I spent Thursday night in Doro, South Sudan. The original plan was to spend another night in Loki, then fly down on the DC-3 Saturday morning. However, things changed, and the DC-3 planned to fly down Friday afternoon.
It made me happy to spend less time away from Breanna and the family, but it also meant I needed to get everything taken care of before late afternoon. After landing, I needed to run my Doro passengers’ passports over to the border. That required about an hour of driving over 15 miles of jolting road each way. A bad innertube foiled my first attempt by bike. So I changed to a car, but arrived back too late to meet my passengers before they left on their next flight.
I had another flight after lunch to a place called Kuron. As I returned back to Loki, threading my way through clouds, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text message from Breanna: “Went to the doctor. Not great news. Please come home as soon as you can.”
I still had enough time before starting my descent, so I sent a message to a friend who also lives on our compound, to please check on Breanna.
I landed back in Loki with just enough time to run home and pick up some items we were missing down in Nairobi. Then I hopped on the DC-3 after it landed.
That evening I took the passports to the passengers who had preceeded me to Nairobi. And I saw Breanna. Dr. Patel took her blood pressure at her appointment, and became alarmed at how high it was. He wanted to put her in the hospital immediately, but decided to wait after she met with the cardiologist.
He said if it didn’t come down by next week, he would admit her to the hospital and start plans to induce delivery very soon after. Breanna asked him if the baby would survive coming that early. He mumbled something about it not being very likely.
Breanna was crushed and felt very alone. When we talked it over, we knew we had some important decisions to make.
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