The Runaway Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  “No.” I join in with false laughter. “I sold my car . . . The money has to last me awhile. I’m here writing a book. Can you put half in savings and half in the checking account?”

  “Sure. I just hope no one robs me on my way back to the airport. I’ll have to get Officer Dolman to guard me!” he continues, still snickering.

  I pull out the pack of bills and watch while Girard counts them and carefully places the bills in his case, along with the deposit slips and my forms. (I purposely didn’t bring my whole stash. It’s hard enough to explain the five thousand, let alone thirty-eight thousand.)

  “What kind of checks would you like to order?” Girard asks, handing me a brochure titled Personalized Checks. I’ve never had fancy checks before (Richard thought they were a waste) so, just to be contrary, I choose a pale blue design with white clouds and seagulls.

  The teller explains that it may be a few weeks, but he’ll mail the bank card and checks from the main branch in Leamington to the post office at the country store. “There’s just one more thing,” he says. “I need to make a copy of your driver’s license. We don’t have a Xerox machine, but I can use my cell to take a photo.”

  This was what I was afraid of.

  Test

  This is the big test. Will Girard look at the real Sara’s picture and challenge me? Will I pass? My heart is beating so hard, I fear he may hear it, but with shaking hands I pull out my wallet and hand him the stolen ID. Jessie’s photo and some change falls on the floor and I lean down to retrieve it. Oh, Jess! What would you think of your mother now?

  “What are you writing about?” Girard asks, while he lays the plastic card on the table and adjusts the image on his iPhone. I purposely drop some more change and kneel down to find it, keeping my face turned away.

  “A woman, abandoned on an island by her husband, in the 1800s. She survives alone for a year and then some French traders find her, but things go from bad to worse and she’s abused, almost a slave . . .” I go on and on, embroidering the story, hoping to draw his attention away from the real Sara’s picture.

  He picks up the Ohio driver’s license, squints at it and glances over. “And a passport? If you’re a US citizen a passport is usually required.”

  “You just said two forms of ID. Can’t you accept my driver’s license and social security card? I left my passport at the cottage.”

  Girard looks at the pile of money in his till. “I’d hate for you to have this cash sitting around at home. Give me your social security card. I’ll take it for now and you bring the passport the next time you come in. It’s only for your file, anyway.” He smiles, takes another photo with his cell and hands the cards back. “That’s one of the things that’s different with a credit union. You’re actually a member now and especially on a small island, our service is more personal. We’re always happy to serve you.”

  “Thanks a lot.” I stand, in a hurry to leave before he asks to see my photo again. Just then the door opens and Rainbow comes in.

  “Sara! I’m so glad I ran into you!” she says, giving me a big hug as if we’re long-lost friends. “I want you to come visit the farm someday or maybe I’ll visit you.”

  “Fine. Fine.” (I just want to get away before the teller realizes I’m not really who I say I am.) “See you later, Rainbow.” I take a deep breath and hurry outside.

  Halfway home, I stop in the road and look out at the lake. What will the credit union do with the copy of my driver’s license and social security card, anyway? It had never occurred to me. In the US when you open an account, the banks do the same thing, make a copy of your driver’s license. Does it just go in your file or is the license number and name run through an international database? Will it show up as stolen?

  I was feeling so happy that Girard didn’t say anything about the photo, but now I have a new worry. By tomorrow, will the Mounties be at my door?

  TUNDRA SWAN

  White with a long graceful neck

  Black beak and black legs

  Swans migrate over the Great Lakes from Florida to the Arctic

  Diet: Mostly vegetation on shore or underwater

  Voice: a kwooo, kwooo often mistaken for hounds in the distance!

  Size: 4 feet

  Wingspan: 5 feet 6 inches

  Magnificent!

  CHAPTER 13

  Intruder

  In the night, cozy and warm wrapped in the green-and-white quilt in front of the fire, I fall asleep and I dream again.

  With a flock of swans, I fly through the night sky, the cool wind against my face, my neck stretched out. Whoo-Woo. Whoo-Woo. Below, Seagull Island, like a black cloth against the gray water, looks like a seagull with its wings outstretched. Then I begin to fall. I whirl through the air, trying to right myself. Frantically, I flap my wings, but they won’t work. I flap and flap, but the earth rushes toward me and then with a thump, I land next to the dead man half-covered in sand. Whoo-woo. Whoo-woo call the swans in the distance.

  CRASH! A LOUD noise nearby shatters my sleep and I sit straight up, my eyes wide open in the dark room. The fire has gone out and the air is as cold as the dark waters of Lake Erie. I hold my breath, don’t move a muscle . . . just listen . . . There’s no sound but the waves.

  Slowly I throw back the quilt. Slowly I put my bare feet on the chilly floor. I strain my ears for footsteps and move silently toward Lloyd’s walking stick where it leans in the corner. I grab the stout oak pole and creep through the house to check that the doors are locked, and then I pad into the bathroom where I can peek out the window that looks out on the porch.

  For five minutes I stand there. There’s no movement, no footsteps, no shadow slinking away across the yard, and a chill ripples down my back. And what would I do if I saw someone? I have no phone, no way to call for help.

  Finally, still gripping the walking stick, I sit back on the sofa. What made the noise? An animal? A person? What was I thinking when I moved to this remote cottage on an island in Canada all by myself? Who do I think I am? Sacajawea? Some brave woman explorer? Not hardly.

  The fact is, I went from living with my parents to living with the nuns at the Little Sisters of the Cross Convent to living in a women’s dorm at the University of Michigan to living with Richard after we married. I have never been alone in my life.

  AT DAWN, I pull myself up, back stiff, wondering how I ended up on the sofa. Then I remember the crash in the night! This calls for an investigation, so I put on a kettle of water and dress for the cold.

  I leave by the deck door and, seeing nothing amiss, circle the house looking for footprints. I peek in the shed; nothing is out of order.

  Was the sound only part of the dream about the white angel swans and the dead body? I return to the cottage and find the kitchen door still locked. “Darn! I’ll have to go around back.”

  It’s when I’m cutting through the front porch that I notice the rusted bike. It’s tipped over and lies on its side. That was the crash in the night! I thought I was losing my mind, imagining phantoms or thieves, but what made the bicycle fall? The wind? An animal? A Peeping Tom trying to look in the window?

  Still puzzled, I return to the back deck to let myself in. That’s when I notice the blue and white saucer is empty again. The milk that I’ve been putting out is gone. Someone is visiting me, but he may not be human.

  Jessie

  All day it rains and the sound on the tin roof is driving me crazy. I think of Jessie when she was little. We were a happy family then, weren’t we? Richard’s infidelity didn’t start until three years ago. (That was the first I knew about it anyway.)

  Often I wonder how Jessie is doing on the other side of the globe in the outback of Australia. Is she immersing herself in the cultural experience, living with her fellow students and professors in an aboriginal village? Is she studying or is she just screwing around? Does she worry about me? Does she miss me?

  I think of writing or calling, but if she knew where I was, I fear Richard would f
ind me. (Knowing him, he’s probably already hired a private detective.)

  MY HEART BLEEDS for Jessie and to survive I place my fist over the ragged wound and hold the red in. I tighten my jaw. Jessie will survive without a mother, the same as I did. She didn’t seem to need me much the last few months! Someday I may reach out to her, but I won’t go home again, won’t go back to my old life. Not only did I steal all the money in our joint account and all of Richard’s private stash, there’s something else and it takes my breath away every time I think of it—Robyn.

  Over and over, I’ve run through the doula’s description of the patient’s sudden chest pain and difficulty breathing. The only medical diagnosis I can come up with that involves both chest pain and hemorrhage is an amniotic fluid embolism, a rare obstetrical complication that starts with the introduction of minute particles of amniotic fluid into the woman’s bloodstream and results in an immediate shutdown of the lungs, shock and then uncontrollable hemorrhage. It is so rare I’ve never seen it in over twenty years of practice.

  My own birth was wonderful and I understand how home-birth families think . . . With the C-section rate at 34 percent in the US, women who believe birth is a normal part of life feel safer out of the hospital and away from a surgeon’s knife.

  THE RAIN HAS stopped and the sun has come out, so I put on my parka and take the wooden steps to the upper deck. Robyn’s death is in the past. Clara Perry, nurse-midwife, has disappeared and she didn’t do anything wrong. I say that last part again. She didn’t do anything wrong.

  As I take a seat in the gazebo, something catches my eye. Soaring high overhead in the sunlight is a huge black bird with a white head, white tail and yellow bill. It circles three times, out over the last few ice caps, flapping its huge wings once or twice, then moves on.

  I have never seen one before, but I know instantly what it is. A bald eagle.

  BALD EAGLE

  The national bird of the United States

  Lives from Mexico to Alaska

  Dark with white head and tail

  Yellow talons, yellow beak

  Diet: Fish, mammals or waterfowl

  Voice: a harsh cackle, kleek-kik-ik-ik-ik

  Size: 31 inches

  Wingspan: 7–8 feet!

  Spring

  CHAPTER 14

  The Eagle Lands

  It’s March 30, by the Burke’s Country Store calendar, and I’m surprised when Rainbow bumps her truck into my driveway. (I’d hoped she’d forget about visiting me and trying to make friends.)

  She hops out of an old red-and-white Chevy and bounces up the steps to the porch with her long braid swinging. “Can I see your house? Sometimes I wish I had a little place of my own.” Gliding from room to room, she touches the books on the shelves and the wooden cupboards, the quilt on the sofa and the stone fireplace.

  “You really love seagulls!” She laughs when she sees the collection of gulls on the mantel.

  I smile. “They aren’t mine. The owners of the cottage collected them. The place is called Seagull Haven. It’s kind of a haven for me too.”

  “Hey, I brought some apple wine. Want to go out on your deck and drink a glass?” Though I’m not much of a drinker, it would be rude to refuse.

  Up in the gazebo we watch as a prop airplane circles the island getting ready to land and then another and another.

  “Is that the plane that comes in from mainland Canada three times a day?” I ask. “Molly Lou told me about it.”

  “No. You can set your clock by the Windsor flights,” Rainbow informs me, shading her eyes and looking up. “Eight, noon and five. The ones we can see are the planes coming in for the Ninety-Nines event this weekend.”

  “The Ninety-Nines?”

  “It’s an international organization of women pilots having a rally on Seagull. Nell Ambroy, the mayor, is really involved. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a pilot? To wing your way through the clouds? Did you fly over from the States in that little prop plane?”

  “I came by snowmobile. My boyfriend brought me.”

  “No way! Across the ice? I wouldn’t have the nerve.” (Ha, I think. You might if you were as desperate as I was.)

  She pours us each a glass of wine then holds the amber liquid up to the sun. “Apple wine is about all Seagull Island has going for it. Wine and the sheep and the bird count . . . but we love it here.”

  “Molly Lou told me the same thing. What’s up with the sheep anyway?” I ask. “I’ve seen pictures of them on several buildings and when I walked down to the credit union I counted thirty-five in a field. Are sheep like the island mascot or something?”

  “You don’t know about the sheep-shearing festival and the sheepdog trials?”

  “No.” I shrug.

  “They’re a big deal, bring in a lot of tourists and a lot of money. I’ve only been here a year, but when they have the events, all the B and Bs are full. Anyone with a spare room rents it out. The bars and restaurants are hopping. Gives people on the island enough cash to get through the winter. So what are you writing about?” Oh great! I should have known the conversation would get around to this.

  “It’s a novel about a woman abandoned on an island for years and how she survives. Finally she’s rescued by some French traders, but then she’s treated like a slave.”

  “Sounds interesting. So is that why you came here? To get the feel for island life?”

  I think that she’s joking, but I can’t be sure. “Yes, I thought it might help.”

  “Do you already have a publisher?”

  Now she’s making me nervous. Should I have a publisher? Do you get one before or after you write a book? I don’t even know a real author.

  “I don’t mean to be elusive but I don’t really like talking about my writing that much.” I evade the question. “I don’t have any particular training and I’m new to the whole business. I used to be a nurse.” This is only a half lie; I was a nurse-midwife.

  “So you quit your day job to be a novelist and retired on your parents’ fortune?” Rainbow teases me.

  “No, my parents both died in an auto accident when I was fourteen.” The truth just slips out.

  “That must have been awful.” Rainbow puts her warm hand over mine. “Did relatives raise you?”

  “No. My parents were both only children and I was an only child too.”

  “So adoption, an orphanage or foster care?”

  “No. I had a social worker and she got me a full scholarship to Little Sisters of the Cross Academy, a Catholic boarding school for girls. The nuns kept me until I was eighteen, then I used my parents’ life insurance money to put myself through college.”

  “I grew up on the West Coast in Seattle,” Rainbow shares. “Pretty conventional life with two parents and two brothers. Moved to Ohio when I went to graduate school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. That’s where I met Dian from New Day and she brought me to the island for a visit.

  “At first I thought the people on the commune were really out there trying to live off the grid. That’s one of the things we’re experimenting with at the farm—trying to find a level of technology that’s healthy. People are too connected. Know what I mean? They can’t get along without their cell phones or computers for an hour. They have to check their email and their Facebook accounts every few minutes. Have to tweet about everything and see if anyone’s tweeted them.”

  “I guess I can agree with that. I’ve been without Internet or cell service since I got here and I seem to be doing okay.”

  We sit staring at the sky in the west as the sun falls into the flaming clouds and the sky turns purple, then Rainbow stands up to leave. “Red sails at night, sailor’s delight. Red sails in the morning. Sailors take warning,” Rainbow says as she hugs me goodbye. “I want you to visit the farm soon. We’ve invited so many local people, but no one ever comes.”

  “I guess . . . Maybe someday. I’m pretty busy with my writing just now.”

  I wave from the porch as
she swings the red-and-white Chevy truck out of the drive, then I take the stairs back to the deck to watch the stars come out.

  When I return to the gazebo, three tall gray water birds stand in the shallows hunting for fish. They’re as still as stone. Then, one by one, they lift off the water, their great wings flapping slowly as they come down the beach. When they see me they turn and I follow them with my eyes as they round the point.

  GREAT BLUE HERON

  The largest heron in the Americas

  Nests in dead trees

  Feeds in shallow water for fish and small reptiles

  Range: Summers in the northern US and Canada;winters in the southern US

  Voice: Very deep hoarse trumpet sound: Franaahk!

  Size: 3 feet 6 inches to 4 feet

  Wingspan: 6 feet!

  CHAPTER 15

  Sentry

  Every night for two weeks I’ve put out my tempting milk and in the morning it’s gone, so this evening, eager to find out who’s drinking it, I decide to stay up and wait. First I lock all the doors and turn off the lights, and then I push a rocking chair up by the big front window. I’m determined to catch a glimpse of my night visitor even if I have to sit here till dawn.

  IN THE QUIET, the tick, tick, tick of the clock on the mantel sounds too loud, and around one I begin to nod off. What kind of lookout am I? Just then, a shadow moves on the breakwall and I freeze. Did I imagine it? No! Slowly the animal slinks down. The dull glow from the fire illuminates the deck and I can see by its tail that my visitor is indeed a cat and a very skinny one too.

  Silent as the stars, I watch the poor thing as it gobbles up the milk and lunchmeat, then licks its paws, then licks the bowl again. In the gloom I can’t be sure, but the animal looks orange with white stripes. What do you call that, a tiger cat?

  Weary of my perch at the window, I decide to try something daring. In my bare feet, I tiptoe over to the door, unlock it quietly and open it a crack, hoping maybe the warmth will tempt the kitty in, but it’s still very wary and, smooth as mist, it slinks away under the rocks.