One life to live

tihitina: [Screaming in pain] Oh, mom! I’m going to die without seeing you again.

midwife: Push! Be strong! Push a bit more!

tihitina: Oh, I am dying! Call my mom.

gashaw: [Angered] It’s the midwife you need now, not your mom.

tihitina: Oh, I can’t stand it any more! My God! Why won’t you take me to the hospital?

midwife: Are you afraid? Be brave, woman. Don’t forget that I have helped countless women safely deliver their babies.

gashaw: She’s just putting on a show!

midwife: Please, Gashaw! How can you say that while she is in labor?

gashaw: Well, that’s a fact. All of us respectable folks, haven’t we all been born at home?

tihitina: Oh, I can’t bear it any longer. If you don’t want to be sorry if I die—

midwife: It will soon be over, baby. Take a break, Gashaw! Will you please leave? Where is the butter? Let me massage her belly with it.

tihitina: Please! Smother me and put me out of my misery.

gashaw: Do you hear her malice? She knows how much I want to have a child, and yet she wants to die and deprive me of my baby!

midwife: Though we’re not supposed to say that God gets it wrong, wouldn’t it have been better if you men sometimes got pregnant so you could feel the pain?

gashaw: Lady, wouldn’t you rather do your work instead of comparing men and women?

midwife: Sorry, I’m just trying to entertain her.

gashaw: Me having labor pains and giving birth like a woman, is that something that would entertain her?

midwife: I’ve already told you, I was just joking.

gashaw: Look, you are an old woman. You should know what is to be joked about and what is not.

tihitina: Oh! Please help!

midwife: Courage, my dear. Keep on pushing.

tihitina: I can’t! Where can I get the strength?

midwife: These hands of mine have delivered so many babies. They are special. Take courage, my dear Tihitina.

tihitina: Oh dear! Ahh! [Screams]

midwife: This is the pain we had to endure to bring you into the world.

tihitina: I’d rather not have been born than suffer this pain.

midwife: Hold on, baby! Gashaw, shouldn’t we take your wife to a doctor?

gashaw: Have you been persuaded by what she’s said? She causes me lots of trouble.

midwife: By now the baby should have been on its way out, but it hasn’t moved.

gashaw: Maybe she was lying about her labor pains after all!

midwife: The labor pains have come. There were other signs as well.

gashaw: So what has happened to the baby?

midwife: That’s what I don’t know.

gashaw: Just ignore her. What has not been done for anyone else will not be done for her.

midwife: What if something terrible happens?

gashaw: Why do you want bad things to happen?

midwife: I am only expressing my concern about what could happen.

gashaw: I have never seen a woman as stubborn as she is. She’s so determined to go to the hospital that even if the baby came now she wouldn’t have it here.

midwife: That’s what I mean by you guys not knowing what it’s really like! Is she deliberately delaying the birth of the baby?

gashaw: She will, if she so chooses.

midwife: It’s not right for you to be so unfeeling.

gashaw: Am I not the one who lives with her? Also, if she has the baby in the hospital and it gets switched with another baby, would I not be the one raising someone else’s dirty toddler?

midwife: Why would it be switched? All the babies have numbers.

gashaw: What? Are they going to put a number on my baby, the baby of Gashaw Aschanaqi? It will never happen! She will never have our baby in a hospital.

midwife: All the townsfolk are having their babies in hospitals.

gashaw: That’s their business and not mine.

[Tihitina screaming in the background]

midwife: Oh, Gashaw! What has become of you? Take it easy, my dear Tihitina. You’ll soon be okay, honey. Gashaw, her body is getting cold.

gashaw: What a terrible misfortune!

midwife: Oh, I am losing her. Help! Help! I need someone now! Saint Mary, Mother of Light, please don’t fail me now!