by Bowes, K T
“This is unbelievable!” Tama raged. “What the hell are we doing up here?”
“Looking for Logan.” Hana felt like a child and dread snaked its fingers around her heart. “Are we stuck?”
“Yeah, pretty much!” Tama dropped to his knees and examined the soil. “He’s been here recently.” He poked at the fresh hoof prints in the dust. “We’re too late! He’s been and gone. Looks like he galloped round the paddock like an idiot and left. He does that when he’s pissed off. He rides like a maniac.” Tama swore a few times and kicked the aged quad bike again.
“Swearing at it won’t help,” Hana said, feeling the bloom of irritation turn to fear. It leached out of her voice as she slipped from the machine. She could smell the sea and sought the safety of this place. It was Logan’s happy place and everything would be ok. He said it was sacred, marked by a faded rahui pole at the gate. It was where he wanted to build his house. Hana felt less desolate here somehow and a strange peace descended on her slowly, wrapping around her and giving her certainty. “He’ll come back for us,” she said, her voice light and confident.
“No, we should try and get back down to the house,” Tama said. “I’ll try and get the bike going again if you climb back on.” He reached out to help her, but as he seized Hana’s forearm a torrent of water rushed unexpectedly down her legs, hitting the hard ground and splashing on his boots.
“What happened?” Tama gripped Hana’s arm, his eyes white and scared in the growing gloom.
“Oh God help me!” Hana cried out, bending double against the familiar back pain, which suddenly snaked around to encompass her stomach in a vicious bite. It gripped like a vice and Hana recognised it immediately for what it was. “It’s labour,” she panted out, pinioned by the pain.
Tama panicked like the teenager he still was. He tried to shove her back onto the broken quad, but Hana pushed his hands roughly away, unable to sit down. Then he dragged his trusty mobile phone out of his jacket pocket only to find there was no signal. “There’s no phone reception here!” His voice was high pitched and afraid. “That’s why we needed the bloody radio!”
Tama came back to Hana, holding onto her as she groaned and sank to her knees and his jerky body movements betrayed his desperation. “Can you hold it in?” he asked, terrified when Hana laughed hysterically amidst her agonised groaning. The teenager stayed on the ground with her, resting his forehead on her bent back, stroking her arm and trying to tell her it would all be ok.
“It’s not gonna be ok!” Hana’s sentence was encased in a guttural groan which terrified the teenager. His heart thudded in panic and his hands shook as he tried to comfort her, patting her back with futile movements. “I need my husband!” Hana wailed, descending into panting interspersed with moans of pure agony.
Tama ran down the track, trying to work out how far he could run on foot and if he dared leave Hana to get help. Her cries of pain brought him running back up again. “Don’t you leave me!” she screeched in his face, her eyes wide and glassy.
“I promise I won’t,” Tama gasped, feeling wretched, divided and exhausted with fear.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 36
Hana knelt in the dirt on her hands and knees, moaning softly and resting her forehead on the grass. She felt as though her insides were being ripped out. Tama paced up and down next to her, accidentally kicking dust over her with each turn on his heel.
Hana tried to regulate her breathing, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She leaned back and down onto her heels, dropping her hand to grip her stomach but the pressure inside pushed her back up again, her spine arched, a groan escaping from her lips.
“How far apart are the thingies?” Tama asked and there was panic in his voice.
Hana wanted to laugh. He didn’t know what he was asking; repeating what he had seen on some science class DVD. If she could tell him, which she couldn’t, it wouldn’t offer him any comforting information. Not now. It was too late. The contractions couldn’t be measured anymore, they had all melded into one giant, never-ending pain, as though an iron bar had been shoved in sideways and two big men crushed it between them. Hana felt like she was going to break. “The baby’s coming,” she sobbed, snot mingling with the soil. There was no doubt about that.
“But it’s too early!” Tama stated the obvious. “You’re not due yet.”
“Tell her that!” Hana spat. Had she not been in such agony, Hana would have been more afraid for her child.
The pressure in her bottom increased and the remaining amniotic fluid soaked her leggings and underwear. Hana felt an animalistic urge to get her clothes off and she freed up one hand by taking the weight on her other. She grappled around behind her, wrenching at her leggings, managing to get them down over her bottom to her thighs. Tama saw what she was doing and instead of helping her, rushed over to pull them up, freaking out. “No!” he squealed, “Logan will kill me if you get your kit off with me here!”
They ended up having a bizarre tug of war over Hana’s pants until the contraction bit hard and knocked the breath out of her, so that she cried out in absolute tearing agony. The sound of her pain rocked their surroundings, causing birds to leave their perches and the cry to echo loudly around the cliffs behind them. A startled tui in a nearby kauri tree mimicked Hana shamelessly, repeating her noise over and over as though amused.
Hana pulled her leggings down to the backs of her knees and then attacked her underwear, knowing instinctively it needed to come off. Tama was beside himself with panic. “Please don’t do this,” he begged. “I’m too young to die.”
Hana felt down between her legs, frightening herself when she felt the fluffy topknot of her baby crowning. She leaned forward and howled in pain and fear. She had no idea what to do next. She needed help and Tama was absolutely no use. “Get. Help!” she managed to cry out to him and he ceased his pacing for a moment, groaning at Hana’s undressed state in the deepening twilight and panicking. He ran to the back of the quad bike and unstrapped a shotgun from under the seat. Someone would be in deep trouble for leaving it there. It was a grave offence and completely illegal, but for once Tama was grateful for the error.
“That’s a great idea. Just shoot me,” Hana hissed behind him. “In the head, please, in the head.”
“I’m not gonna shoot you!” Tama felt in his pockets and scraped together some ammunition, snapped the barrel closed and fired into the air three times in quick succession. He checked for more cartridges and repeated the dreadful noise. It echoed around the land, reverberating over and over until it died out, drowning out Hana’s agonised screams as she fought the thing that tore her in half.
“Three quick shots, hunter in distress,” Tama said to himself, more than to Hana. “Why didn’t I do it before? Idiot!” His whispered voice was close to Hana’s ear as he knelt down on the ground, trying futilely to rub her back again. Hana’s face was streaked with filth as she smeared the tears away with her dirty palms and she cut a pitiful figure. Tama tried to hold her, feeling utter terror. He was at a complete loss, his blood running cold at the sound of Hana’s pathetic cries,
“God help me, God help me, God help me...”
Tama ran back to the quad bike, searching frantically for anything else which might help. He grappled in the cavity under the seat and unearthed a first aid kit. Inside there were the usual things, slings, bandages, gauze, scissors, gloves. Nothing that would tell him how to deliver an imminent baby. He agonised and panicked in equal parts and no solution presented itself.
“Logan, damn you! I need you now!” he cried out. He hoped and prayed his uncle had heard the shots. He would know what it meant. If he was out there, he would come. “He’ll find us,” Tama convinced himself. “It’s gonna be fine.”
Tama took the first aid box over to Hana and threw himself down next to her. He stroked her hair and tried to soothe her as she began to make the most awful noises as she pushed. Hana laboured for the next while and Tama knew by so
me strange instinct it was too long. She was exhausted and leaking all kinds of awful stuff that ran into the dust underneath her. He grabbed the gun and fired again, the same three fast shots, betraying that frail, human ability to hope, giving him courage.
A few minutes later as he knelt by Hana, a steady rumble came through Tama’s knees and Hana’s hands, followed by the audible sound of hoof beats and the clank of tack. Tama began to shout for help, as loud as his lungs would allow. Hana shouted too, but hers was interjected with panting and fractured speech. She sounded like an incoherent drunk, even to her own ears and would have laughed at herself under different circumstances.
Logan’s keen eyes picked up Tama’s shape in the dusk and he dismounted in an instant, flinging his hard body from the horse with ease. He saw Hana’s outlined form on the ground on all fours and saw her lower half was undressed. Tama’s distress radiating out in waves. “What the hell...?” he began. He looked at Tama in utter confusion, not understanding the scene before him and then Hana bore down again, exhaling out in a grating moan, no longer thrashing but concentrating and focussed.
“Help her,” Tama cried out, grabbing Logan’s shirt front and shaking him. “Please help her!”
Logan ran to his wife, putting his arms around her shoulders and gathering her to him. It was as though she no longer knew he was there. Her eyes were glassy and strange. All her attention was focussed on birthing her baby and she pushed him away viciously as he unbalanced her. Her teeth were gritted shut and her eyes wild and staring as she got on with her job. “Take the quad, get help,” Logan barked at Tama, who reacted instantly, flinging himself onto the seat and trying to start the engine. It clicked, but refused to turn over. Tama tried twice, his final attempt ending in a wail of frustration.
“It’s knackered! That’s why we’re stuck up here!”
Logan waved with his hand towards the mare who stood fully tacked where he abandoned her. She had stayed close, nosing around in the sparse ground underfoot, tasting the odd blade of grass despite the bit in her mouth. “Take her!” Logan implored the boy. “Take the mare. Go! Tell them to bring the old ute up to the bend on the east side of the fortieth and a stretcher. Hurry!”
Tama was in the saddle, hatless, spinning the surprised mare around on her hind feet in a second. The sound and vibration of her hooves as they galloped away came back to Logan and Hana through the dusty earth. Logan wanted to shout a warning to him to be careful on the rugged track, but he didn’t have a chance. He reasoned Tama knew its faults as well as he did.
Logan stayed on the ground with Hana, rubbing her back and trying to comfort her. He felt useless. At one point, she clawed at his arm and tried to tell him something. “What, sweetheart, what?”
She reached underneath herself and felt around between her legs. She cried out and said words that didn’t make sense. Hana looked at her husband with fear in her green eyes and gripped his arm in her soiled hands, trying to pull him round behind her. He went to where she seemed to want him and in the light of the half moon, saw the head and shoulders of a baby emerge into the world.
He could do this. He had helped to birth hundreds of foals and calves in his lifetime. It had to be the same. “Bloody hell!” Logan took the weight of his daughter’s head and felt her slide out as Hana gave another huge strain. The tiny girl slipped into his big hands, looking up at him with wide, unfocussed eyes. He laid her little body on the baked earth and reached in his jeans pocket for his penknife. He went a good distance from her end of the cord and tied a looped knot in it. Then he cut it on the other side of the knot from the child, guessing, but not knowing if he was doing it right.
Hana seemed to be coming back to him, laying her forehead on her arms and panting hard from the exertion. The baby gave a tired strangled cry and Logan stripped his shirt off and wrapped her in it, swaddling her close to his body to keep her warm. The evening had been balmy but with the going down of the sun the temperature dropped. Logan managed to get to his feet, still holding the baby. She was breathing fine and gave little sucking noises in between her pathetic wails. He found a dirty tarpaulin under the seat of the useless machine and laid it down on the ground up against the quad. He went back to Hana, still prone on the floor and encouraged her to crawl over to it and try to sit down. “I can’t sit down,” she wailed. “I’m never gonna be able to sit down again!”
Logan sank down behind her and let her half lie, leaning on him. Then he pushed the baby around the front, towards her. “You need to feed her, babe, you have to, it...it makes things work properly.”
Hana was visibly traumatised, crying quietly and shaking her head. “I want to go home,” she sobbed. Logan started unbuttoning her shirt and pulling up her bra. Hana tried to fight him, but he persevered, pushing the baby onto her and unhooking her bra from the back.
“Feed her, Han,” he begged, “please, she’s so small. She needs you.”
The baby girl determined to keep her firm grip on life and smelled the milk. She began to root and fret, bringing Hana out of her shock. Hana lifted her up and the tiny head butted her breast, trying to latch on. Hana sniffed and natural reflex and maternal memory, which had borne her through the same experience more than twenty years ago, kicked in. She sat up more so that the baby could suck. She experienced the familiar feeling of ‘let down,’ that toe curling sensation which a breastfeeding mother never forgets even when she is an old woman. Hana heard the child making the sloop, sloop noise as she drank deeply.
Logan breathed out a sigh of relief. Foals and calves that fed quickly had a far better chance of survival. Yet he knew from experience it wasn’t over. Hana had forgotten the next part.
The breastfeeding activated the closing of her womb and it was sudden, intense and painful. It made her stiffen and pant again as the afterbirth was expelled. Logan tried to help, gently guiding it until it was out but was unable to see in the darkness if it was complete. He took it over to a wide kauri tree and used the heel of his boot to dig a hole in the hard earth. The tui bird cawed in a loud trumpet of noise overhead as Logan laid the mess in the hole, unaware that his grandmother had buried the product of his own birth in the same place. She wanted the illegitimate offspring of her favourite son to be tied to this land; to make a difference. “You will begin and end here, my mokopuna,” her words whispered on the breeze. “No matter where you roam in the world, the whenua, the land, will call you home.”
Logan stopped and listened. A strange sensation crawled from his head to his toes. “Kuia?” he whispered as he felt the old lady’s words wash over him. “Āwhina. Help me.” He shook the unreality from himself and concentrated on his wife, squatting down in the dust next to her. “Talk to me, Hana. How are you feeling?”
“Hideous!” Hana and the baby were filthy, covered in blood and dust from the ground. Her pants were still around her ankles, trapped on by her boots and soaked from the fore-waters. Logan had no clothing left to give, but noticed Tama’s jacket on the ground where it fell. He helped Hana pull up her clothes to her knees and wrapped the jacket around her lower half, sitting so he could watch his daughter feed. She sucked greedily, eyes squeezed tightly shut, growing slower and slower as her tiny stomach filled. She fell asleep finally, pulling off the breast, her bottom lip pushed forward and slightly above her top one. “She’s beautiful,” Logan whispered. He touched a hand to his chest. “I never expected to feel like this.”
Hana began to shiver with shock and Logan prayed Tama had reached the hotel safely and raised the alarm. He needed to get his little family down off the mountain. “He’ll have made it there by now, babe. Everything’s gonna be ok,” Logan soothed her. “Help’s coming.”
Hana shifted under Logan’s gaze, trying to get comfortable against the side of the quad and she pulled her bra down, realising she was improperly dressed. “It hurts,” she whimpered and Logan stroked her hair back from her face.
“I know, sweetheart. I know.”
“You don’t bloody know!�
�� she replied with more of her old fire and Logan hid his smirk, relief coursing through him as his Hana returned to give him hell. “This is all your fault. You are never coming near me again, do you hear?”
“Don’t bank on it,” Logan muttered with mischief and Hana’s green eyes sparkled and glared at him in the moonlight.
Logan took the baby from her, urging her to try and stand. Hana used her hands to walk herself up the side of the quad to a standing position. She felt shaky and leaned heavily against it, aching in every muscle of her body. Logan leaned down and tried one handed, to haul up her knickers and leggings. Hana squirmed as they contacted her skin; the material soaked and gritty. She gripped her stomach as another bout of milder contractions told her brain her womb was doing its job and Logan grabbed a wad of gauze from the first aid kit. He offered it to her and she used it as a makeshift sanitary towel inside her pants. She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the safety bar of the quad, drained. When she opened them, she saw a sight she would never forget.
The Milky Way spread out directly above her head like a white speckled stripe, unadulterated by man-made interference. It was breath-taking. Hana gasped and pointed, causing Logan to look up also. It made them dizzy but it was hard to look away. The absence of town lights revealed the created magnificence. “Told you it was beautiful,” Logan sighed, holding the sleeping baby with one arm and propping his wife up with the other. He leaned into her and whispered in her ear, “You did good tonight, sweetheart. You’re amazing. I’m so proud of you.”
Hana snuggled in closer, pulling Tama’s jacket more closely around her legs. “It’s getting cold,” she said, shivering. Her jaw clattered as she spoke, banging her teeth together involuntarily.
Logan got her to sit back down on the tarp and he held her and the baby close. The little girl became fractious; giving startled cries as though horrified at being out in the world. Logan sat her up and leaned her over his big hand, rubbing her back gently, careful of her wobbling head. She gave a series of burps which seemed to come from her boots and then began to witter again. “Just give her some more.” Logan passed the baby back to Hana, who lifted aside her shirt and offered the child the other breast. They had the same little performance as before, the baby rooting and head banging Hana until she found what she wanted. Her tiny fists stayed up by her ears as though raging against something unseen and she fed again. She dropped into a deeper sleep this time, her head rolling back on her neck and a trail of milk dripping from the side of her mouth.