Obstetrix(21)

“Did you ever read The Hiding Place?” I asked, more because I thought the answer was yes than because I’d particularly loved the book. That was a memoir by a Dutch woman and Evangelical Christian who’d hidden Jews during the Holocaust.

I saw the spark of recognition in her eyes. “I loved that book.”

“I read it years ago,” I said. “I remember it was really good.” I had read it in high school and I remembered liking it at the time, but I hadn’t revisited it in part because I was pretty sure it would not have aged well. I’d reread it now, if I could.

There was a knock at the door—another young mother shepherding in several children. I wondered what they’d do if I announced that someone had cancer, decided I’d save that tactic for another day, and turned to smile at the mother.

Sarah was right about the deprivation making text feel precious, I thought that night as I read the ingredients on my toothpaste tube while brushing my teeth. As a child, I’d read the nutrition facts on the cereal box in the morning while eating. I would read an entire library of cereal boxes now, if I could. I’d read drug package inserts, if I had any. I’d read a licensing agreement for a phone app. A Bible consisting only of the listings of “begats.” It felt almost like a hunger. There was steam on the mirror when I took my shower before bed: I wrote courage in the steam, and looked at the word for a long time.

That night in bed, instead of The Onyx Dagger, I thought about Corrie ten Boom and The Hiding Place. She’d been caught, eventually—the Jews she’d sheltered successfully hid and remained safe, but Corrie spent months in prison and was then sent to a concentration camp. In prison, she’d struggled with boredom to the point of treasuring visits from ants, which she’d observed with close interest. Eventually someone slipped her a Bible, and she talked about how now she had the word of God with her and—not to question Corrie’s framing or anything, but while reading her memoir as a teen, I absolutely assumed that part of her joy in that moment was just about having something to read.

Corrie had spent her time in the concentration camp forgiving and periodically ministering to the Nazis who imprisoned her. I tried to imagine spending my time here spreading understanding of the scientific method to the children. Let me tell you the good news about evolution and natural selection. That would sure be playing the long game. I closed my eyes and imagined myself instead in the vine-covered treehouse where Deirdre brought Isabelle for sanctuary after rescuing her. Where are we? Isabelle had asked. This is beautiful, can we stay here forever?

We can’t stay here forever because danger will follow us, Deirdre had said, stroking Isabelle’s hair. We can stay here a moment, though. Let us treasure the joys of this moment.



* * *



I WOKE UP HOT and sweaty. There was something deeply unfair about the fact that I was still having hot flashes while kidnapped. I shoved my blankets off, put my shoes on, and went outside the cabin just to cool down.

My exterior light clicked on. It was snowing: I looked up at the flakes spinning down, glittering bright in the light. I couldn’t tell what time it was, just that it was still very much night.

Some young man—not Brother Ethan tonight, someone else—came right over to check on me. “Do you need anything?” he asked.

“Just to cool off,” I said. “I’m having a hot flash.”

“Oh,” he said, and backed away like it might be contagious. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

I stifled a snort. I should start coming out every night, every time I woke up to pee, and tell them all it was hot flashes. Eventually, “Dr. Liz comes out at night due to hot flashes” would become the sort of thing they just accepted, and they’d stop checking on me. I could walk right out and they wouldn’t notice.

The heat was fading, replaced with a chill. I went back inside, kicked off my shoes again, and got a drink of water. My pajamas were damp from my sweat, so I dug through the drawers looking for something to change into. They hadn’t given me extra pajamas, so I put on some of the scrubs and went back to bed. I found myself fuming, thinking about the lack of extra pajamas. If I knew where Sarah slept, I could go bang on her door and tell her I needed something dry to sleep in. Well, or I could tell the patrolling young man with a gun that I needed fresh pajamas—he’d be mortified, too, which made it almost ideal. Getting back up felt like a lot of effort, though.

When I woke up properly, there’d been some real snow accumulation. Someone had put a plow attachment on this little rugged golf cart thing and was clearing the walkway from the houses up to the meeting house, although I could see trails people had made wading through the knee-deep snow ahead of the plow. I made my way up to the building.

“I need more than one pair of pajamas,” I said to Sarah by way of greeting. “I have hot flashes at night and I need to be able to change.”

She looked taken aback. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll let Sister Kate know. Are you on any medication for it? Because we can—”

“I’m not on any medication for it,” I growled. “I just need to be able to put on fresh pajamas if I sweat through the first pair at night. Fresh sheets, too.”

“I’ll put down that you should get air-conditioning, come summer,” she said kindly, and I only barely managed to hide my full-body flinch at the idea that I might still be here in June.