? Would the baby even survive without its mother?

With the coughing sickness, the risk of taking mother's milk from a wet nurse was too big. Not to mention that half the town had dysentery. In the end, Edwin decided to do the two things as one. He was either going to save them both or lose them both.

With one hand, he did the easy task of forcing the tears and the two incisions closed. He bent down and sealed the baby's nose and mouth with his mouth and blew five breaths in the little baby.

Then he pressed two fingers on the baby's chest and began making the thirty chest compressions that healer Alber had sworn up and down could save any infant, provided that the help was given in the shortest time possible.

As Edwin counted, the girl stirred from her mana induced sleep. She raised her head and began sobbing when she couldn't hear her baby crying. Edwin counted to twenty, but the baby was still not crying. He decided to try an old midwife's trick. He put the baby's head on his shoulder and gave its bottom a slap.

Loud wailing was his answer.

Edwin gave a raspy laugh as he patted the newborn's back. Now, the most important thing was skin to skin contact with the mother. That and for the little, Edwin checked the gender quickly, girl to get her first feeding.

Edwin placed the girl in her mother's waiting arms and watched as the baby was given a nipple to suck on. The girl looked at Edwin with gratitude in her eyes and nodded at him.

"Is my baby going to be ok now?" the mother asked as she held the child close to herself.

"She will be fine, but you will have to take it easily. I healed the cuts I made with mana, but they can still reopen. Don't lift anything heavy and stay here for at least three days. I am sure no one will complain." Edwin said.

"She? I have a baby girl!" exclaimed the mother with a happy smile on her face. A man entered the room. He took off his hat and moved to the bed.

"Lily, I was told that you went in labor," the man said. He looked to be about forty.

"Your daughter needs rest, sir. Do you know where the father of the baby is? It is important that the newborn make a bond with him as soon as possible," Edwin said.

"Daughter? Lily is my wife. You say I can hold my daughter now?" asked the man, and he closed the distance between the door and the bed.

"You are the father?" Edwin asked, surprised. The mother was barely legal, and this man was by far her elder. Then he shook his head. It was not his job to judge, just to heal.

"Hi, there, little fairy," the father said to the baby. She blew a raspberry and wiggled her little arms.

"I think she likes you, Harold," Lily said as she gently swayed the baby in her arms. Then she handed the little girl to her father.

"How do we name her?" Lily asked.

Hadrian tapped Edwin on the shoulder and pointed at the door.

"This is a bit private, don't you think, Eddy?" asked the vampire with a wink. It was not lost on him that Edwin couldn't take his eyes off the family. As if in a trance, Edwin let Hadrian lead him out of the room and into the crowd in the corridor.

Loud whops and much back clapping ensured. The town's folk were happy that nothing bad had happened. The mayor extended his hands wide and spoke.

"People of Orc's Rest Town, this healer, with my patronage, has done much good for us all. But he is a second-class citizen. I say we make a petition for this great wrong to be fixed. I have the papers already made," Louis Monter said, and he waved a stack of paper in the air.

"I'll sign, second-class? The healer Donovan should have been second-class. Going on the farms and placing gray flags on the chimneys, so the people inside could die with no one to help them," a man said, and he was the first to sign.

"Now, I don't want you in my town," whispered the mayor as Edwin approached him to ask him what he was doing this for now. "But my people must see you rewarded. And, while you are here, take a look at my son. His fever hasn't broken even after the blood root sludge."

Edwin nodded. This could be something different from the coughing sickness. For the child's sake, he would examine him and find something to get him back on his feet.

As he and Hadrian followed the mayor back to the man's house, people kept signing the papers. It was not unheard of for a petition to be able to increase someone's status.

But Edwin was not going to hold his breath. After all, he had written black on white that he was going to heal everyone who needed it, regardless of politics.