Scarlett was stone-cold silent. She knew her way through the narrow streets in the dark, and was afraid of nothing when she moved in the night. Other women were tucked away in the safety of their homes when Scarlett was out on her own. She walked a few steps ahead of Cayetano and Luna, and couldn’t bring herself to look at either of them. She wasn’t surprised; he never shut up about Luna Beltrán. So when, on a lonely night while out on the road just prior to Christmas, when he came to her tent to spend the night, Scarlett had been very surprised. She wasn’t going to deny him; no one could deny Cayetano Ortega anything. The man left a trail of broken hearts that could light up the entire road from Madrid to Valencia and back again. He was everything her broken heart longed for – affection and company. Her own husband was killed in the Battle of the Ebro only six months ago. Scarlett had gone to work in a new field hospital, set up in a natural cave at La Bisbal de Falset, under the instruction of a top doctor from Nueva Zelanda. Ulrich was positioned at the front not far away, and she had worried for him. When all in the International Brigade were called to leave España in the October of 1938, Scarlett thought it was her chance to leave with her husband while they still could. But it was too late for Ulrich, who was killed at Ebro before the Brigade retreated. Scarlett buried his body by herself by the Ebro river outside the town of Mequinenza. Only a few people knew she had even married Ulrich, a German man who had come to España in search of adventure. So when Cayetano, who knew about what happened to Ulrich, wanted to be with her that cold night near the town of Requena, her loneliness gave in to what he wanted. Now that night was going to haunt her forever. She wouldn’t be able to hide the evidence much longer.
“What can we do to help Sofía?” Cayetano asked Scarlett while he climbed the stairs behind her.
“We need witnesses.”
“This is all women’s business.”
Scarlett glanced over her shoulder at him and Luna. “You have no idea what goes on, do you, Caya?”
“Where is Alejandro?” Luna asked.
“I left him at the back entrance to the hospital with a packet of cigarettes.”
“Shouldn’t he be with Sofía?”
Scarlett stopped and turned around. In the faint light that came from the window of the building that they stood against, they could see that Scarlett’s flaming-red hair had started to go frizzy in the rain. “Okay, I don’t know what España you have been living in, princesa, but let me fill you in with some facts. When a young woman comes in to give birth, if she is deemed ‘unsuitable’ by the nuns who work there, they will take the baby and tell the mother that her child died. The priest then sells the baby to a family that’s deemed ‘suitable’.”
“Should have shot the rest of the nuns,” Cayetano muttered.
Luna looked at Cayetano and then back to Scarlett. “Who decides who is suitable? That baby belongs to Sofía!”
“I know, and that is why I am trying to help,” Scarlett said. She turned and started up the wet path again, and her companions followed. “Sofía is my best friend, and that is the only reason I was even allowed in to see her while she is giving birth. Alejandro is banned from being in the hospital completely.”
“Did you know about this?” Luna asked Cayetano.
“I have heard about this going on in different places, but I don’t know of anyone who has had it happen to them,” he said.
“That you know of,” Scarlett said.
“Why would they say Sofía is unsuitable to be a mother?” Luna asked. “They know her, she works there.”
“Exactly, they know her. They know she was pregnant to Alejandro before they married. She’s only 20, young and stupid.”
“She married Alejandro!”
“Yes, she married Alejandro. A man with a reputation and an anarchist soldier, and the son of Juan Pablo Beltrán, a well-known Republicano activist. The baby could be given to a family that supports Franco. Probably sent off to Zaragoza and then sold on.”
“They wouldn’t do this,” Luna pleaded. “The priest…”
“The priest who has been lucky not to have been shot?” Scarlett bit back. “Oh yes, he’s into this. The Republicans denounced Catholicism. Franco sides with them and the church will get all their power back – and soon. We are about to be on the losing side of the war. Our army is dead after what happened in Ebro, and we can’t fight. The church will do anything it has to in order to appease the man who will be our dictator soon. Franco would love ‘undesirable’ babies to be sold off and given ‘better’ lives with his own sympathisers, in ‘good’ Catholic families.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know, but I bet once the war ends, this will keep happening.”
“And you are sure this is what is going to happen with Sofía?” Cayetano asked.
“I don’t know. It could be fine, but the question is, am I willing to sit back and hope for the best? I have to help. They let me in because I used to work there. Soon after the labour began, she started bleeding. There is so much blood.”
“Will they do a caesarean?” Luna asked. “That would terrify Sofía.”
“I fear they might,” Scarlett said as the group rounded the final corner. The hospital was now in sight. “Something is wrong. I think the placenta has burst. Sofía and the baby are in real danger. If they want to take that baby, they will easily sacrifice her in order to get it.”
“So why is Alejandro out the back of the hospital?” Cayetano asked. “His wife could be dying!”
“In case they take the baby and slip out the back. They have many times before.” They were outside the front of the hospital now, a stark stone building that was in darkness. “Cayetano, you should go around the back and wait there with Alejandro. Tell him that we’re with Sofía and we will take care of her and the baby.”
Cayetano nodded. “But will she be all right?”
“I hope so. I will do all I can for them.”
“We can trust you, Scarlett.” He placed one hand on her shoulder. “You’re extraordinario.”
Scarlett just scoffed. “Go. I will take Luna in to see Sofía.”
Luna watched Cayetano disappear down a dark alley, and turned back to Scarlett. “Are you sure they will let us in?”
“They aren’t letting us in,” Scarlett said, and beckoned her to follow her up the front stairs. “We are sneaking in.”
“But we can’t!”
“Do you want your brother to be a widower by morning?”
“Of course not!”
“Then we are sneaking in,” Scarlett whispered as the women went in the front entrance. She had jammed the lock when she had left earlier to ensure they could get in later. Normally the hospital got locked at night. “Unless this is all too dangerous for a princesa like you.”
“Stop calling me princesa.”
“With the Medina ring on your hand, you practically are a princess.” Scarlett glanced at Luna. “He didn’t tell you where the ring came from, did he?”
Luna glanced at the ring on her finger. “Where did it come from?”
“That is a long story, best left for Cayetano to tell you. The payment from Sergio Medina tells a lot about Cayetano’s status in life.”
“What you do mean? Cayetano is no one. He is like us.”
“Cayetano isn’t like us, Luna, trust me. We are all very different people. You are the privileged daughter of a once-wealthy businessman, and your brother is the stereotypical rebel to his father’s empire. Sofía is a whore who thinks she fools everyone by playing the sweet young wife…”
“And you are the foreigner with eyes as cold as her heart.”
“Do have any idea what I would give in order to be who I was when I came to España? To think I could help, or make a difference in this war? I crossed the entire world on a ship to come and try to save your country. I would love to change all that has happened and to have never seen what I have. Do you know what it’s like to see men blown apart by air-raids? To see bo
dies that have had their eyes gouged out by Falange members, for no reason? To see bodies of pregnant women with smashed skulls and the unborn babies sliced from the womb? To see young girls gang raped? To see the man you love gunned down?”
Luna had no answer to that. “I’m sorry, Scarlett. I suppose that’s why Cayetano said that you’re leaving España.”
“I have my reasons. I’m not surprised that Cayetano didn’t tell you the details. I take it that he asked you to marry him?”
“He did, yes.”
“Well, I won’t ruin that for you,” she said coldly. “I hope he didn’t suggest you had to sleep with him because he asked…”
“No! It was my idea.”
“Yours?”
“Yes, mine. Who knows what the future holds. I’m no fool, Scarlett. I took my chance.”
“I assume that was the first time for you.”
“So?”
“Are you all right? Cayetano… sometimes he can be rough with women. If you need anything, you don’t have to see a doctor. I can help you.”
“I’m fine.” Rough? Need a doctor? He wasn’t cold and cruel like those fascist soldiers who had raped their way through towns. She wondered briefly if Scarlett had escaped that fate. Women were the spoils of victory, and the rapists had claimed most of the nation. “How do you know what kind of lover he is?”
“You aren’t his first, Luna.”
“I know that.”
“We are on the road together a lot, and we stop in towns. He meets women a lot. Sometimes, he has them in his tent when we’re camped, and I hear what happens. Other times it’s a quick one out the back of a bar with some girl who works there and her father isn’t watching. It’s not information that I wish to possess.”
Luna glanced at the ring again. She was a woman who thought it best not to pry into what a man did in his own time. Never mind, he loved her. “We aren’t innocents.”
“You certainly aren’t, Señorita Beltrán. I never thought you would be one of those women. You could pray for forgiveness to your priest, if he isn’t busy stealing your brother’s child.” The conversation halted when they heard the sound of voices. Sofía was screaming. “She’s alive. We are going to storm in and assess the situation. If it’s under control and we think we can trust them, we will step out, unless Sofía wants us to stay. If it looks bad, you will be with Sofía, and I will see to the baby. Are we clear?”
Luna nodded. “How many people are in there? This is a hospital room, not a war zone.”
“You may re-think that when we go inside. Right… go!” Scarlett pushed the door and open, and the women ran into the small room. Scarlett was right; it was a war zone. Sofía was on her back on the bed in the centre of the room, covered in her own blood. The bed was soaked. It was all over the floor. The sound of Sofía’s screaming overwhelmed her senses.
“Scarlett!” the nurse exclaimed. “What are you doing back here?”
“I went to fetch Sofía’s sister-in-law… to comfort her,” Scarlett said, and they both approached the bedside. Sofía was extreme weak and pale. Luna rushed to her and took her hand, which was bloody. “That is not a problem, is it?” Scarlett asked the nurse.
The woman looked at the nun assisting her, Sister Rosa. Scarlett had run into her many times when she worked at the hospital. She was a sour-faced old woman. “Nurse Blanca has Sofía in good care,” the old nun muttered.
“She has no such thing,” Scarlett replied. She had delivered babies before. She knew the difference between a birth and a disaster. “Her placenta has burst, hasn’t it?”
“We think so, and the baby is breech.”
Scarlett stepped forward to see nothing more than a foot poking from its mother’s bloodied body. “We must get this baby out! It will stop breathing!”
“We have called for the doctor. He will be here in the morning.”
“The morning?” Luna cried. “It’s not even close to midnight!”
“The doctors aren’t here tonight.”
Scarlett stood for a moment in the blood, to assess the situation. Sofía moaned, a deep, primal groan that only came from a woman when she gave birth. She had lost a lot of blood. There was no way that the baby would slip out. “We need to take care of this ourselves. We need to get the forceps, and she needs blood. Lots of it.”
“We can’t do that!” Nurse Blanca interrupted. “Certainly not. Let nature take its course.”
Scarlett watched the two women share a look. They had no interest whatsoever in helping Sofía. A young mother, another faceless girl in a sea of women who were not going to get the care they deserved. It only took her a second to reach under her shirt and into the back of her trousers where she kept her gun.
Luna glanced up from Sofía when she saw Scarlett make a sharp movement, and her eyes bulged in panic. “Scarlett!” she cried. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing the problem,” she replied without moving an inch. Her body stood rigid when she pointed the gun squarely at the two women in front of her. She wasn’t going to miss if she fired a shot. “I know what you are doing, Sister Rosa,” she said to the nun, who stood firm in the face of the weapon. “You can’t have this baby.”
“We want to deliver the child safely,” Nurse Blanca said.
“And give it to who?”
“You can’t stop this, Scarlett,” Sister Rosa said. “This girl is going to pay for what she has done. A whore like Sofía doesn’t get treated like a virtuous woman. The same way you won’t when your time comes.”
The only muscle that moved in Scarlett was her index finger when she fired the first shot. Sister Rosa dropped like a stone, and the single shot to her chest barely had time to bleed before her body hit the ground. Nurse Blanca also didn’t have a chance to move before Scarlett put a bullet in her. She fell to the cold floor with blood splattered on her white nurse’s uniform. A shot to the stomach wouldn’t bring instant death, but it would do the job.
Scarlett stepped over the nurse who was beginning to choke on her own blood, and stood at the end of the bed with Sofía again. This baby couldn’t possibly still be alive. Gloves, she needed gloves.
“What the hell have you done?” Luna cried. She clutched at Sofía’s hand so tight, but by now Sofía was barely responsive.
“I did what I had to do. I know there aren’t any blood supplies in the hospital,” Scarlett said while she fumbled through the equipment drawer by the bed. No gloves anywhere. “We can do this on our own.”
“I can’t!” Luna stuttered. There were two bodies on the floor, neither of them dead just yet, and Sofía looked pale and lifeless. “Sofía isn’t moving!”
Scarlett stepped forward to Sofía’s side with a face full of concern. “Sofía,” she said loudly. “Sofía, can you hear me?”
Sofía opened her dark brown eyes, but there was barely any life in them. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing more than a whisper came out.
“What’s going on?” Luna asked. Her eyes couldn’t help but go between Sofía and the two women on the floor. “She was screaming just a moment ago.”
“She has gone into shock. I don’t know what we can do.”
“What? But you said…”
“I know what I said. We need to get her out of the room.”
“How?”
“I don’t know that either, but it will make life easier if we’re not found with the nurse and the torturous witch.”
“You shot a nun!”
“Yeah, well, we do what we have to do. Besides, she was going to kill Sofía and steal the baby. She was letting her bleed out.”
“So what do we do?”
“A caesarean needs to be performed, but from the swelling, I would say she is bleeding internally. I think the pressure put on her when they were pushing on her stomach has burst her placenta. It must have become unattached prematurely. Even if I knew how to perform a hysterectomy…”
“Can’t there be a doctor somewhere?”
“There a
re none, that bit I believe. There are so many casualties at the moment, and this would be considered non-essential and a waste of supplies. We are on our own. If there were doctors here, they would have responded to the gunshots by now anyway.”
“Quiero ir a casa,” Sofía whispered.
“No, Sofía, we can’t go home,” Luna tried to reassure her.
“Por favor, mi bebé…”
Luna’s panic-stricken eyes looked up at Scarlett, who had gone to check the baby. “We are in a hospital, we should be able to do something!”
“They don’t care, Luna, you don’t seem to understand that. If Sofía wants to die at home…”
“She wants to live at home!”
“Luna,” Sofía whispered, and the two women stared at the poor woman. She was flat on her back and with her knees bent and her feet strapped to the bed. Her luscious black hair was wet, and it clung to her skin. “El bebé …”
“I will care for your baby, I promise,” Luna said. She looked up at Scarlett. “Scarlett, please help her.”
“I could try and pull the baby out. The odds of it surviving are very slim anyway. I just worry that if the placenta has burst it will only increase the blood loss.”
“But if she is still bleeding then isn’t the blood just building up behind the baby anyway?”
Scarlett’s eyes widened when she nodded in agreement. She looked down and kicked Nurse Blanca’s arm out of the way. She still made a slight gurgling sound while she drowned on her blood. At least the nun was dead. “We have to get her out of here, or they will catch us. Okay, I’m going to push the baby back in and then hope I can find both feet, and pull.”
“Won’t it hurt Sofía?” That was when Luna realised that Sofía wasn’t holding her hand anymore. “Sofía?” She shook her limp hand, but her dear sister-in-law didn’t move. “Scarlett!”
Scarlett stepped forward and put her hand to Sofía’s throat. She looked up at Luna and hoped she would feel something. Anything. Scarlett had checked enough pulses in her time, and made the call about whether someone would live or die enough times. But this was Sofía Perez, her best friend, the only person who had befriended her when she first moved to Cuenca. Scarlett may have become a dark soul, but she would always love Sofía. There was nothing. Not even the faintest pulse. She could see the tears coming to Luna's eyes and Scarlett desperately tried to fight back her own, but it was no use. “We have to save the baby,” she managed to say, and Luna nodded as she started to cry.
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 15