The Midwife

-Please!!! There must be something that can be done!!! -No, I’m really sorry. On this planet we’re all egg-laying, we don’t have the equipment or the knowledge. -Is there really no one who knows even a little bit?? -Not here. You have to take her to the alien hospital located in the capital, in the embassy district. -That’s almost a day away!!! We won’t make it!!! -I’m really sorry, I’d like to be able to do more.

The Teserita glared at the doctor, but upon seeing his feathers dyed with the colors of genuine despair, he understood there was truly nothing that could be done and forced himself to remain calm.

Looking desolately in all directions, searching for something, a small hope, a miracle that could save his wife who was about to give birth prematurely far from any healer for live births. Everyone around him kept silent and avoided looking at him, since they had surely heard the whole conversation.

But over there, at the back of the room, a group of aliens was chatting and laughing calmly. He had already met them before, when he arrived with his wife to this tourist park. He noticed their lack of body hair and their brown skin. “Humans,” one of them said when he asked for the name of their species. Later, while his wife slept, he read that these were mammals, bipedal, and came from a world of…

-Mammals!!

The doctor shouted without realizing it, and the doctor looked at him disapprovingly.

-Those over there are mammals, right?? Maybe they have a healer with them that can help us!!

-Yes, they’re humans, one of them broke some bones and is being treated.

-Them!! They can help!!

-No!! Wait, they’re not regular humans, they’re LATAM…

The doctor’s words hung in the air, as he was already halfway to them in two jumps. Seeing him approach with all his fur bristling and eyes red from excitement, the humans fell silent and got ready for defense. Immediately, the largest among them stepped forward in front of the group, and the frightened young ones clung to their mothers.

-Please… No… I don’t want…- He realized he had scared them -I need… My wife… She needs help… Our child is about to be born…-

Still agitated, one of them spoke for the group, apparently translating his words. None of them seemed to react or calm down. He was about to cry at seeing that he had ruined it when, among them, a human with long gray hair braided into two thick cords that hung from his head, with skin so worn that it hung in folds across his entire face, pushed through them shouting and hitting with a staff anyone who got in his way. No one responded to the aggression, but respectfully stepped aside from his path until he reached the front of the group.

When she reached in front of him, the human said some words that he did not understand, not knowing what to do until the same one who had translated before said: “Take us.”

Without thinking further, he moved his spines in gratitude and went through the hospital corridors toward the room where his wife was dying. The human walked very slowly, leaning on the staff as if it were a third leg. Unlike the others, he walked a bit hunched over, looking weaker than the rest, but everyone seemed to respect him and followed without hurrying him, murmuring among themselves (why were they all coming?). After what seemed like an eternity, they arrived with his wife, who, tired of screaming, now only ruffled her spines in pain.

The human approached and removed all the sheets from over his wife, leaving her naked. She looked around everywhere, saw her belly, touched it, pressed in some areas and saw where his wife screamed the most in pain, looked intently at her expulsion vent, and looked silently for a moment.

When she was about to ask if she could do something or how much she would charge for her help, the woman started shouting at her companions what seemed to be orders. Some left the room hurriedly to bring trays of water, clean cloths, knives, alcohol? The human hit the others with the staff until they left the room and stayed outside, watching everything that happened inside.

While gathering things around the human, she climbed onto his wife and, in the horror of the present doctor and husband, began to drive the rounded part of one of her arms into his belly, causing him terrible pain that made him scream and move his legs. Sweaty and clearly exhausted, the human descended and shouted something to the translator.

-You have to push - she told the pain-stricken mother. -You, get next to her and hold her… Legs??… Whatever it is that you do to support each other - she told the husband.

He got next to his wife and gently pierced her with his mating spines while she pushed at the rhythm the human indicated.

Everything went as if it were a dream. With the most terrible scream that she had ever heard, her wife expelled the birth sac. In a hospital, he would have entered smoothly into a neonatal capsule where an automatic system would have done everything necessary for his son to be born, but here…

The human received the sac with her own hands and, sinking her fingers, broke the membrane to pull out the neonate. With incredible skill, she cut the three cords and tied them with a thread that had been soaked in alcohol, cleaned all the fluids with a cloth soaked in warm water, and cleared his airways by breathing with her own mouth and spitting into a pail. The doctor hurriedly exited the room and in the distance, he could be heard vomiting. It must have been his first viviparous birth, at least without neonatal capsules. But the human seemed to have done this many times, the other humans looked at her with admiration, and now he did too.

When she finished, she wrapped the new being in a cloth so tightly that he could only move his head and eyes, took him to them, and delivered him as if he were a gift.

–EPILOGO

As is customary in LATAM, a big party was held to celebrate the birth.

The couple returned to their planet with their son, who received the honorific name “Pequeño Juan” granted by the LATAM.

The federal government authorized the purchase of viviparous neonatal capsules for all hospitals on the planet and prohibited, under penalty of deportation and payment of damages, both material and cultural, all LATAM parties in the future.