“Don’t Touch Them Yet”

“What is that? There are larvae inside the wound!”

The young doctor stepped backward so quickly that his stool rolled into the wall.

I remember the fluorescent lights above me. I remember somebody cutting away the muddy leg of my jeans. I remember a nurse covering her mouth.

Mostly, I remember both hands going to my stomach.

“My baby?”

Nobody answered me.

Another doctor reached for the tray beside my bed.

Then a gray-haired surgeon walked into the treatment bay and caught his wrist.

“Don’t touch them yet.”

The younger doctor stared at him.

“Dr. Whitaker, they’re inside her leg.”

“I can see that.”

Dr. James Whitaker leaned over me without touching the wound.

His expression changed.

“Look again.”

The room became quiet.

He examined the edges of the injury, then the improvised bandage the rescue crew had cut open.

“Most of them are concentrated over the damaged tissue.”

He looked at me.

“Who wrapped this?”

I tried to answer, but my mouth was so dry that nothing came out.

He bent closer.

“Did you deliberately do this to your own wound?”

I managed four words.

“I’m a paramedic.”

Then the ceiling disappeared.

Five days earlier, I had been driving toward Cypress Hollow with an old medical bag on the passenger seat and sixteen years of silence waiting at the other end of the road.

My name is Sarah Bennett. I was thirty-six years old and seven months pregnant.

And I was going home to see my mother.

Sixteen Years Earlier

The last thing I had said to Margaret Bennett when I was twenty years old was something I spent the next sixteen years wishing I could take back.

I had just accepted a job that would eventually lead me into emergency medical work. My mother hated the idea.

Not disliked it.

Hated it.

She stood beside our kitchen table with both palms flat against the wood.

“You keep choosing jobs where somebody has to call me and tell me whether you made it home.”

“It’s my life.”

“You think that makes me stop being your mother?”

I grabbed my duffel bag.

She followed me onto the porch.

“Sarah, if you walk out angry, don’t expect me to pretend this conversation never happened.”

I turned around.

I was twenty. Angry people at twenty can be very certain.

“As far as you’re concerned, from today on, I’m already dead.”

My mother stopped on the porch steps.

She didn’t answer.

I got into my car.

For years afterward, that silence was the part I remembered most.

Neither of us called.

Birthdays passed. Christmases passed. I changed jobs, moved twice, became a paramedic, got married, divorced, and eventually learned I was pregnant.

I sometimes looked up my mother’s number.

I never pressed Call.

Then Mrs. Collins phoned me.

She had lived two houses down from my mother for as long as I could remember.

“Sarah, your mother had a stroke.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed.

“When?”

“Last week. She’s home now. Her right arm isn’t working well.”

I closed my eyes.

“Is she—”

“She’s alive.”

Mrs. Collins waited.

Then she said quietly:

“She asks about you every day.”

I was in my truck twenty minutes later.

Before pulling away, I put my hand on my stomach.

My daughter kicked beneath my palm.

“Okay, Grace.”

I had already been calling her that privately.

“We’re going to meet your grandmother.”

I didn’t know whether Margaret would hug me.

I didn’t even know whether she’d let me through the front door.

I only knew I was finally going.

About an hour outside Cypress Hollow, I found the road blocked.

Several days of heavy rain had softened the ground, and a large tree had come down across both lanes.

I stopped behind it.

There was no easy way around.

Then I noticed tire tracks disappearing down an old service road.

I should have turned around.

Instead, I followed them.

That decision cost me five days.

The Truck Stopped Moving

The service road narrowed until the trees nearly touched both sides of my truck.

Then the ground disappeared beneath my right tires.

The truck slid sideways.

I hit the brake.

Nothing.

Mud sprayed against the windows as the vehicle dropped off the road and sank nose-first into marshy ground.

My seat belt locked across my chest.

For several seconds, I just sat there.

Then I touched my stomach.

“Come on, baby.”

A kick.

I breathed again.

The driver’s door wouldn’t open.

I crawled across the console and forced the passenger door outward.

When I climbed through, my foot slipped.

Something tore into my right thigh.

I screamed and dropped against the side of the truck.

A jagged piece of rusted metal was sticking out near the damaged door frame.

My jeans darkened immediately.

Training took over.

Pressure.

Assess.

Control bleeding.

Don’t panic.

I pulled my medical bag from the passenger seat and worked on myself as if I were treating somebody else.

The cut was deep.

Too deep.

I cleaned it as well as I could with what I had and wrapped it tightly.

Then I reached for my phone.

No signal.

I held it above my head.

Nothing.

I climbed onto the truck.

Nothing.

The road was barely visible through the trees.

I shouted until my throat hurt.

Nobody answered.

That first night, I slept sitting against the passenger door with my hand resting on my stomach.

The next morning, my leg hurt worse.

By afternoon, I was running a fever.

I rationed the bottles of water I had brought for the drive.

There were three.

I had two granola bars and half a bag of crackers.

I ate almost nothing.

On the second night, rain struck the roof hard enough to wake me.

I put an empty bottle outside to collect water.

By the third morning, I knew the wound was getting worse.

I unwrapped it.

The smell told me before my eyes did.

Some of the tissue around the deepest part had changed color.

I cleaned what I could.

My hands shook.

Then my daughter moved.

Not the strong rolling kick I had grown used to.

Just a small movement.

I pressed both hands against my stomach.

“Hey.”

Nothing.

“Grace.”

A faint push answered me.

I leaned my head against the seat.

Years earlier, after a major storm, I had worked alongside a medical team treating wounds that had gone days without proper care.

One physician had explained maggot debridement therapy to me.

Sterile larvae, produced specifically for medical use, could sometimes be used under controlled conditions to remove dead tissue.

What I had in a Louisiana swamp was nothing like that.

No sterile environment.

No laboratory-raised larvae.

No physician.

No monitoring.

I knew exactly how dangerous improvising could be.

I also knew I was getting sicker.

What I did next was not something I would ever tell another person to copy.

It was a desperate decision made by a trained paramedic who believed she might not survive long enough for anybody to find her.

I used what I knew, what little equipment remained in my bag, and the cleanest dressing I could manage.

Then I covered the wound again.

Afterward, I refused to look at it.

I sat inside the truck with my hand on my stomach.

“Just a little longer.”

I listened for engines.

Nothing.

“Someone has to be looking for us.”

I was right.

I just didn’t know the person refusing to give up on me was my mother.

“My Daughter Said She Was Coming”

I learned this part later from Mrs. Collins.

Mom had asked what time I was supposed to arrive.

When Mrs. Collins told her, Margaret apparently stared at the clock for nearly an hour.

Then she said:

“Call her.”