Mozhgan swiped left. Her trimmed purple fingernail tapped her calendar for the day. On the schedule was a 10 a.m. pelvic exam with a first-time mom. Jessica was twenty weeks pregnant and well into her second trimester. A nervous woman, she had gestational diabetes and texted Mozhgan daily.
Her phone buzzed.
Jessica Chan: Sorry to bother u. Just checking my appt is still at 10 today? Smiley face, pregnant woman emoji.
Mozhgan sighed, long-pressed the message until the tap-backs menu bubbled on her screen and selected a thumbs up. She rolled her head back onto the bus seat massaging the two knots on either side of her neck that never seemed to go away.
She stared out the window at the floodplains. This was the quietest part of her day, the hour commute from home to White Rock to Richmond. Unlike the city buses with their hard plastic bench seats, the White Rock bus was a coach. Each upholstered captain’s chair seat had a storage bin overhead, the perfect space for an attaché, or in Mozhgan’s line of work, a medical bag.
A midwife for twenty years, Mozhgan used to run a practice, but the business side was exhausting. After she delivered a couple of mommy bloggers’ babies and they wrote about it, her business boomed out of control. Rather than retire, she gave it up and joined another practice part-time.
For the past year, she commuted to Sage Midwives. It took her three busses to get there, but it was less stressful than running her own business. She had ridden public transit 248 times, which was 22,387 and a half minutes or 373 hours. She had done the math. Keeping meticulous track of dates and measuring the time between contractions was part of her job.
She had taken on Jessica even though her client roster was full. Jessica had begged her after reading about her on ModernMama.ca, and she didn’t have the heart to say no.
Her phone buzzed.
Jessica Chan: Great! Thanks so much! See u soon!! Smiley face, thumbs up emoji.
Mozhgan’s husband didn’t approve of the extra client.
“You do too much.” He didn’t bother to glance up from his computer screen. He owned a combination pizza and Indian food restaurant chain that was strictly delivery, no dine-in. He had just opened a third location and worked seventy-plus hours a week.
Look who’s talking. She fired off three more work texts. “Yes, Faiz-joon.”
They had no children of their own. Their careers were their babies. For Mozhgan, this was not only the figurative but literal truth.
She shifted her gaze from her phone to the seats around her. The bus wasn’t even a quarter full. A woman at the front was sleeping with her back and head against the window and her legs up on the seat beside her. It was the same woman who rode the bus every weekday and Mozhgan had watched her belly grow. To pass the time, she would guess how far along she was. Nineteen weeks. Twenty-eight weeks. Thirty-seven weeks. She played this game whenever she spotted a pregnant woman. It wasn’t always obvious, but Mozhgan knew the signs to look for: a softening or rounding of the face, a protective placing of the hand on the belly. All midwives developed this sixth sense.
The bus stopped. The woman jerked awake with a groan. Mozhgan revised her earlier estimate. Forty weeks.
They were in the middle of Highway 99. The red brake lights of hundreds of cars stretched around the bend and into the horizon.
The pregnant woman inhaled sharply and leaned forward gripping her belly. She was hyperventilating. Mozghan stood and made her way to the front of the bus.
A dark stain spread across the upholstery of the woman’s seat. She looked up, her eyes wide with surprise, her face flushed. “My water broke.”
Mozhgan modified her voice to smooth honey, “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to help you. My name is Mozhgan and I’m a midwife. What’s your name?”
“Emily,” she whispered. “Emily, can I touch you?”
The mother nodded. Mozhgan placed her hands on her hard round abdomen firmly pressing on all sides. The baby had dropped. Mozhgan kept Emily talking, using a low and slow voice. Emily worked at the university and was supposed to start mat-leave that week.
“My due date isn’t for twelve days,” she cried, her voice going up an octave. “My first was two weeks late.”
“Then you know that babies come when they’re ready.” Mozhgan placed a hand on Emily’s shoulder. Inwardly, she worried. The risk of infection and complications increased significantly outside of a sterile hospital environment.
The bus still hadn’t moved.
One passenger waved his phone in the air and said there was an accident a few kilometres ahead. The driver put the bus in park and called in to confirm. Standing up, the driver addressed the passengers on the PA, “Sorry folks, looks like a fatality. The highway could be shut down for hours.”
They were stranded in the middle of the floodplain. It was May and the water was still high. There wasn’t a gas station or farmhouse for miles. Emily sucked in air through her nose and exhaled it in audible “hee hee haws” through clenched teeth. She didn’t have hours.
“Call 911,” said Mozhgan to the driver. “Tell them to send an ambulance. We’ve got a woman in active labour who is…” She assessed Emily. “Thirty-eight weeks.”
“Yeah,” Emily nodded.
“A pregnant woman who is thirty-eight weeks, but otherwise healthy.” Mozghan held her fingers to Emily’s wrist. “Pulse is strong, water is broken, and baby has dropped.”
A dozen passengers crowded around Emily, offering to help. Mozhgan shooed them outside except for a young nurse named Aaron. Mozhgan sized him up quickly. Aaron was built like a linebacker and covered in tattoos. He had a calm demeanour. They conferred quietly and agreed to move Emily to the very back of the bus where she could pace, squat, or lie down along the five adjacent seats. For the first time in two years, Mozhgan wished the coach bus was a regular city bus with bench seating. She texted Jessica to cancel their 10 a.m. appointment, and then put her phone on vibrate.
“What music do you like to listen to when you’re relaxing?” She asked Emily as they walked down the aisle.
“Bob Marley. My husband and I got married in Jamaica. The resort bar had him on repeat the entire time.” Emily gave a short laugh, punctuated by a gasp.
Tapping her Spotify app, Mozhgan found a Bob Marley playlist. She handed her phone to Aaron who chuckled as “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” came on.
Emily paced. She moaned. She leaned over as Mozhgan and Aaron took turns rubbing her back and murmuring encouragement. The smell of sweat, shit and blood permeated the air while Emily laboured for the next forty-five minutes to reggae.
“That’s it, you’re doing great.” Aaron held her up under her armpits from behind.
Mozghan knelt on the ground in the aisle just beneath Emily and her opening cervix. Her legs were cramping, and her back was stiffening, but the baby was crowning and there wasn’t time to shift positions. “Try not to push just yet.” She had to wait long enough for Emily’s skin to stretch to the point where she might not tear, and then she gave her the go-ahead. “Okay, one little push. Now, a big push. Again, one more. You can do this.”
Emily grunted, groaned, and finally let herself scream. Mozghan caught the baby girl, wiping gunk from her nose and mouth, and placed her on Emily’s chest wrapped in a clean gym towel, Aaron fished out of his workout bag.
“We did it,” Emily whispered. The healthy baby girl looked up at her mom. She didn’t cry. She cooed. A complication-free delivery. Silently, Mozghan thanked Allah.
The afterbirth was quickly delivered while Aaron checked the baby’s vitals. As soon as the baby was confirmed healthy and stable, Aaron stuck his head out the door and made a thumbs-up sign. A cheer rose from the passengers on the side of the highway.
The ambulance arrived driving up the shoulder of the highway. As Emily and her baby exited the bus to get into the ambulance, the passengers applauded from the muddy side of the road, one openly weeping.
The road cleared by the time the ambulance left, and the bus finally continued its journey.
Back in her window seat, Mozghan checked her phone. Thirteen missed messages. One from Faiz, one from Sage Midwives, and eleven from Jessica. She forwarded Jessica’s messages to the office and texted her husband.
I’ll be home late. It was a good day. Smiley face, bus emoji, baby girl emoji.
Originally published in WayWords Journal.
Photo by Tobias Reiner on Unsplash
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