The Runaway Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  A searchlight is pointed at Wade, Peter Dolman, Big Chris, Earl Prentiss and the mayor of the township, Nell Ambroy, as they climb into a bucking red rubber rescue boat with a gas motor on the back. John from New Day and Austin Aubrey hold the rope and I watch them struggle with the uncontrolled watercraft.

  What courage it takes to jump into a flimsy Zodiac and face waves ten feet high, I think. It’s not some macho thing; it’s true guts.

  Red . . . blue . . . red . . . blue, a strobe-light effect. “It’s too rough over here to fly a helicopter,” Jed yells into his cell phone. “Don’t even try. You could send the forty-seven-foot boat, but that would take two or three hours and we can’t wait. I’ll call you back if our rescue operation is successful. If we aren’t, you’ll be searching for bodies in the morning.”

  When Jed sticks his cell back in his pocket, I ask him what’s happening out on the water. “It’s a sailboat tipped on its side, bobbing around out there like a cork in a washer. Serena saw the fore lights when she was closing the Roadhouse, so we know there are people on the vessel, but now the lights are off, so they must have lost power. You probably heard me talking to the Coast Guard. It’s too dangerous for a helicopter to make it with the weather like this, so we’re on our own.”

  He pauses to throw back his hood and glares at the breakers. “When the rescuers got close last time, they could see the boat has three masts and is tilted to the side, probably taking in water, but the waves keep dragging our dinghies back to shore, so they can’t get out far enough. Lake Erie has turned into a raging animal and this ice doesn’t help. Chris Erickson already slipped once and I almost fell. If they can’t get ropes on the sailboat and pull it in, it’ll go down and the passengers with it.”

  “So no one knows how many people are out there.”

  “There’s no way to tell. We have nine of our own in the two Zodiacs and who knows how many on the sailboat. I’ve tried to look with my binoculars, but with the snow, I can’t see a damn thing. We called out to them on a shortwave radio and a bullhorn but there’s no answer. It’s a hell of a night to be out on the water and I can’t even fathom why someone would try.”

  Five minutes later, when we enter the Roadhouse, I see that Serena is way ahead of us. The heater is cranked up and she’s back in the kitchen making coffee. She’s also got bread out for sandwiches.

  While Jed goes back to wait on the docks, I set up a triage area by pushing tables together for beds, laying out the blankets that he’s already brought in and organizing IV sets. Then I go out to bring in the orange lockbox of meds.

  The wind is so strong and cold, I have to crouch low and lean into it to get to the ambulance. If someone falls in the water, I know that their heart rate will plummet and within minutes they’ll lose muscle coordination and be unable to swim.

  At the last moment, I grab some gauze and Ace bandages just in case someone has some other injury. When I’m done setting up my makeshift ER, I call out to Serena. “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Spread mayo and mustard on every slice of bread. I’ll layer on the pastrami.” She puts some reggae music on the stereo and I’ve almost forgotten that we aren’t getting ready for a party when the door bursts open.

  Rescue

  Hypothermia!” Jed yells as he and John wheel in an ambulance stretcher with a body wrapped in an army blanket. “The men in the first Zodiac pulled the victim out of the water about twenty meters from the end of the dock,” John yells.

  They place the body on a table and run back outside. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, so I pull the blanket off the victim, expecting to see a stranger and discover it’s Charlene Nelson. Her face is white, blue around the lips, and her breathing is slow and shallow. “Jakey,” she mumbles. “Save Jakey!”

  “Get her clothes off,” Serena tells me. “Warm her trunk first then her hands and feet. You’d better start an IV. I’ll do the rest.”

  “Thanks. I know about hypothermia from the textbooks, but I’ve never actually seen a case of it.”

  With competent gentle hands, Serena peels off Charlene’s wet black jeans, black jacket and black knit cap. It takes me a few minutes, but after three shaky tries I find a good vein and insert an IV catheter in her forearm, then run in normal saline at 125 drops a minute.

  “Mama!” Charlene calls. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Mama.” The woman is clearly delirious. I quickly wrap her up again with the warm dry army blankets and then I get the patient’s vital signs. Her pulse is slow, forty beats per minute, and her temperature, taken under the arm with Jed’s thermometer, is thirty-five degrees Celsius. “Do you know how much that is in Fahrenheit?” I ask Serena.

  “I’m not sure, but it’s way too low.”

  “Can you bring some warm towels from the kitchen? Turn on the oven and put a stack on the door.” Within minutes Serena’s back with a pile of warm dish towels and a white mug of warm tea with sugar and a spoon. “That was fast,” I commend her.

  “I microwaved them,” she says with a grin. Quickly we layer the patient’s body with the warm towels then tuck the blankets back around her again.

  “Charlene. Can you hear me? It’s Sara Livingston. You’re safe now. We want you to sip a little tea.”

  I don’t get to serve tea. I leave that to Serena, because two minutes later the door bursts open again. It’s John, from New Day, wheeling in Mr. Aubrey on the ambulance cart. John’s face tells me something is very wrong.

  “What happened?”

  “He slipped on the icy dock helping the men tie up the Zodiac. Hit his head really hard on a metal dock cleat.”

  We get Austin on a table, wrap him up and then turn him on his side, so I can see the back of his head.

  He’s bleeding of course, but he’s also unconscious and this worries me more. Though he hasn’t gone for a dunk in the freezing waves, he’s wet just from freezing spray so again we go through the steps of undressing him, warming him and starting an IV. Luckily, the man has good veins and I get the needle in with one try.

  Once more the door blows opens, only this time it’s Jed by himself. “They’ve got lines on the sailboat and almost have it in,” he says, looking tired. John brings him tea, helps him get out of the wet rain gear and puts a blanket around his shoulders.

  “Want a sandwich?” offers Serena, setting up a buffet with the coffee.

  Jed waves her away with a quiet “No thanks.” You can tell he’s exhausted, but he still makes rounds on our patients. First he checks Aubrey’s pupils. They’re equal and reactive, which is a good thing. Temp 36. Pulse 60. Respirations 14. Blood pressure 94/50. He gently shakes him but the shepherd doesn’t respond.

  “How’s Charlene Nelson?” Jed asks me, and I take her temp again.

  “Temp’s up to 35.5.”

  “I’ve already called the emergency team in Windsor and they expect the storm to wear out in a few hours,” the nurse practitioner says. “I think both Charlene and Aubrey need to go to Regional. Can you call Aubrey’s wife, Serena? She might want to fly over with him. I don’t know who to call about Charlene.”

  “I’ve got that.” It’s Peter Dolman coming in the door with the men and Nell from the rescue boats. They’re all wet and cold and Nell Ambroy begins to pass out blankets, but there aren’t enough to go around so the strongest give them to those that are most worn out.

  Jake Nelson shuffles in with the others, wet and reeking of booze, but apparently unharmed. He pulls over a chair and sits next to Charlene, taking her hand. “Is she going to be alright, Doc?” he asks the nurse practitioner.

  “Yes, I think so. Thanks to Sara,” Jed says. Jake holds my eyes, glaring as if his sister’s having hypothermia was my fault.

  Peter Dolman is at the buffet getting coffee and looks over, then he approaches Jake. “Care to tell me what you were doing out on the water on a night like this?” he asks.

  “Hell if I know,” Jake growls. “I thought I could make it home to Sandusky. I g
uess I had too much to drink.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Dead in the Water

  “So I had to arrest Jake Nelson,” Dolman informs me when he drops in a few days after the boating accident. The sun has come out and the surface ice has melted, but there’s still snow in patches. Nature is like that, a raging beast one day and a kitten the next.

  “Took him in for reckless endangerment,” the cop goes on. “Driving a boat under the influence . . . and everything else I could think of. Someone could have been killed that night. We were lucky that more people weren’t hurt because of his stupidity.”

  “How’s Charlene?”

  “They stabilized her in Windsor and flew her back to a hospital in Detroit. Hope she has good health insurance. It will cost about $10,000 US for her hospitalization in Michigan.”

  “How about Aubrey? He worried me more.”

  “He’s weak but okay. Coming home on the late flight this afternoon. His wife, Elsa, called and asked if I could meet her at the airport in case she needs help getting him off the plane and into their vehicle. He’ll have to take it easy for a few months. Bad concussion.

  “It was a hell of a night . . . I took Jake into the cop shop, but we don’t have a jail on the island, so I handcuffed him to a chair and let him sleep it off. He’s home now too. His brother, William, bailed him out. I don’t think they’ll come back. The casino and hotel are dead in the water.”

  “Wait! Will you say that last part again?”

  “Which part?” he asks, sipping his coffee and smiling.

  “The Nelsons won’t be back and the casino and hotel are dead in the water!”

  “Well, Jake would have to face charges for operating a boat under the influence if he returns to Canada.”

  “Like that’s gonna stop his big plans for the development! A drunken escapade. His siblings will keep at it.”

  “Not just that. I showed Jake and William Charity’s charm bracelet and explained where it came from. With both of them lying ten years ago about not knowing her and with the bracelet as evidence that she was once in the cottage, I made sure they understood that I could have the cold case reopened and they would be my prime suspects. There’s no statute of limitation on rape in Canada.”

  “Is the evidence strong enough to convict them? Would Charity come back and testify?”

  Dolman smiles. “I didn’t say I had enough to convict them, not without Charity’s identification, just enough to reinvestigate and possibly arrest them for suspicion. The newspapers in Ontario, Michigan and Ohio would do the rest, pick up the story and drag the two of them through the mud for months. It would be a big scandal: PROMINENT DEVELOPERS ARRESTED FOR RAPE. They’d never be welcome on the island again and in the end their names would be ruined in the States too . . .

  “Helen and Eugene say Charity is doing so well in Montreal,” he adds. “They just came back from a visit. Charity is married with two kids. The assault was twelve years ago and it probably wouldn’t help her to relive that horrible night in front of a courtroom.”

  “So the Nelsons won’t try to get the permit to build the casino? You have it in writing?”

  He pulls his keys out of his pocket and holds them out. The thin silver chain is double looped through a Swiss Army key ring. “Nope. I have the bracelet.”

  Light through the Window

  Molly Lou and I are on our way to the country store when we see a small animal standing on a snowbank at the edge of road about halfway between her house and mine. I’m not a naturalist, but it looks like a gray fox to me. Gray body, red around the face with red ears; tail as long as the animal is long, with an orange fringe. Before we can roll down the window to get a better look, it darts into the trees.

  When we get to Burke’s Country Store, the parking lot is almost full and the building has been decorated for the holidays with blinking red-and-green Christmas lights.

  I check out the vehicles to see who I know. There’s Peter Dolman’s squad car and the Nature Conservancy van, Jed’s yellow Jeep, plus eight autos with a variety of license plates, none from West Virginia, thank goodness!

  “Funny there are so many cars and trucks here from Ohio, Michigan and Indiana,” I comment. “It’s almost like tourist season.”

  “They belong to the families who own cottages and come back for the holidays. Those Ontario plates are cottagers too, but they’re from the mainland. You’re coming to the Christmas Eve party at the Black Sheep Pub, aren’t you?”

  “I haven’t heard about it. Does everyone go?”

  “Yeah, pretty much everyone. I don’t know about the people from New Day. I guess they’d be welcome. We could ask them.”

  “I thought the pub was closed.”

  “It is until spring, but they open for events like this.”

  Inside, the store is as full as I’ve ever seen it, with cottagers and even a few migrant workers picking up special treats before they go back to Mexico.

  I wander the aisles with my shopping list but see Pete Dolman sitting at the counter and walk up behind him. “Want half a sandwich?” he asks, turning on his stool, and I sit down for the company and the free lunch.

  When Molly is done with her shopping, she wants to go home right away so Peter offers to drive me. (Neither the cop nor I mention the silver bracelet. It is our secret and apparently will remain so.)

  While I eat, Helen makes me a cup of coffee then sits down to show us the photos she took while visiting Charity in Montreal.

  “I’m so proud of her.” She holds out picture after picture on her cell phone of Charity and her husband and two little boys who are blond like their mother. “She left the island under terrible circumstances, but she’s thrived. She learned French, got her degree and works in a high school as a counselor. She could never have done that here.

  “The months after her assault were the darkest days of our lives. I didn’t know what to do, how to help her and then she tried to cut her wrists and had to be hospitalized for a year. I thought the sun would never shine again, but look, it does! Charity and the kids are coming to the island for Christmas!” She nods toward the windows at the front of the store, where patches of light stream in, reflecting the ice and the blue water beyond.

  The sun will shine again, I think. She’s right. No matter how dark the night, if we wait, the sun returns.

  I take a last sip of my coffee, thinking about Charity. Maybe if the Nelsons were arrested and convicted of rape, it would bring Charity and her family peace or maybe it would just rip open old wounds. Peter seems to think it’s better to be silent and let the healing continue.

  I shake my head, realizing I don’t know the answers. I barely know the questions.

  Give up on Fear

  Every morning, first thing, I look out the kitchen window and see the demolition equipment with KINGSVILLE DEMOLITION stenciled on the side. What did I think? The machines were just going to have a change of their mechanical hearts and slink away in the night?

  “Tiger,” I say to my cat who rubs his furry body against my ankles, waiting for his breakfast. “It’s already early December, the November deadline has come and gone and I still haven’t found a place to live. What are we going to do? I know this isn’t my home; it belongs to the Nature Conservancy or it probably will belong to them after the courts sort everything out. Peter feels sure the Nelsons aren’t going to build a casino, but that doesn’t mean they won’t tear down the house just out of spite, if they get the chance.” I glance out the window again. It’s raining cold tears.

  At a quarter to seven in the evening, Peter Dolman picks me up to go to the third township meeting. “Give up on fear,” the folksingers said, so I get in his car and prepare myself for another shouting match.

  I know why I hate such meetings. Since I was a child, I’ve never done well with conflict. The sounds of people arguing remind me of my parents’ fights when I was little. Posttraumatic stress, a therapist once told me.

  The minute we enter the pub,
I wish like anything I could duck out. This time every chair is full, but there is no easel with plans. I sit with Dolman and hope for the best. If the Nelsons give up the casino, there’s no point in argument.

  Mayor Ambroy calls us to order. No prayers tonight. This woman means business and I have the feeling she’s not in a very good mood.

  “The first thing I want to announce is that the Nelsons have backed out of the casino and hotel project. Those who opposed it, I hope you’re satisfied.”

  The room erupts with hot lava. “What?” “Why?” “Goddamn!” “Was it the gray fox?” “Was it the environmental audit?” Even people like Molly Lou, Chris and Terry look concerned. Now what?

  Ambroy pounds her gavel. “Settle down!” The room goes quiet. “I can’t tell you much more. I received an email this afternoon from Charlene. I’m sure they were concerned about the audit and the Nature Conservancy, but she said they also felt unwelcome. They’re giving up on the island, selling all their real estate here and taking their project somewhere else.” I look at Dolman, but there’s no smile, no sign that he isn’t as amazed as everyone else.

  The room explodes again and there are so many voices it’s hard to sort out who’s happy the casino has been scrapped and who’s disappointed. Then Kristie the waitress jumps up, almost spilling her coffee. “You mean we aren’t going to do anything? Just turn every opportunity for growth away?

  “What about young people like me? I work two jobs just to survive and even with that, I’ll never be able to buy my own place. I love this island and I want to stay here, maybe even have kids here someday. What about the other investor?” She’s almost crying and you can tell by the murmurs that the crowd sympathizes.

  “Can I speak?” It’s Bob Burroughs, the man from Toronto. “I wanted to do something to help the island, but I’m not one to push my way around. Apparently this is not the time to invest in a hotel and casino and I can take my money elsewhere.” There’s a low buzz in the crowd like someone hit a beehive with a stick.