Changed by His Son's Smile by Robin Gianna

She kneeled next to him again, heart racing. Why was the woman still bleeding? It looked like he’d already tied off the big uterine veins and stitched the uterus itself.
    “What’s wrong, Chase?”
    He shook his head. “Uterus can’t seem to naturally clamp down and stop the flow. Check her pulse.”
    Dani pressed her fingers to the woman’s wrist and stared at her watch. “One-forty,” she said, dismayed. Clearly, the woman’s pulse was rocketing to compensate for her blood volume loss.
    He worked several more minutes in silence. “Damn it!” Fiercely intense, he turned to look at Dani. “Get me the garbage bag that’s in the motorcycle box and the sponges and gauze in there. Hurry.”
    She ran to grab what he asked for, wondering what he could possibly have planned but not about to ask with the situation so dire. As she hurried back into the hut she heard him barking orders and the few other women in the room ran off.
    Blood literally dripping from his hands and arms, he grimly took the garbage bag from Dani. He slipped his hands inside the bag and began to ease it into the woman’s belly cavity.
    “What in the world are you doing?” In her astonishment the question just burst from her lips.
    “Packing the belly. Like a big internal bandage. It’s her only chance. I’ll stuff it with the sponges and strips of cloth the women are getting. Tamp it down and apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Pray like hell.”
    He grabbed the sponges and gauze and stuffed them inside the garbage bag. Then he yanked off his own bloody shirt and rapidly tore it into small strips before stuffing them, too, into the bag. The women returned with cloth strips and he shoved them inside before pressing on it all with his hands.
    He kept the pressure on the woman’s belly for long minutes before lifting his gaze to Dani. With blood spattered across his face and naked torso, his eyes looked harshly intense. “Check her vitals again.”
    She quickly took the woman’s pulse, and her heart tripped. “One-fifteen. It’s working!”
    She doubted they’d get it down to a normal reading of seventy, but at least it was heading in the right direction.
    “Call Spud. Tell him to get a car here stat to take her to our hospital. We can’t transfuse there, but if we pump her with fluids, it should be enough.”
    She stepped outside the hut to call Spud, and when she returned she saw that Chase was stitching the woman’s belly closed with the filled garbage bag still inside.
    “So, you leave it in there until she clots well enough? Then take it out?” Dani had never seen such a thing. Never even heard of it. Amazement and awe swept through her at Chase’s incredible knowledge and skill.
    “Belly-packing is battlefield medicine.” He continued his steady, even stitches to completely close the incision except for the very top of the garbage bag, which was still exposed. The plastic extended outside the woman’s body as he stitched around it. “Eventually, we’ll be able to pull the sponges and cloth out piece by piece, then the empty bag, and hopefully not have to open her up again.”
    The woman started speaking again in barely a whisper. In spite of what she’d been through, she extended her arms towards the midwife. Holding her new, tiny son close to her breast, she kissed his head and managed a weak smile.
    Dani’s throat filled and tears stung her eyes. Chase had done this. He’d somehow, miraculously, saved this woman’s life. Her baby hadn’t lost his mother.
    Chase spoke to the women who’d fetched the strips of cloth, and they brought several pads and put them beneath the patient’s legs. Obviously, Chase was concerned about her going into shock before they got her to the hospital.
    The women brought some water and, silently, Chase stripped off his gloves and washed the blood off his chest and arms as best he could, with Dani following suit. Spud arrived with a nurse from the hospital, and they carried the woman and