A/N: Inspired by Genesis and Catastrophe: A True Story by Roald Dahl. Contains depictions of Childbirth. Written for the Caesar's Palace Nova Challenge Prompt: Birth.
"It's her, she's gone into labour and it's not going well."
The doctor hangs up the phone and races down the stairs to his bag. He doesn't need to hear one more word from the District midwife to know that something's gone wrong. In the twelve years they've worked together, he's heard her broken, trembling voice over the telephone seven times - and all seven of the new-borns died; most of them from the side-effects of their mothers' chronic malnutrition. Giving birth is a painful and arduous process even for the well-fed, and they'd been so gaunt and frail, it'd be impossible for the infant to survive a delivery.
He greets the warm summer air with a shudder as he recalls an awful childbirth many years ago where both the mother and child died.
The doctor runs to the Seam without stopping, morphling vials clinking in his bag. His mind races through the possibilities that could be facing him when he enters the house. A still-birth would be the worst, but the easiest to deal with. A breech or cord entanglement would be tricky, but it offers some hope for the infant's survival; though none of the ones he's handled survived. He knows one thing for sure: there's going to be bloodied hands and screaming voices today.
He didn't have to ask which house the woman's in; the sound of screaming and smell of blood leads him there. The door opens to the sight of a bare house covered in coal soot with flies buzzing around in the air. A single bed sits in the centre, and the woman's lying with one of her hands clutched tightly around the sheets, and the other firmly clasped around the midwife's hands.
"She's haemorrhaging!" the midwife yells, not looking away from her eyes.
He looks between her legs and frowns at the pool of blood.
"That's a lot of blood; we have to deliver now. She's going to lose her child if we wa-" he says, before being cut off by a blood-curdling shriek.
"No!" the woman screams, "I can't! I won't!"
The midwife nods and makes several attempts to yank her hand away from her grip. He retrieves a bottle from his bag and proceeds to douse her hands with white liquor, before offering some to the woman. She shakes her head violently, eyes screwed shut in pain.
"Alright then," he quips, wiping away the sheen of sweat from her brows, "let's get started."
The midwife pulls a stool in front of her parted legs, and hitches up her dress.
"She's crowning."
The doctor presses his palm to her mid-section, feeling for the infant's orientation in her womb. Satisfied that everything's right where it's supposed to be, he squeezes her elbow and tells her to push. Receiving no response apart from gritted teeth and groaning, he shouts in her ear, "If you want your child to live, you're going to have to push!"
She lets out an earth-shattering scream, and tears the sheets between her fingers as a massive contraction rips through her body.
"It's coming out. We're going to have to do something about the blood though," the midwife quips.
He touches a hand to the woman's writhing head and it comes away with cold sweat.
"Shock," he mutters under his breath, and digs around in his bag, "it won't be long now, before she loses consciousness."
"Are you-?" the midwife turns to him, blood dripping from her elbows, "Is that-?"
"Adrenaline," he says, drawing the drug into a syringe, "let's hope you make it quick, or she'll pass out from the pain."
The doctor injects the adrenaline directly into the woman's vein. The bleeding slows and her screams increase in intensity. She pants before pushing hard again, nails digging into the mattress beneath. Her groans of agony are so loud, and the pair's exhortations so fervent; no one hears the door open.
"Oh my god!" the man at the door cries out, dropping his helmet and shovel, "no one told me!" He dashes over to her bedside, and grasps his wife's hand.
"Please sir," he pleads without breaking the gaze from his wife's, "you have to-, it's our first and she-"
He rests his hand on the man's shoulders and instructs him to tell his wife to push. She clutches her husband's hand so tightly their fists turn into a solid lump of white. Soon, his eyes are screwed tight in agony now, sharing in his wife's pain. Amidst the huffing and yelling, the clutching and screaming, one sound pierces through the room.
A baby's cry.
"Almost there, stay with her," the doctor instructs, reaching into the midwife's sack and rummaging through the tools of her trade.
"It's-" she gasps, "it's a girl!"
The doctor douses a pair of scissors with white liquor and reaches into the entanglement of bloody limbs to cut the infant's cord. Satisfied that the baby is crying and squirming within the Midwife's grasp; he searches for some water. It's only then he has a good look around the house, or what little they have in it. He wanders into the kitchen, hoping to find a tap, before remembering - there's no running water in the Seam. As he pours some warm water from a kettle into a basin, he can't help but notice the empty shelves and furniture, swept clean to the best of a pregnant woman's ability.
God, they're poor.
He returns to the couple, and holds out a basin of bathwater for the midwife.
"Is she - ?" the woman gasps.
"Yes, she's alright."
"She's stopped crying."
He looks at the new-born, face bubbling with delight as the midwife washes her.
"Your little one is beaming with delight to be born. Now, allow us to wrap her," he says, passing the midwife a cotton flannel, "it's been awfully warm these days and you'll want to keep the flies away."
The midwife places the child in her arms and immediately the tension in the room lifts. Everyone remains still, basking in the joyous aura that's befallen the couple.
"She - she looks just like you!" the woman exclaims, running her hand over the infant's soft brown hair.
"There's nothing quite-, god she's beautiful!" her husband says.
The doctor looks at the couple with their new-born baby. He smiles, and begins packing his items. There's silence between him and the midwife, punctuated by the clink of metal washing in the basin and the child's lively squeals of delight. As she finishes washing her hands and instruments, a smirk forms on her lips; she knows what's coming next.
"Dad," the woman says.
The doctor's brows furrow. It's been awhile since he's heard that word directed at him, and it fills him with regret.
"Don't worry too much about the sheets," he says, rummaging through the District paperwork he's supposed to fill in, "Hazelle does a gr-"
"Dad."
He looks down, but knows his daughter's looking right at him.
"Don't you want to hold your granddaughter?"
He looks over at the baby resting silently on his daughter's bosom, and frowns. Black hair, dark skin, gray eyes. Not mine. But the child reaches out to him, and his heart melts.
"She's amazing," he says, cradling the infant to his heart and feeling her tiny hand grasp his finger. But, almost as quickly as she's placed in his arms, he passes the child back to her mother; and turns away to write the birth certificate. They can't see it, but the doctor wipes a tear from his eyes.
"I – I need to fill in the form," he says, trying not to let the emotion show in his voice, "Mr Everdeen, what are you going to name your daughter?"
"Katniss," he replies, not breaking his gaze from her eyes, "we'll call her Katniss."