*We flew my "sister" Marta from the village to have surgery in Pucallpa. This was written that night while I stayed with her in the hospital.*

The public hospital in Pucallpa is by no means comfortable. It is hot - well over 90 degrees and humidity to match it. The women in the gynecology wing are stacked six to a room with about a foot and a half between each bed. There is no sense in who ends up in which bed. In fact, in our room there are two new moms next to two other women who are in the middle of miscarriages.

The building itself is cement block,absorbing the hot sun during the day and slowly releasing the heat even as the temperature outside drops a little in the evening. The floors are filthy despite the odor of bleach that permeates everything. The furniture is ancient rusted metal and the walls are in desperate need of a coat of paint.

All night the women toss and turn, more from the heat and noise than whatever ails them. They fan themselves with whatever is handy until their hands finally drop, and they manage to sleep for at least a few minutes until a nurse comes in to check on something, flipping the lights on in the process, or a baby cries. There are two in the room I am in. In fact, they are part of the reason for the stifling stillness of the air. There is a working overhead fan, but the nurse refuses to turn it on because, she explaines to me, moving air might make a baby sick. (I manage not to make a snide comment about the babies being more likely to die of suffocation in here first.)

The garish fluorescent light in the hall is finally flipped off at midnight, but the sounds continue on, a lot of babies crying and people chatting and laughing right outside the open windows. We would shut them, but the noise is much more bearable than the heat.

Often through the night, I think about how silly it is that I am here at all, but the reality is that Martha's baby needs 4 different doses of medicine during the night, and even if Martha had a watch, I don't think she would know how to use it. And of course, if she needs anything, be it toilet paper or a new bag of iv solution, someone has to go buy it and bring it to her.

So here I am, polka dotted with mosquito bites and dreaming about my air conditioned bedroom. But honestly, I am thankful for the chance to show Martha that I care, that I am involved, even if it is just by fanning her so she can sleep and changing her baby's diaper. It's like my teammate joked earlier today, "This is what I became a missionary for, right?" Well... yeah, I think so.