Even longer, perhaps, than last night had seemed, Sarah found herself thinking as she waited for Al to return. If this snow didn't stop soon they'd all get cabin fever, although so far they hadn't started snapping at each other.
Which was something of a miracle, she thought. Mr. Jefferson must feel as if each individual nerve-end had been sand-papered. Constant pain, even the dull ache and tenderness that characterize appendicitis, does that to a person…
Al was back, then, the kettle was perched on the rocks to boil, and the pieces of birch bark they had used for plates were washed in the snow and stacked carefully atop a suitcase to be used again.
But not until Al, Andy or Mac McDavie got another rabbit or a ptarmigan, Sarah reminded herself. Or perhaps a fish. She tried not to think how hungry she still was, as of course the others also were. Poor Mr. Jefferson, who had gotten only a half cup of bouillon because she'd been afraid to let him have more, must be famished.
She rose. "How's the ice pack, Mr. Jefferson?"
"Well, it's not dripping yet." He handed it to her. "But it's getting kind of sloshy."
"I thought it must be," as she took the pack they had improvised out of Andy Stevanic's weatherproof jacket. There was a hot-water bottle but no ice pack in the kit Jenny had packed, so they had made one. They had to be careful with it, though, and change it often, or the water would leak through the folds. It had once this afternoon. But, awkward and inadequate as it was, it was helping to hold the inflammation in check, Sarah hoped. Anyhow, it was all she could do—the ice pack and frequent checks of temperature and pulse— and Al and Mac McDavie had brought ice this morning from a quiet cove they had found down along the river…
She was filling the "pack" again when Al came outside.
"How's he doing?"
She folded the jacket over the flattish chunk of ice. "His temperature and pulse stay the same." She let go the sigh she had been holding in. Out there, with only Al to hear, she could. "But I—don't know, Al."
"I know," understandingly.
Perhaps, she thought, but only partly. She had seen too much of the treachery of appendicitis. A fecalith, or maybe bacteria, choking the neck of the appendix, inflammation forming, slowly perhaps and sometimes receding after a few days. But sometimes it didn't and the picture her surgical nurse's knowledge sketched for her was not a pretty one.
She had seen ruptured appendices, she had seen patients die of the peritonitis that followed, sometimes even in spite of the miracle drugs. And they had been in hospitals, hospitals to which they had not gone until too late but nevertheless there had been facilities, surgeons. While George Jefferson—
Biting her lip, she said, "We'd better go back in, Al."
In the pale snow-darkness he nodded.
The warmth of the room caressed her. She smiled at Mr. Jefferson. "Here you are, Mr. Jefferson."
"Takes longer with help," he remarked with a twinkle.
Sarah felt the rush of color to her face and thought: For Heaven's sake! Sarah Bennett— She joined in the ripple of laughter.
They were trying hard, all of them, she thought. Especially Mr. Jefferson. And Jan-Doreen Stevanic, bless her… She smiled at the girl, who was sitting on Mrs. Emlyn's two Samsonite bags and looking perfectly miserable despite the vivacious young face.
"Pop the thermometer in his mouth, Sarah," Jan-Doreen suggested.
"I'll be damned if she does!" George Jefferson burst out in mock protest. "She's done that a dozen times today. What time is it anyhow? I'm run down."
Al Malcolm held his wrist to the firelight. "Five twenty-seven."
Somebody groaned—Mac McDavie, Sarah thought it was—and she didn't blame him. But at least the lean-to was corded nearly full of spruce and the fallen cotton-wood they'd found beyond the cabins toward the river and tonight's hush was better than the wind that had pummeled the tiny cabin until it had found many a way through the chinking…
She sat in the middle of one of the spruce-bough pallets—during the day they had made more, including another crude bed for Jan-Doreen—and almost before she knew it was nodding.
Without even thinking of the vole they'd seen skittering across the floor this afternoon she lay down, and when, sometime later, Mac McDavie said, "Coffee, Miss Bennett," and Mrs. Emlyn retorted softly, "Let the poor child sleep," their voices seemed to come from far away…
She didn't know what it was that had awakened her, nor what time it was. The gentle drone of voices was stilled. The fire was burning steadily, with Al on drowsy watch… She lay without moving, watching the flicker of light and shadow across his lean, craggy, unhandsome face. He wasn't even good-looking, she supposed—not as Ralph was.
But with Al Malcolm it didn't seem to matter. His eyes were warm and as blue as the Ohio sky on one of those days when it was heaven to drift in a boat on the Miami, under the bridge and past the town and into the country until smoke from the factory stacks were mere smudges on the horizon.
Jenny would call that romanticizing, she reminded herself, and perhaps it was. Foolish romanticizing. Al Malcolm was a reddish sandy-haired pilot who had been stationed at Eilsen while Paul was at Wright-Patterson and who, like Paul, had succumbed to Alaska's charm, and she was Sarah Bennett who had been in love with Ralph ever since he'd practically forced Dr. Cal to introduce them.
She didn't like remembering things like that. It had been at a hospital open house, when they had dedicated that new surgery wing.
As one of the surgical nurses, Sarah had been on the hostess committee, escorting visitors through one of the surgical suites—sterile, shining chrome and glass -and subdued green, and as yet uninitiated—when, all of a sudden, there was Ralph. Dr. R. Caldwell Porter. She knew him by sight and by reputation. One or the other of the nurses was always talking about him, or about one or another of the patients he had sent to Dr. Inverness.
And here he was, out of nowhere to attach himself to her group until they came upon Dr. Cal…
"Good evening, Dr. Brineson," Ralph greeted the hospital's chief of surgery.
"Good evening, Doctor. Looking us over, I see."
Ralph's smile had caressed her even then. "Looking over your staff, rather. Introduce me, why don't you, Brineson? Afraid I'll take her away?"
Remembering, Sarah wished she hadn't. A few months later she had left the hospital, and for what?
To do what any nurse's aide or probie student could have done…
The bitterness welled up in her, as it had been doing more and more often of late.
Across the room Al raised his head. Sarah closed her eyes. She didn't want to talk… not even to Al, she was thinking when he said, gently, "Do you want Sarah, Jan?"
"Ohhhhhh, yes—"
It was a whisper, tremulous and frightened, as, until now, Jan-Doreen Stevanic had not been.
Chapter 8
"I'm awake, Jan-Doreen," Sarah said and thought that it had been some movement or murmured moan of Mrs. Stevanic's that had awakened her.
She was beside the girl at once, one slender hand cool, reassuring against the tensed young cheek. Poor child, she was taut as a fiddle-string, and frightened half to death—
Jan-Doreen whimpered, "I—I think it's time."
Another pain must have gripped her again, the first spasms of it, for the swollen body went taut and even in the flickering firelight Sarah could see the fear in the girl's eyes. Automatically she checked the time.
Seventeen minutes till one. Such a long time till daylight—
"Don't be frightened, either one of you."
Her reassurance included Andy Stevanic, who was sitting bolt upright on his spruce-bough pallet and looking as if his world was just about to end. "Babies have a habit of saying when they want to be born, and yours has decided to be a pioneer."
Andy Stevanic looked as if he would much rather Baby had chosen to be a pantywaist and be born in a hospital. He wobbled to his feet, managed to navigate the few feet to his wife's side. "Jan-Doreen, honey—"
>
"Andy!" She grabbed his hand and held on tight.
The cramping pain was short and light and Sarah, her hand on Jan-Doreen's tensed abdomen, could feel it subsiding, the abdominal muscles relaxing. They might even be the false pains that sometimes send pregnant women rushing to the hospital, she thought. If so, they would pass after a little while without getting worse or closer together. If they didn't, if Baby Stevanic was getting ready to arrive—
For the first time Sarah was grateful that babies take their time about getting born. During her student days she had hated o. b. duty: the waiting, the knowing that pain was a part of it; she'd even hated the knowledge that pain was an indication that all was going well, that the body was making the adjustments Nature had designed it to make. Oh, she'd had the patience for o. b., all right. It was the same patience that had made her such a crack surgical nurse, one for whom operating-room tedium or boredom simply did not exist. There she could do something besides wait. A life might depend on her and while there were times, frequent times, she knew, when a mother's or a baby's life depended upon the delivery room nurses, there was, to her, at least, a difference…
Everybody in the tiny cabin was awake now. Though there had been only her own voice and Andy's and Jan-Doreen's since Al had spoken so softly, the very atmosphere was changed. As quiet as before, there was a certain electric quality about the stillness now, as if they were all waiting, counting the minutes until Jan-Doreen's womb would contract again.
"They may be false pains, Jan-Doreen," she reminded the girl. "Remember, your doctor told you about them."
Mrs. Stevanic nodded.
"Even if they aren't, don't be worried or frightened. The plane's First Aid kit is specially stocked for babies. Olive oil, Q-Tips and everything."
"Including a nurse," George Jefferson said, letting them know that he was awake.
Jan-Doreen found a smile. "Oh, I'm not afraid, but I'm an awful coward." Her giggle was a little strained. "That sounds silly, doesn't it?"
"Not to me, it doesn't," Mr. Jefferson told her. "That's me to a gnat's elbow."
Although Sarah had warned him against it, he sat up, swung his legs over the side of his spruce-bough bed. "You want us out of here, Miss Bennett?"
"For a few minutes."
The men trooped outside, Andy Stevanic with them, and Sarah examined her patient. Dilation hadn't begun, and there was no water escaping from the vagina so the bag of waters hadn't broken… and yet, those pains?
Sarah kept her face carefully unworried. Usually labor pains begin several hours after the water breaks, and unless these were false pains—
Oh, God, Sarah thought.
Suppose something is going wrong?
"I feel fine now," Jan-Doreen volunteered.
Straightening, Sarah lied, "You look fine."
"How long will it take?"
Sarah shook her head. "We're going to have to wait first until we know whether you're having false pains or not."
Jan-Doreen Stevanic thought about that for a minute before she said, "I'm not, Sarah. The baby feels-different. I—I think she's turned."
Sarah's heart gave a crazy lurch that put it on a ski slide. "Well, anyhow, we've plenty of time."
Time that would never pass, Sarah was to think more than once as the hours crept toward the late northern dawn. Mrs. Stevanic's pains continued far apart, irregular, relatively weak—but they continued.
Which perhaps was not unusual, Sarah found herself thinking.
After all, it only seemed forever since she'd wakened and had been lying there thinking about Ralph and herself—and Al Malcolm… But shouldn't there be some indication they were subsiding?
She reached back into memory, probing for the answer. Had she read somewhere, or heard in a lecture, of false labor sometimes lasting for days? She knew that some doctors tried to hurry a baby along—Ralph did that, sometimes, for his patients who didn't want to be bothered. Or performed a Caesarian that wasn't really needed—
Wearily, Sarah closed her eyes. Why did she keep thinking of Ralph? Remembering things that made her slightly sick at her stomach. Ralph wouldn't bother with a patient like Jan-Doreen. Andy was an Airman First Class at Ladd and Airmen First Class didn't make Ralph's kind of money— She bit her lip until, startlingly, the salty taste of blood was there.
Beside her on the spruce pallet Mrs. Emlyn stirred restively, but not in her sleep, Sarah knew. Although it had been a long time since one of Jan-Doreen's pains, none of them was sleeping, unless perhaps it was Jan-Doreen. She could tell that from the measured quiet breathing, the too careful turning of a body upon the spruce boughs, that muffled clearing of a throat.
That would be Mr. Jefferson, she thought, tracking the sound across the cabin without opening her eyes. Thank Heaven his temperature still was 101.1.
She had been so afraid that it wouldn't be, so worried about what she would do if it did start to climb, indicating a rapid increase in inflammation, that she'd been ready to agree with Jan-Doreen Stevanic that of course the baby would be born on exactly the day the doctor said he would—and she knew better than that.
How many times had she heard o. b. nurses—Jenny among them—say, "Just let a storm or a change of the moon come along and no matter what the doctor says, look out!"
And what had happened to Jan-Doreen Stevanic was equal to a storm and a change of the moon! For Heaven's sake, it was a wonder she hadn't had that baby before they'd stopped hearing the sound of the plane!
"You asleep, Miss Bennett?" George Jefferson asked in a low tone.
"No."
"Wouldn't it be better if we built a fire in that other cabin and the men went over there?"
"There's no door."
"We can tear up some suitcases and maybe make one." The quickness of his suggestion said he'd thought of that too. "Mine's leather, so are one or two others. We could lace them together with bark, maybe, or something, and make a fairly wind-tight door."
Sarah nodded. She could feel the caressing warmth of the fire, which Mac McDavie had built up again a short time ago, on her face and throat. If Jan-Doreen's labor was the real thing, she was going to need privacy.
"What we need is a grizzly or caribou skin," Mac McDavie said into the lengthening silence. He sat up. "She sleeping?" with a glance at Jan-Doreen.
"I think so."
Nobody said anything. They didn't have to. They were worried too, Sarah knew.
Perhaps not as worried as she and Mrs. Emlyn, who, with their combined nursing knowledge and experience, knew that something was not as it should be. Unless these pains were false ones, of course, she reminded herself. If only the water would break. And normal labor begin.
Then, Sarah thought, she could relax—even though her work would be ahead. At least she would know things were going as they should.
Now—
With the late dawn, Al and Andy Stevanic got busy readying the other cabin, while Mac McDavie took the Magnum and went off in search of game. They needed the cabin anyhow, everyone agreed, and if they were going to spend the winter— George Jefferson had said that, and even Jan-Doreen had laughed.
The laughter echoed hollowly in Sarah's ears. A baby imminent, Mr. Jefferson's appendix, and no food— Maybe it was a good thing they could laugh.
At midmorning she banished Mr. Jefferson and again examined Jan-Doreen, gently palpating the girl's abdomen to feel the baby's position. He seemed to be lying in the right position for birth, and he was kicking like the dickens—
"He's a right active lad," she said.
"Andy wants a girl."
"All right," Sarah corrected herself laughingly, "she's a right active lassie."
Jan-Doreen patted herself. "I wish you'd hurry, Andrea."
"I knew a girl named Andrea once," Mrs. Emlyn said. "She had a voice like a meadowlark on a warm May morning. I hired her to sing in the 'Home, Sweet Home,' " which, Sarah knew by now, was the saloon Mrs. Emlyn (although she wasn't Emlyn until later) opened as soon a
s she'd saved enough of the gold dust miners threw at her feet to hear her sing in other saloons in Dawson, Nome and Fairbanks. "She did too —really packed 'em in, they'd say now—until some Russian count, one of the poor ones who'd come to Alaska to find gold, married her."
"What happened to them?" Jan-Doreen wanted to know. "Did he find his gold, or just his Andrea?"
Mrs. Emlyn sighed. "I don't know. I heard he struck a good claim later, but I never saw them again. I wish I had. I liked Andrea."
"What was she like?"
Sarah left them both enchanted with Mrs. Emlyn's past and went outside. It was still snowing, but not nearly so hard. She could see the rim of mountains into which the river plunged and into which Paul and John Norstead had gone, forever ago. Was it only forty-three hours? Sarah thought, counting them. It seemed longer. But not as long as it would seem to Paul and Mr. Norstead, she told herself. Surely, in forty-three hours, they had found someone.
Probably, even now, they were on their way back, with food and blankets to help them wait out the storm. Knowing Jan-Doreen's condition, they would plan it that way.
Wait for the storm to blow itself out and then a helicopter could land easily in the valley. Or even a cabin plane. A good pilot could. Mr. Rand had.
But suppose Paul and Mr. Norstead hadn't found help? What if they were still wandering, or—
Determinedly, Sarah closed her mind to that haunting spectre.
The cabin in which Al and Andy Stevanic were at work was perhaps thirty feet from theirs. The half a cabin, all that some distant past fire had left standing, and which they were using now for a latrine, was beyond it, nearer the river. It had been the largest of the group, Sarah decided. It would be interesting to know their story, and the story of the ageing, rotting wharves here and toward the other end of the small valley.
There was the falling-in remains of a cabin there too, Al and the others said.
A trading post? they had wondered. Perhaps even an early-day Hudson's Bay Company outpost?
Wings for Nurse Bennett Page 7
