I got a phone call this morning from a girlfriend of mine in Kenya, she could not go to the cemetery she said, so she had to come to the hospital to console the mother.

What are you talking about, slightly irritated, it was early morning and the sun is not shining much in this part of the world. I am cold in this bed.

Her baby died, she says, I came to see her and be with her because she could not go to the Lang'ata Cemetery to bury her child, and everyone else went there and left her alone. That is what is done, they have to bury the babies immediately.

I wonder where they got the priest, and how the baby's cold body was transmitted there.  I find myself thinking of Gazan babies. I remember a news story that the Lang'ata Cemetery was full up, and bodies were being compiled into graves already held. I contemplate entangled limbs on Judgement Day, sinners and saints.

She, the mother, had gone to Doctors' Plaza, to see some kind of specialist about her baby, a routine checkup the sort of thing a responsible parent does, forking out close to more than she could afford, part of next month's rent, her baby had to have the best.

There was a heart beat, it was faint, very faint, and where was she booked to have her delivery? She had to have her baby now, they said, it was not yet due but she had to have it, to save the little one's life. That was the specialist's advice.

She was booked to go to Kenyatta National Hospital, it is a good hospital she thinks, one of the best, and her delivery doctor is there. She makes her way, her brother driving the borrowed car as fast as he can, there's a new baby to be born, joy to the world. They are anxious that its father should not miss the birth, they call him, he is at the bank working hard to take some days off to be with his wife when she gives birth in three weeks. He is one of the new fathers.

He gets to the hospital and rushes around, mobile phone in his ringing ears, frantic, hoping to be there on time, worried. I find myself concerned about whether or not there are no-mobile-phone-allowed signs in Kenyan hospitals, are there any, in any hospitals around the world? I have not been in many, I do not know. She is talking on the other end of the international line.

He finds her, her head in her hands, crying. Her brother asks him if he has the receipts, the nurses are arguing with a man in a white coat and shiny brown shoes. Why are you crying, he wipes a tear, do you have the receipts, someone is asking in his ear. Eh, what receipts he asks the back of his brother-in-law running off into the corridor.

A nurse offers that the doctor has refused to operate on his wife without the receipts, she has to prove that she was booked to have her baby here, that she has paid good money, the other part of the month's rent.  They will not take her in they say without the doctor's blessing. He is unmoved by their begging, is the doctor. He says the system would crumble if they had to think with their hearts. The shiny leather shoes walk into the distance, followed by the enraged father's running shoes.

He starts speaking in his language, she is going to die, I can see it, and my baby, you must do something. He mutters something about the Hippocratic Oath. The nurses call out to them, there are orderlies about now, separating them.

Two hours later, the nurses realise the faint heartbeat has got so faint it is not there anymore. The baby is soon born, without the receipts, but dead to the sorrow in the room. In spite of everything, it was still born. The doctor refuses to operate on the bleeding mother, there are more urgent cases.

The father is sitting in the corner of the room, unable to face his wife when her brother rushes into the hospital with the receipts in his hand.