15Five minutes later, he did as he’d promised. Pani Jola’s left arm lay heavily on Bella’s chest, pressing Bella’s shoulders down on the examining table. I threw myself across her thighs. Her body was rigid with her effort to hold still. When Jerzy made the first incision, her scream pierced my soul. The pain defeated Bella. We couldn’t stop her moving. And nothing stopped her terrible cries. Yet Jerzy operated successfully in spite of the noise and movement. Unbelievably calm and cool, he compensated for Bella’s writhing.
At twelve-fifty-five, he delivered Bella’s baby, a healthy girl weighing three-point-three kilos and vigorously demonstrating lungpower to match her mother’s. “Perfect in every way,” Jerzy said to Bella as he sewed her back together.
Perfection, I thought, when Pani Jo
