“We’ll be done?” she asked. “These babies that no one expects? Sometimes they last about ninety years! After labor and delivery, there’s stuff to do! Children to raise!”
“Yeah,” he said, tiredly. Focused on the road he whirled the SUV around the tight turns, gunned the engine when the road was straight. But the straightaways were short, always followed by more tight turns. Most of the time the speedometer read about twenty miles per hour. He used not only his headlights, but the lights mounted on his roof. It was a long, silent spell before he said, “I’ll take care of what they need. After the baby’s here, when she’s up to it, there’s a sister she can go to in Nevada.”
“Why’s this all so secret?” Mel asked. She looked at his profile and saw him grin largely. He had a slight bump in his nose. Under the bill of his ball cap his eyes crinkled when he smiled like that, and she noted that while he was rugged and scruffy, he was not unattractive.
“Jesus, you’re something, you know that? Just go with it, little girl.”
“How’d you know where I live?” she asked him.
He laughed. “I hope you don’t think you’re hiding out there, miss. Because everyone knows where the new midwife lives.”
“Oh, great,” she said under her breath. “That’s just great.”
“It’ll be okay. Nobody wants you hurt or anything. That would just bring a whole heap of trouble on a whole lot of people.” He stole a glance at her. “Someone like you goes missing, three counties go tearing up the hills. That’s bad for business.”
“Well,” she said softly. “I guess I should be honored.” She looked over at him. “Why am I not feeling so honored yet?”
He shrugged. “I guess this is all new to you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Boy howdy.”
They rode silently for a while, twisting around the mountain roads, up and over, down and around. “How’d you get yourself into this mess?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Just one of those things. Let’s not talk about this anymore.”
“She better be okay,” Mel said.
“That’s what I’m thinking. Jesus, she better be okay.”
Mel thought again about all the help available in a big city—lots of people. Not the least of whom was law enforcement—real handy. Cops parked right inside the hospital all the time. Right now, it was just her. Before her, it had been just Doc. If a woman was having a baby out in the middle of nowhere and there was only one midwife in the area, what were the options?
Mel began to tremble. What if they were too late and something wasn’t right—what if things turned nasty?
She wasn’t sure how long they’d been on the road. Definitely over a half hour. Maybe forty-five minutes. The man took a left turn down a one-lane dirt road that seemed to stop at a dead end. He got out and pushed open what appeared to be a gate made entirely of bushes and they drove through, down a potholed, washboard road thickly enshrouded by big trees. At the end, the powerful lights on the roof of his SUV illuminated a small building and an even smaller trailer. There were lights on inside the trailer.
“This it is. She’s in there,” he said, pointing at the small trailer.
That’s when she knew, and was amazed that she hadn’t understood sooner. She—who was so cynical about the crusty side of big city medicine—was totally naive about the pretty mountains and what she had thought was benign small-town life. The house and trailer were buried beneath the trees, camouflaged by the tall pines, and right between the two was a generator. This was why everything was so secret, why there was a gun for protection—he was a grower. Further, this was the reason he’d hire someone to work for him who had felony warrants, the only kind that could get you sent straight to jail—because that’s who you could get to sit out in the woods and watch over a crop like this.
“Is she alone in there?” Mel asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Then I need your help. I’ll need you to get me some things.”
“I don’t want any part of—”
“You better just do as I say, if we’re going to salvage this situation,” she said, her voice sounding more authoritative than she felt inside. She rushed to the trailer, opened the door, stepped up and in. Five steps took her through a little galley and into what passed for a bedroom, a berth, upon which a young woman writhed beneath a sheet soiled with blood and fluids.
Mel put a knee on the bed, placed her bag beside her knee and opened it, dropped her jacket off her shoulders onto the floor behind her, and there was a transformation within her, taking her from scared and uncertain to driven and focused. Confident. “Easy does it,” she said gently. “Let’s have a look.” Over her shoulder she said, “I need a large, empty pan or bowl, some towels or blankets—soft as possible—for the baby. A pan of warm water for cleanup. Ah…” she said, lifting the sheet. “All right, sweetheart, you have to help me. Pant like this,” she instructed, demonstrating while she put on her gloves. “No pushing. More light!” she yelled over her shoulder.
The baby was crowning; another five minutes and Mel would have missed the whole thing. She heard the man moving around behind her and suddenly a saucepan appeared beside her bag. Then there were a couple of towels and an overhead light flicked on. Mel made a mental note to add a flashlight to the articles in her bag.
The woman grunted weakly and the baby’s head emerged. “Pant,” Mel instructed. “Do not push—we have a cord situation. Easy, easy…” She gently tugged on the ropey, purplish cord, pulling it from around the neck, freeing the baby. She hadn’t been in the trailer for five minutes, but it was the most critical few minutes of this infant’s life. She slipped a gloved finger into the birth canal and gently eased the baby toward her. Cries filled the room before the baby was completely born; the strong, healthy cries of a newborn. Her heart lifted in relief; this was a strong baby. Suction was not even necessary.
“You have a son,” she said softly. “He looks beautiful.” She looked over the raised knees of her patient and saw a young woman of perhaps twenty-five years at most, her long, dark hair damp from perspiration, her black eyes tired but glowing, and a very small smile on her lips. Mel clamped and cut the cord, wrapped the baby and made her way around the narrow space to the woman’s head. “Let’s put this baby on the breast,” she said softly. “Then I can deal with the placenta.” The woman reached for her baby. Mel noticed that sitting beside her on the bed was a large basket, ready to receive the baby. “This is not your first,” Mel said.
She shook her head and a large tear spilled down her cheek as she took her son. “Third,” she said in a whisper. “I don’t have the other ones.”
Mel brushed the damp hair back from her brow. “Have you been out here alone?”
“Just the last month or so. I was here with someone, and he left.”
“Left you, out in the woods in a trailer, in advanced pregnancy?” Mel asked softly, running a finger over the baby’s perfect head. “You must have been so scared. Come on,” she said, giving the woman’s T-shirt a tug. “Let the baby nurse. It’ll make a lot of things feel better.” The infant rooted a little bit, then found the nipple and suckled.