Fields of Home

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “Let’s wait a bit to break the water. Maybe Jacob will be back. I sent Hyrum to the field to get him.”

  “He probably went to the wrong field,” Camilla said.

  “He’s only nine,” Geraldine reminded her. “It may take a while, but he’ll find him.”

  Mercedes hurriedly finished smoothing out the plastic sheet on one side of the bed, covering it with a white cloth sheet for comfort. “Here. Roll over on this side, and let me finish.” She topped the sheets with several towels before letting Geraldine roll back to the middle. It was all they had available to soak up the impending fluids.

  “Ohhhh,” Geraldine groaned.

  The pains had returned, only a minute apart. “I think we need to break the sack,” Mercedes said.

  “Next contraction, then,” Geraldine panted. Breaking the water sack was easier and safer during a contraction when the bag usually bulged, especially when Mercedes wasn’t as experienced as she’d like to be.

  Mercedes felt a fleeting desire for the hospital and the constant monitoring that showed the baby’s heartbeat, but Geraldine wouldn’t make it five miles down the road, much less an hour’s travel. Besides, Mercedes knew Geraldine likely wouldn’t go even if she could make it. Giving birth for her had become as natural as for the cows in the field.

  “Let me know when you have the urge to push.” Once the baby was in the right position, the transition would come when Geraldine wouldn’t be able to hold back. “I hope Jacob hurries, or he’s going to miss this one.”

  “He’ll be here.” Geraldine lay back. Her face was drawn but flushed and pretty. Crow’s feet gathered around her eyes, and there were deep grooves at her mouth. She looked older than the forty-five she was, but her life was full and rewarding. Eleven children would keep her happy in her aging years.

  Mercedes wished she had a stethoscope to check the baby’s heartbeat. If only Jimmy had come when Brandon was still at the farm. He would have had his doctor’s bag, full of sterilized equipment and emergency supplies, and surely he’d assisted with at least a few deliveries before specializing in heart surgery.

  But even if she had a stethoscope, what would she do if she learned the baby was under stress? It wasn’t as if she could do anything to help the child. Anything but what she was doing now.

  Geraldine began another contraction, so Mercedes pierced the water bag with a curved quilting needle, hastily sterilized in alcohol. The needle did the trick and soon they were changing the towels. Then she propped pillows up behind Geraldine and made her stay on her back, half sitting, half lying.

  Another contraction, and Geraldine began keening a high-pitched cry. Mercedes reached around her to dig into her pressure points. “It’s not helping.” Geraldine pushed her hands away, and Mercedes knew it was almost time.

  “Go get your sister,” Mercedes ordered Camilla.

  “I need to push,” panted Geraldine.

  “I know.”

  Geraldine took a deep breath and pushed as she held it. The baby’s head began its descent.

  “Good one,” Mercedes said, checking the position of the baby. “Another one or two like that, and it’ll all be over.” She squirted olive oil onto the new glove she was wearing and began rubbing it in.

  The girls entered the room, followed by their father, who was out of breath and still in his dirty overalls. Only his hands looked clean.

  “Jacob!” Geraldine shut her eyes momentarily. “Thank you, God.”

  Jacob hurried to the bed where he sat next to his wife. “Is everything going well?”

  “Perfect.” Mercedes said. “Your child is almost here. During the next contraction, you’ll be able to see the top of the baby’s head. Maybe.”

  The next contraction came quickly, and Geraldine pushed with apparent great effort. “Not so fast,” Mercedes cautioned. Too fast often meant ripping tissues. Mercedes had stitched up a lot of animals but never a human.

  “I can’t stop,” grunted Geraldine.

  “Head’s coming.” Mercedes pushed gently against the top of the baby’s head so it would emerge more slowly. “There, the head’s out. Checking for a cord.” This part was much like with her animals. The plump, ropy cord was around the neck, but Mercedes deftly hooked it with her finger and pulled it over the baby’s head. “All clear. Push when you want. Or with the next contraction.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Grace squealed, bouncing on her feet by the bed. “It’s a baby. A real baby!”

  “Of course, it is,” Camilla said, laughing.

  Geraldine gave another push and the baby’s face turned upward as the torso slipped out and onto the bed, guided by Mercedes’ hands. “A girl,” she announced, wiping the baby’s face with a large square of gauze. “I need a—” Before she could finish, Camilla handed her a bulb syringe.

  “It’s boiled,” Camilla said. “We didn’t have a new one.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Mercedes cleaned out the baby’s nose and mouth. Still no breath. Her little face was quickly going from ashen to a bluish tinge. Mercedes’ chest tightened with the beginnings of panic. No! she thought. Please, no! She rubbed the baby’s chest, toes, held her upside down, all the while talking to her encouragingly. “Come on, sweetie, breathe. Come on. We’re all waiting. Take a breath. You can do it.”

  Nothing.

  “Why ain’t she breathing?” Jacob stared, terror frozen on his face. Everyone was staring at Mercedes anxiously.

  Geraldine gave a broken sob. “Help her. Please. Dear God, help her!”

  “She’s still getting some oxygen through the cord,” Mercedes said, though by the bluish tinge, she could tell it wasn’t much. The placenta must already be pulling away from the uterine wall. She had to act. The next few minutes would be critical.

  She tilted the baby’s head slightly. Not as far back as an adult, she reminded herself. Babies’ airways were small, and tilting too far back would only make it worse—that’s what they had told her with Lucy. The tongue didn’t seem to be in the way. What was wrong?

  “Is she dying?” Grace backed up against the wall, a hand across her mouth. “Momma? Will she be okay? Momma?”

  Geraldine didn’t answer, her anxious eyes fixed on her newborn.

  “They just take time, that’s all.” Camilla put her arms around her sister.

  “What do we do?” Jacob knelt beside Mercedes, his big callused hands trembling.

  Mercedes had no time to answer. She placed her mouth over the mouth and nose of the newborn. Was that the right way? She couldn’t remember for sure. She blew a tiny puff of air into the baby’s lungs, using just the air in her mouth. The chest filled. She lifted her head, allowing the baby to exhale on her own. But she didn’t take a new breath. Mercedes gave her another short puff of air. She felt desperate to do anything to prevent Geraldine from knowing the pain she herself had known all too intimately. The midwife would have had oxygen, but Mercedes had no such equipment. Though it wasn’t normally needed, today it might mean life.

  Still no breath.

  “We should call the ambulance,” she said.

  “I will.” Camilla ran from the room, dragging Grace with her, but Mercedes knew, as did Jacob and Geraldine, that the ambulance would arrive far too late.

  “Her heart?” asked Geraldine. Tears streamed down her face and her fingers grasped at one of her baby’s limp hands.

  The heart, that strong but amazingly fragile organ.

  Mercedes placed two fingers on the inside of the baby’s upper arm, checked the pulse at the brachial artery. One, two, three, four, five, she counted. No pulse. She would have to do chest compressions. This she was more familiar with, the memories rushing back to guide her actions. Two middle fingers on the baby’s chest, one-half inch compressions. Five times, then a breath. Repeat. Again.

  Come on, baby! Tears streamed down Mercedes’ face, falling onto the newborn’s velvety skin. Inside she was shaking and sobbing, but her hands on the baby were sure and deliberate. She
’d worked similarly on calves—rubbing them, talking to them, encouraging them to breathe. But this was far different. Where was the midwife? Shouldn’t she have arrived by now? Surely Mercedes had been doing this for hours. Should she tell the girls to get ice water? She’d heard sometimes it worked to put the baby in cold water for a few seconds when all else was lost. Should she try spanking her—a concept she’d always vehemently opposed? What was wrong with the child? Maybe she wasn’t merely a week or two early, though her size seemed about right. Possibly her lungs weren’t yet developed enough to work on their own. But why would her heart stop beating? Because of her breathing problems? Mercedes wished she knew more.

  “Please, Lord,” sobbed Geraldine. Jacob reached one hand out to his wife to comfort her, his own expression one of agonized disbelief.

  Mercedes checked the brachial artery again. This time there was a faint pulse. “Her heart is beating,” she said, leaning down to give the baby another puff of air. Three seconds and then another breath. Pulse still there, though faint. “Come on,” she murmured.

  The infant gave a little gasp and began to cry weakly. Immediately her color turned from blue ash to pink and then red as she balled her fists and began crying with more effort. Mercedes picked her up and held her snugly to her chest. “That’s it,” she said, her voice scarcely a whisper. “I knew you could do it.”

  “Thank God. Oh, thank you, God!” Geraldine wept tears of relief as her husband held her, his own face slick with tears.

  A part of Mercedes didn’t want to let the baby go, wanted to hold her and nurse her and see her grow up, to watch her running through the fields with the boys. But this was Geraldine’s baby, and Mercedes had long ago come to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t have another baby, much less a little girl to restore what had been lost. She had her boys, and that was enough. She no longer lived in the days when knowing she wouldn’t have another little girl had brought her nothing but despair.

  Brandon’s face shimmered in her mind. Was that how he felt? Despair at never having a child. If so, he wouldn’t give Darrel up.

  I wouldn’t if I were him.

  Trembling now for another reason altogether, Mercedes placed the infant in Geraldine’s waiting arms. Then she collapsed on the floor near the wall, grateful for the support against her back. She felt weak, as though she couldn’t possibly move ever again. The clock on the nightstand told her she’d been in the house less than twenty-seven minutes. So little time for such a big miracle. She let her head fall into her hands and sobbed silently in relief. Camilla and Grace had returned, and the family talked together softly, jubilantly, over the newborn.

  After a few minutes, Camilla said, “Uh, there’s a lot of blood. Too much, I think.”

  Camilla had been at other births and probably knew enough to judge, so Mercedes forced herself to check on Geraldine. “I think you’re hemorrhaging, but not a lot. Let’s get the placenta out. Try to nurse the baby, Geraldine. That will help.” Mercedes tugged the cord a bit to see if the placenta had torn free.

  “I feel a contraction,” Geraldine said.

  Mercedes continued to keep the cord taut as the placenta was delivered. But the blood didn’t stop as it should have. “Well, at least the ambulance is on its way.”

  “I told the ambulance we didn’t need them after all.” Camilla’s face was abruptly devoid of color.

  “It looks like more than it is, I think,” Mercedes reassured her. “A little blood goes a long way. Keep nursing, Geraldine. Jacob, massage her stomach here. You should feel the uterus shrinking. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to take you in to the hospital right away.” Mercedes tried not to think about the hour and five minutes it would take to arrive there.

  “I feel fine.” Geraldine stared down into her baby’s face with so much love that Mercedes had to look away. She knew that feeling, and it was so private and deep that it couldn’t be shared with anyone, not to any meaningful extent.

  The plump, gray-haired midwife finally arrived and took over before Mercedes could become too worried about Geraldine. She watched from the side as the midwife mixed an herbal tincture in juice for Geraldine to drink. Then she placed cloths soaked in ice water on her lower stomach. With Jacob’s help, she elevated the foot of the bed by shoving numerous pillows and blankets underneath the mattress. “Put pressure here,” she told Jacob, handing him several sanitary pads. “I’ll massage the pressure points on her feet. Camilla, go see if that tea you put on is ready. Shepherd’s purse has a lot of Vitamin K, which is good for this sort of thing.”

  The worrisome flow eased under the competent care of the midwife. Turning her attention to the baby, she checked every inch of the small body, pulling out a stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs before pronouncing her completely healthy.

  Mercedes knew her job was over and that the midwife would stay as long as she was needed. Less than two hours had passed since she’d left the boys at home. They would be finished reading now and in bed. Unless they’d convinced Wayne to read more.

  “I’d better get back home,” she said to Geraldine. “I’ll come check on you tomorrow. I’ll bring dinner.” She’d also spread the word among the neighbors so the family would have meals brought in for the next week.

  Geraldine grasped her hand. “Thank you, Mercedes. Without you . . .” She trailed off.

  “You’d do the same for me.” Mercedes smiled sadly. “You rest up, okay?”

  She started shaking again in the truck and had to sit there for a few minutes in the darkness before she could drive. So easily things could have gone wrong. Or could they? Nature had a way of continuing on, and in reality, this birth was easy compared to many. Compared to those of her own children, in fact. She had simply been in the right place at the right time to help her friend.

  Wayne met her at the front door. A quirk of the eyebrow showed he was interested in the outcome. “A girl,” she said to his unasked question. “She wasn’t breathing. I had to do CPR. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t known how. If I hadn’t learned with Lucy.”

  He held her then, and Mercedes drank in his warmness, the smell of the fields and the horse that clung to his clothing. But she didn’t let herself fall apart again. Better to let the numbness take over.

  “I think it was the shock, being born so fast. Or maybe there was something in her lungs.”

  “But she’s okay?”

  “Yes.” Mercedes made a face. “If Geraldine has any more, I’m going to urge her to rent a place in town near the hospital, just in case.”

  “Good idea. But maybe this is the last one.”

  “Probably.” Eleven children. Mercedes would have liked to have even half of that. A daughter to teach how to cook, another son in the fields.

  They went down the hall holding hands in silence. Mercedes stopped to check on the boys and found the younger ones already asleep in their shared room. But Darrel, who had his own room, was still awake reading a book with a flashlight that he clicked off when she came through the door.

  “Give it to me,” she said, stifling a smile. He reluctantly handed it over, and she placed it out of reach on his dresser. Unlike the younger boys, he’d put away the clothes he’d worn that day, and his belongings were neatly stored. There was an order here that was comfortable to her. This he’d gotten from her—or perhaps from Brandon. Wayne had a tendency to let his clothes lie where they dropped and to misplace his belongings. “You have to milk early tomorrow,” she reminded her son.

  “I know. What did she have, a girl or a boy?”

  “A girl. A pretty little girl.”

  “Like Lucy?”

  “Yes. Like Lucy.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek, her heart full enough of him that she didn’t feel any other longing. “Good night, honey.” She stood to go.

  “Momma, I liked your friend. He seemed pretty nice. Kind of like Uncle Austin.”

  What should she say to that? “I hoped you’d hate him” or “Good, because
he’s your father,” or “I hope we never see him again.” Or even, “Don’t trust him. He’s good at breaking hearts.” No, none of these were appropriate, and Mercedes, after seeing the miracle of birth and the fragile nature of life, couldn’t seem to continue the hatred she’d been feeding in her heart. She understood why Brandon wanted Darrel.

  “That’s good,” she said. At the door, Wayne was watching them. Mercedes held out her hand as she walked toward him.

  In their room down the hall, Mercedes sat on the bed with a soft sigh. Wayne helped her off with the sweater she’d thrown over her yellow dress, which she now saw was spattered with blood. A good soak in cold water would likely remove the stains if she did it tonight.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “He’s not going away. I know him.”

  Wayne sat next to her, his big hands resting on his knees. “The way I see it, we have two options. We can forbid him to see Darrel and be prepared to fight legally, which we could probably draw out for months or a year or more.”

  Mercedes had gone over that option in her mind, but each time she knew it would lead to a court battle. That didn’t seem the way to protect her son, especially because tests would show that Brandon had at least some claim on him. “Or?”

  “Or we let him get to know Darrel—and us in the process. We show him that leaving Darrel’s life intact now is a step toward building a future with him later.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll be willing to settle for that.” She spoke slowly, sluggishly, as her eyes wandered over the familiar room. The double dresser and huge mirror, the queen-sized bed that was barely big enough for them because of Wayne’s bulk, the chair she’d rocked her babies in, draped with Wayne’s pajamas from this morning. Above the chair, the three pictures of lilies that she’d bought on a trip to Nevada to visit Austin. And lastly, the small closet which held their few clothes. Simple things for simple folk. Likely Brandon would consider it impoverished.

  “What if this life isn’t good for Darrel?” She felt a pain in her chest similar to the one she’d felt when Geraldine’s baby had refused to breathe.