Silent Honor (31 page)

A new epidemic of measles kept them busy after that for two weeks, and at the end of the second week, Hiroko stayed late into the night to help Reiko. And for once Reiko looked as tired as she was. Hiroko had been working tirelessly for days, but she wanted to give them all the help she could before the baby came. She knew that in another week or two, she would have to stay at home, at least for a little while, with the baby.

The knitting club had given her the shower by then, and everything was ready. Tami was more excited than anyone, and even Sally had softened a little bit, although she was still fairly vocal with her disapproval. But Hiroko had other things on her mind that night, as she took care of two old men and a woman who were covered with spots from the measles. She knew that she herself had had it as a child, and wasn't afraid of catching it. But their coughs raged, along with their fevers.

“How are they?” Reiko asked softly as she came by to check on her and watched admiringly. Hiroko had a genuine talent for nursing. She was doing everything she could to make them comfortable, and showed no signs of fatigue herself, although it was her second straight shift on duty. Reiko had thought of sending her home earlier, but Hiroko had insisted on staying at the infirmary with Reiko.

“They're about the same,” Hiroko said quietly, sponging their brows again, and glancing up at her cousin.

“And how are you?” It was pointless even to ask, she'd been on her feet, off and on, for hours. And Reiko noticed her rub her back a couple of times, later, when she watched her. She came back to check on her again around midnight, and told her she should go home, but Hiroko looked bright-eyed and full of energy. Reiko smiled at her and hurried off to help a doctor with what looked like a perforated ulcer.

It was two
A.M.
when she came by again, and this time Hiroko looked exhausted. Her patients were finally asleep, and she was helping another nurse change the dressings on a little boy with burns. He had been playing with matches when his straw mattress caught fire, and he was crying while Hiroko held him. Reiko saw her wince several times in sympathy for the child, and when she set him down again and finally stood up, she noticed that Hiroko held on to the table. And then she knew, even before Hiroko did, that she was in labor.

“Are you all right?” she asked, and Hiroko winced again and tried to smile.

“I'm fine. My back is just tired,” she said, but she looked distracted, and Reiko smiled at her. It was time. It was the first of March, time for her baby to come.

“Why don't you sit down for a few minutes,” Reiko suggested, and knew from the fact that Hiroko did, that she was probably in more pain than she was willing to admit. Reiko got her a cup of tea, and the two women talked softly in the dim light of the makeshift nurses' station. It was freezing outside, and drafty in the barracks where they were working, but there was a cozy feeling between the two women. And as they chatted, and others came and went, Hiroko's face grew more and more strained, and she looked more and more worried. “Are you in a lot of pain?” Reiko finally asked, and this time, Hiroko looked up with eyes filled with tears, and nodded. She had tried to work in spite of it for hours, hoping it would go away, that it was not time. Suddenly she was terrified, and she didn't feel ready to face it. Just sitting there, the pains were becoming unbearable, and she suddenly clutched Reiko's hand and gasped. No one had prepared her for what this would be like. But Reiko was sitting calmly with her, and she put an arm around her and gently helped her to stand up, as two other nurses appeared and Reiko explained that Hiroko was in labor.

“Well, that's good news.” Sandra, the eldest of the nurses, smiled at her. She was a small, round,
smiling
nisei woman whom Reiko had worked with years before at Stanford. “I could use a little good news tonight.” She was tired of dying old people with measles. But Hiroko looked like a wide-eyed little girl as she stared at them, not knowing what to expect. “It's all right,” the older woman said soothingly, seeing what was happening to her. It was normal for young girls to panic. She was only nineteen, she had no mother at hand, and it was her first baby. But the nurses of the infirmary all took her under their wing, and two of them joined her and Reiko and led her slowly to a little cubicle they'd set aside for deliveries, carefully partitioned with old blankets. And one of them left immediately to tell the doctor they'd need him that night.

As it turned out, it was the same doctor who had been on duty the morning that she'd fainted, and he smiled warmly when he saw Hiroko again, although she could barely smile at him by the time he got there. He asked her when the pains had begun, and she looked sheepishly at Reiko, and admitted that she'd felt the first twinges early that morning, just before dawn. It had been nearly twenty-four hours by now, and the pains were getting more and more powerful with each moment. She could hardly talk as the next one came, and the nurses lay her down gently and helped take her clothes off. Reiko was standing close to her head, and holding one hand, as the doctor examined her beneath a rough drape, and Hiroko turned her face away in mortification. No one had ever examined her before this, except externally and very superficially after she fainted. No one else had ever seen or touched her except Peter.

“It's all right,” Reiko said soothingly, and Sandra took her other hand and held it.

The doctor was pleased, but surprised that she had stayed on her feet as long as she had. She was almost fully dilated and he could see the baby's hair. With an encouraging look, he told her it wouldn't be long at all. But as he left the cubicle, he signaled to Reiko, and she joined him. Hiroko was writhing with another pain, but fighting not to make any noise, so no one would hear her just beyond the partitions made of flimsy blankets. The room just beyond them was filled with sleeping patients, and Hiroko would have felt disgraced if she'd made a sound to wake them.

“The baby looks big to me,” he said to Reiko. “I don't want to have to section her here. She's going to have to do everything she can to push that baby out. I don't care if you ladies have to stand on her stomach, Rei. I don't want to have to do that kind of surgery here in camp, unless I have to. It's too risky for her and the baby.” She nodded, worrying about Hiroko, who still had not confirmed that Peter was the father of her baby. If it was Peter, as it surely was, he was tall and broad, and the baby might be much too big for Hiroko to deliver on her own. But she said nothing to the doctor about the baby's father, as he moved on to check on some other patients.

The other nurse was helping Hiroko breathe and trying to keep her calm when Reiko got back to her bedside. The two women exchanged a knowing look, as Hiroko seized their hands again, and this time she cried out, despite the flimsy blankets around her and the patients on the other side of them who might hear her.

“It's all right, go ahead,” Sandra encouraged her. “Don't worry about it. If they don't like it, they can go to another hospital.” She smiled, and Hiroko tried not to scream but lost the battle as the next pain engulfed her.

“Aunt Rei,” she said hoarsely, “this is terrible. … Is there medicine? …something …” They had given whatever they had to patients for pain ever since she'd worked there, she couldn't imagine surviving this without it. But they needed what anesthesia they had for surgeries, not for delivering babies, and Reiko knew she could not give her anything unless the doctor said so. And he hadn't suggested it when he came by to see her.

He came back several times in (he next two hours, and at four-thirty, he told her to start pushing. But the baby was so large it didn't move at all. It just sat trapped where it was, unable to go back, and unwilling to go forward.

“Stubborn little thing,” the doctor said, after battling with a pair of forceps that left Hiroko gasping in agony, as three nurses held her. It was six o'clock by then, and they had gotten nowhere in the last few hours. He glanced at Reiko from time to time, and she remembered his warning, but there was nothing they could do to help Hiroko move the baby.

“Try, Hiroko, come on,” Sandy told her. “Push as hard as you can.” She had, but it was exactly what her own mother had experienced with Yuji. The baby was too big, the mother too small. But this wasn't Kyoto. And there was no hospital to go to. There were only these women helping her, and a minimum of tools and options. The doctor tried the forceps again, and then told Sandy to press as hard as she could on Hiroko's stomach, just above the baby. They were going to try to force the baby out. Hiroko screamed as she thought she felt her ribs breaking, and the baby moved forward a tiny bit, as the three nurses working with her gave a cheer, including Reiko, but Hiroko didn't acknowledge them or smile. She was in too much pain and growing weaker by the moment.

“More!” the doctor said, trying the forceps again, as Sandy pushed harder and this time the other nurse added pressure as well. Hiroko screamed again and looked pitifully at Reiko. But her cousin could do nothing for her.

“No … no … I can't…. No! …” Hiroko said breathlessly, fighting them, and then suddenly all she could think of was Peter, and the promises they'd made each other. Suddenly, she knew that if she did not do this for him, she would die, and so would their baby. The agonies she'd been through that night were for him, and she could not give up or stop until she had done what she was there to do, bring his child into the world, and be there for him when he returned. No matter what happened now, she could not fail him. Remembering that gave her a strength she never knew she had. She fought valiantly to help push her child into the world, but still the baby refused to move. It seemed hopeless to her, and to everyone who watched her. And after another hour, both their heartbeats were weakening slowly. The doctor knew he had no choice. No matter what the risk, he had to do it. She was bleeding a lot too, and two women had hemorrhaged to death in childbirth the week before. He wanted to do what he could to control the damage while he still had the option, and to save, if not Hiroko, at least the baby's life.

“Take her to the operating room,” he said to Sandy in a tone of somber resignation. “She can't do this anymore.” But Hiroko heard him and clutched his hand, looking ghostly pale and very frightened.

“No!” She knew that was how Yuji had been born, and how they had both almost died. Her father had told her the story, to prove to her how dangerous the old ways were, but here they had no choice. There were only the old ways, or death if those methods failed. Feeling demons behind her, she battled the forces of nature with fresh fervor, knowing that what she might lose was her own or her baby's life. She fought with all the terror of what she knew might happen if she didn't succeed in pushing the baby out. The doctor tried the forceps one more time and dared even more than he should have. But he had felt Hiroko's struggle for life. And both nurses pressed on her again, as Hiroko fought with everything she had, and for yet another moment it seemed hopeless. And then it came, moving slowly at first, and then hurtling forward with another pain and then another, and suddenly there was a terrifying scream, and a long thin howl, and then a little shout of fury. He had a bright red face, and soft brown hair, and dark blue almond-shaped eyes, and except for a hint of something faintly Japanese, he looked exactly like his father, as Hiroko lay staring at him, totally spent and unable to believe she had done it.

“Oh …” Hiroko said, almost too weak to speak as she looked at him in wonder. He was so beautiful, so perfect, and very large, just as the doctor had said. They weighed him on a little scale they had.

“Exactly ten pounds,” the doctor said, staring at the baby who had defied him for hours, and then smiling at his mother-who had refused to give up. “Hiroko, you're a hero. That is just amazing.” If anyone would have asked him, he would have sworn he was going to have to do a cesarean section, but he was glad now he hadn't. In the condition Hiroko had been in by then, he was almost sure they both would have died. But by some miracle, he had saved them. And Hiroko had astounded him, by refusing to give up and persevering.

The sun was coming up by then, and the nurses cleaned Hiroko up as she lay peacefully and held her baby. Everyone was touched by what they had seen that night.

“I'm sorry it was so rough,” Reiko said softly to her. She had been very brave, and incredibly strong, and given the size of him, none of them could believe she had made it. But Hiroko was an extraordinary young woman.

The new mother whispered proudly to her cousin then, looking happily at her baby. “He looks just like Peter, doesn't he?” As she looked at him, it was all worth it. For a time, it had been like an express train driving through her soul, dragging her down and then up again, and just when she thought she would die, he had been born. She only wished now that Peter could see him, and Reiko realized that it was the first time Hiroko had acknowledged who his father was.

“You have to
tell
him,” Reiko said firmly, but Hiroko shook her head.

“It will only worry him. I will tell him when he returns.” She had long since made up her mind. What if he did not wish to come back to her? She would never force him. This way, he was free as the wind, and if he decided to return to her, he would, and he would find them waiting for him, as she had been since the moment he left. She looked at Reiko then, and decided to share some of the secret with her. They had been through so much that night, and Reiko and the others had been so kind. “We were married by a Buddhist priest at Tanforan. I was afraid someone would know and they would punish Peter for it, but they didn't.” She picked up her hand and showed Reiko the narrow ring, and Reiko couldn't believe she'd never seen it.

“You're awfully good at keeping secrets …and having babies.” She kissed her and told her to get some sleep, and when Hiroko and the baby were both sound asleep, she went home to Takeo and told him about the baby. He was just getting ready to leave for the high school. Reiko was shocked to realize it was nine o'clock. The night had flown by like moments.