Last week our pastor’s awesome pregnant wife Beatrice came down with malaria. This week, the day before she was to go back for some pre-natal screenings, I for some reason felt like I was supposed to go with her. So the next morning, our pastor, Beatrice, Angie, and I all headed to the hospital. Though I had heard stories from Angie’s visit the week before, I was not at all prepared for what I saw:
Hundreds patients, unable to pay anything, were camped out along the hospital walls or crammed into small rooms, waiting for someone to have mercy on them and actually provide medical attention. They would be there for days or weeks, some even months. For some, the only time they would make it through security to get into the hospital was when they where headed to the morgue.
It was horrible.
When we walked into the pre-natal care wing, Beatrice was automatically rushed to the front of the line, only because she had two white “Mzungus” with her. It was ridiculously unfair to the hundreds of other women who had been waiting ahead of us for who knows how long. After getting a medical history and vitals taken, Beatrice headed in for the intial exams. I was not at all expecting what happened next. Instead of coming out and then us heading out to pick up the rest of the team for a trip up to the prayer mountain, Beatrice came out with shock written all over her face.
“They can’t find a heartbeat”
My heart sank.
I stood there listening to how they had found a hard mass on her right side and didn’t think she was pregnant anymore. This couldn’t be happening… this family had already been through enough! A few months back part of the church building was destroyed by a storm and recently the pastor had faced loosing the church grounds or prison due to debt… and now here they were facing this.
Angie and I started praying over Beatrice as we headed to another part of the hospital for her to have another scan just to make sure. As we stood there waiting, I started thinking about the situation, and with my experience with my pregnant teenagers at the children’s home, started put two and two together. Beatrice had been having some severe leg pain, her stomach didn’t seem as big as it should have been for how far along she was, there wasn’t a heartbeat, and there was a small hard mass on her right side: Beatrice was still pregnant, the baby was just in a lateral postion… I was sure of it!
Suddenly an hour wait or the headache from the insurance company seemed just like heaven to me.
