Ascendance of a Bookworm

As dawn began to break, the first to leap up was Father, startled by Mother’s groans.

“Tulli, Myne, Mother’s going into labor. I’ll go fetch the midwife! You two, get dressed and be ready!”

“Okay, understood.”

While telling us to change clothes, Father quickly changed his own and rushed out to get the midwife. It seemed that the rest of the family had already divided roles, as Tulli swiftly changed and dashed toward the front door.

“I’ll go call Aunt Carla, Myne, you get changed and stay with Mother.”

“Okay!”

Caught up in the momentum, I nodded vigorously and changed, but standing beside Mother as she struggled with contractions, I wondered—what could I possibly do? My panicked mind was blank.

“Uh, um…”

“Myne, please bring me some water.”

Mother, struggling for breath, asked for water, and I hurried toward the kitchen.

“Got it.”

As Mother wished, I filled a cup from the water jug in the kitchen and brought it to her. Between contractions, she nodded and drank. Seeing Mother’s forehead glistening with large beads of sweat, I prepared a cloth—and suddenly realized:

…Cleanliness! Disinfection! Absolutely necessary!

Our house was cleaner than outside. Mother and Tulli, who thought I was a neat freak because I cleaned thoroughly, also kept things tidy, and handwashing was quite habitual.

But the midwife and neighborhood ladies coming to help were not so careful.

“W-what do I do?!”

At the very least, they needed to wash their hands and disinfect them with alcohol, but we didn’t have any disinfectant alcohol at home.

“Alcohol for disinfecting… um, uh…”

If we had vodka or something similar, that would be perfect for disinfection, but we didn’t. The alcohol used for Rumtopf likely had a high alcohol content, but probably too many impurities to use for disinfection. If only I had returned earlier from the temple, I could have asked Benno to find some high-proof distilled liquor.

“…But it’s better than doing nothing, right?”

The impurities in the liquor were less worrying than the lack of cleanliness around. I searched for alcohol and a clean cloth to prepare for disinfection.

“I’m back. I’m going to fetch some water.”

Tulli returned briefly, grabbed a bucket, and headed out again. At about the same time, Aunt Carla arrived, gathering several neighborhood women. The women, each holding buckets, drew large amounts of water from the well and began heating pots of water.

I caught hold of Tulli, who was about to leave again to carry water.

“Tulli, make sure everyone’s hands are completely clean, sterilize the tools by boiling, and then…”

“Yeah, yeah. Cleanliness, got it, got it. Okay, Myne, stay with Mother.”

Useless when it came to manual labor, Tulli pushed me back into the bedroom.

I approached Mother, who was breathing heavily and groaning in pain, and took her hand. When the contractions hit, she gripped my hand tightly as if to break my bones.

“Mother, during childbirth, it’s ‘hiss-hiss-hoo.’ They say the Lamaze method is good.”

“What’s that?”

Between the pains, Mother gave a faint smile.

“Uh, I think it’s a breathing technique to ease the pain. Sorry, I don’t remember clearly.”

Back when I was Reno, I had no plans to get pregnant or give birth, and there were no pregnant women around me, so I didn’t have much knowledge in this area. I knew the Lamaze method was mentioned, but not why or how it helped, so I couldn’t explain.

“Hiss-hiss-hoo, huh?”

Mother chuckled softly, and the two of us passed the time between contractions, breathing together. Then the midwife and the neighborhood ladies entered the bedroom.

Seeing them, I gasped loudly and spread my arms in front of the bed, trying to keep them from getting too close to Mother.

“First, wash your hands and make them clean!”

“Ah, Myne is a pathological neat freak, isn’t she?”

Aunt Carla said with exasperation and told the other women to wash their hands. Afterwards, I had them wipe their hands with a cloth soaked in alcohol. That should make it a bit better.