Free Raney & Levine by J. A. Schneider

was already a full ten centimeters. The head was
     visible. The mother was pushing and moaning loudly.
    “Almost there!” Woody said.
    “Um, not so sure.” David frowned over his mask. “The head
     isn’t coming. The kid’s stuck.”
    He slid one gloved hand in alongside and past the baby’s
     face. “Great,” he grimaced. “The cord’s around the neck.”
    Jill and Tricia both darted looks to the fetal monitor.
     “What now?” asked Tricia.
    “Come see.”
    “I’ve only done this once,” Woody said.
    The three watched David slide in his second hand, and
     manually rotate the baby a quarter turn, from face down to a position where the
     shoulders were vertical. Then, very gently, he pulled the shoulders first
     downwards, and then upwards, until the baby and the umbilical cord were partway
     out.
    “This isn’t rare,” he told the others. “You need to do it
     fast, or the cord will be compressed by the mother’s pelvic bone, which will
     cut off the baby’s oxygen supply. The cord can also act like a noose and
     strangle the baby.”
    Woody quickly clamped the cord, still pulsating, in two
     places close to each other. David nodded, and Jill used sterile scissors to cut
     between the clamps.
    “That’s it,” he said. And more brightly, looking up: “Momma,
     you’re doing great.”
    Momma smiled at him, gasping.
    The rest of the baby, slippery with amniotic fluid, slid
     right down into his hands, one hand at the junction of the neck and shoulder,
     the other under and supporting the lower back. It was a girl. “Oh, beautiful!”
     he said, holding the child up by her ankles while Tricia unwound what remained
     of the cord, wiped the tiny face with a sterile cloth, and used a rubber bulb
     syringe to suction her mouth and nostrils.
    The newcomer began to breathe on her own, and let out a
     lusty wail. Woody hooted and the others beamed as they put her, howling, on her
     joyous mother’s chest. Jill tied the cord, and Tricia removed the clamps.
    The rest - checking the placenta, administering Ergotrate to
     contract the uterus - took just a minute. The whole birth had taken fourteen
     minutes.
    A welcome respite for Jill from her brooding. She even
     smiled for David as they left the delivery area.
    “Let’s see how Jenna’s doing,” he said, scrubbing out.
    When they left he had his arm around her. Had seen her gloom
     in the cafeteria, and in the elevator kissed her, lovingly and fully.
    On the surgery floor, they made their way to neurosurgery
     and Jenna Walsh’s ICU room - and a surprise.
    She lay, eyes closed, on pillows with her bed slanted up and
     her head swathed in bandages. A blue sheet and blanket covered her up to her
     chin. Wires protruded from under her blanket to a beeping monitor. Her IV pole
     by the monitor hung its tubing down to a vein on the back of her hand.
    And seated sprawled across the bottom of the bed was a woman
     with her face in her arms. She was crying softly. A man was seated next to her,
     his head down, his arm across the woman’s back.
    The man looked up as they entered. Blinked at their scrubs,
     and blinked again as they approached. His bloodshot eyes saw their OB/GYN
     nametags.
    David and Jill introduced themselves.
    “Oh,” said the man. “We’re Paul and Susan Sutter. The…baby’s
     parents. Jenna was our surrogate.”
    Susan Sutter was frail-looking with short, pale blond hair.
     Her eyes were raw and her face was strained, but she struggled for composure.
     Apologized, even, for crying, and thanked them for their efforts. Her hand
     gripped her soggy tissue.
    “Jenna’s not doing well,” Paul Sutter said, glancing back at
     the pretty, comatose face on the pillows. “The surgeon was in a while ago. He
     said there’d been damage to her brain. Hopefully only temporary.”
    “Hopefully,” David said softly, peering at Jenna. “No
     ventilator, she’s breathing on her own...”
    “Is that a good sign?” Susan Sutter asked.
    David