RUWAIDA ✔️

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

She knew the screams were hers and that something across her arm had pulled out the syringe which had earlier been admitted to her. And a sharp pain creaked in her abdomen in a wrenching manner that made her feel ill. She screamed again. She wanted it to stop.

And even when she felt the blackness slowly pulling her in, she turned her head side ways, raising her hand to that voice that brought peace to her mind, but then, all she felt was more pain as the lurching feeling intensified and Muhammad reached out for her cold stretched out hand.

Ruwaida turned her head, looking at him and a sudden sharp pain lurked in her back which caused her to whimper. His hands were on hers and he was inclining over as the hospital hall kept moving and moving, staring at her with worry carved round his face. "Waida, look at me, everything will be okay, breathe,"

She stopped wincing to peek at him, his frown disappeared and he reassuringly smiled nodding his head. "You'll be fine,"

Someone pulled doors behind her as she laid over something but she really couldn't tell what it was. Muhammad was still in front of her, clung to her arm and then she realized that she was laying on a trolley, two nurses and Dr Samuel pushing it.

"The surgery should last for about 45 minutes, any addition would be for reasons of lapses," She heard Dr Samuel speak to Muhammad as the nurses trolled her into the surgical theatre, and the doors closed, leaving them by the hall, their voices disappeared in a series of echoes in her mind, left to deal with pain, coupled with a sort of unconsciousness.

The nurses had given her anesthesia shot, the very reason why she began to feel as if concussed. She watched with her eyelids slowly giving in, one of the nurses measured her pulse, temperature and blood pressure while the other connected to her, the heart and blood pressure monitor.

Ruwaida could remember seeing three surgeons emerge in, clothed fully in their surgical livery, but after that, everything that occurred was a blur to her.

Muhammad could feel his blood boiling with every passing second, ticking so slowly and pulling all of his patient strings. He was too overwhelmed while moving her from the special care ward to that of the maternity that he forgot all the necessities he was supposed to act upon.

Zarah arrived later with Abdullah, then Mama showed up. She gave up waiting for the driver she'd called to come take her, since after picking the call, only his horrible snores ringed through the phone. "Ya Turaad," Zarah rushed towards him, extending her henna filled hands to take his tenderly. "How's she? Still in there?," she yawed her gaze to the glass doors, then up to look at the red light that was still functioning.

One could see sheer angst in her eyes as she stared unblinkingly at the door, and just like that, Zarah began crying uncontrollably. Abdullah was first to console her. Turaad always been there for her, for the first time had no strength to pull himself together, talk less of offering a shoulder to another. And they both cried, with Mama and Abdullah consoling and pleading with them to pray. And they did. It was all they could offer to Ruwaida and the baby.

As moments slowly but surely progressed, Muhammad noticed that it was pass 45 minutes and so on Samuel's words, he began to panic. He knew that a Caesarean section was supposed to be 45 minutes or less. So why was hers taken longer?

In his midst of perceptions and silent prayers, he did not notice the light going off, nor when Mama and Zarah rushed towards the door, until Abdullah had pulled him up and unwillingly had he looked towards those doors, at the same time the mid wife rushed out with the baby swathed in a plastic wrap up to the neck and she walked away without acknowledging them, until the baby has been moved to an incubator in the neonatal unit.