“I hope not.” The words came out too rough and hard-edged, like his thoughts. He took care to modulate his next words. “I don’t think we’re in immediate danger. The wind’s supposed to die at sunset. Night is the best time to work a fire. And it’s only a flare-up, not a breakout. There’s a difference.”
“Both seem equally dangerous at the moment.”
“Watch your step.” He held out his hand, but Lydia waved it off.
“I’m better on my own.” She began to move carefully onto the planks of the bridge. Miguel wondered how long the bridge had stood at this spot. It was still sturdy despite years of weathering and flooding. It had probably been designed and built by the miners to carry the heavy ore wagons down the mountain. Still, he didn’t think he’d trust it to take the weight of a tow truck, even if they could get one up here. Manny’s truck was going to have to go over the side into the dry creek bed. There was no other way around it.
He looked up the overgrown pathway that had once been a street and saw Devon coming toward them. Her arms were around Sylvia’s shoulders. The girl was clutching her distended stomach, her face pale and streaked with tears.
“Oh, dear,” Lydia said under her breath. “It appears Devon was right. She’s in labor.”
“In labor?” Miguel lost a step. Lydia halted and looked back at him over her shoulder.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Damn.”
Jesse trailed a couple of feet behind the women, looking scared, but when he glimpsed Miguel, his shoulders stiffened and his mouth tightened. Great, that was all he needed, Miguel thought. An angry, defiant kid to deal with.
“Sylvia.” Lydia hurried forward to smooth the girl’s dark, tangled hair from her cheek. “Are you all right? Were you injured when the truck went off the bridge?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think she was hurt,” Devon said. “Jesse said the back wheel slid off because he came at the bridge at too sharp an angle, not because he was going too fast.”
“I just hurt so bad here.” She clutched her stomach and moaned. “And my back. The pain is terrible.”
Devon looked first at her grandmother, then directly at Miguel. There was fear in her eyes, but it was buried so deep in the gray depths that he knew he, and probably Lydia, were the only ones who saw it. “We need to get her to the clinic.”
Lydia had detached Sylvia from Devon’s arms and, talking low and soothingly, began to lead her toward the porch of the abandoned hotel. Jesse gave Miguel a sidelong look and followed them.
“She’s in labor. I’m not sure how far along or how fast it’s progressing. She’s too upset to answer my questions with any accuracy. She’s at risk because of her age and lack of prenatal care. Do you understand? We need to get her out of here.”
She didn’t move closer or reach out to touch him, but he wished she had. He wanted to batter down the wall that had grown between them since the night he’d sent her away from him. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her close, keep her safe and soothe her fears. But she didn’t want that, wouldn’t accept it if he tried. He spoke quietly, although the others were too far away to overhear. “We’re not going anywhere, Devon. The fire jumped the road behind me.” He indicated the plumes of smoke now rising above the tree line on the ridge.
She turned her head, her eyes widening. “Oh, God. We’re trapped.”
“We’re fairly safe here, at least for the time being. And there’s always the mine.”
“Oh, no. She’s been through so much. I don’t want Sylvia’s baby to be born in that dark, filthy mine.”
He bent his head toward her so that the brim of his hat shadowed his face. It was as close as he allowed himself to come to touching her. “We may have no choice.”
Devon closed her eyes for a moment. He could see her gathering her composure, searching within herself for strength. “All right. We’re staying here.” She spun on her heel and moved toward the others. “I’ll need my midwife’s box from the back of the truck. And the blankets and flashlight, and even the seat covers if you have time to take them off.” She stopped and turned back to him. “And I suppose you should get my registration…and insurance papers out of the glove box. I mean…in case—”
“I’ll bring your box, and whatever else I can find. I’ve got some emergency equipment in my unit that should help get us through the night.”
Devon looked up at the sun, now shrouded in smoke. It was hanging just above the ridge line, ready to drop out of sight. Night would soon follow. “I’d forgotten what time it was. I’ll need light…and…some way to keep the baby warm.”
He chuckled, a dry croaking noise that didn’t sound much like a laugh even to him. “We’ll build a fire.”
“I suppose we’ll have to. In the truck Jesse and the girls had a couple of blankets and an old…”
“Granddad’s old mattress. And his lawn chairs?”
She didn’t look away, but her chin came up just a fraction of an inch. “Yes. It’s all still in their truck. In the barn.”
“I know where it is. It’ll come in handy. But first I’m going to do my best to get our vehicles across the bridge. I’ll take Jesse with me and between the two of us, we might be able to heave Manny’s pickup over the side and drive the others up here. I’m not looking forward to going to the city council and asking for a new truck because mine went up in smoke.”
“I can see where that would be a little awkward.” She wrinkled her nose and gave a small smile.
He straightened his hat, smiling back. “I wouldn’t put it past them to take it out of my paycheck.”
Lydia had settled Sylvia on the hotel steps. She was leaning against one of the listing porch posts, moaning in pain. Devon’s steps faltered once more. She turned to him. Now tears glistened in her eyes. “You’re certain there’s no way out? A helicopter?”
“They’re all tied up working the fire. If we had radio contact, we might get one up here from Taos, but we don’t.”
She pulled in a deep breath as though absorbing a blow.
“Devon.” This time he did touch her, just a quick brush of his fingertip across her cheek. “You’re good. You can do this.”
She turned her head toward his caress, a movement so slight it might have been just his wishful thinking. “Can I? I’m not so sure.”
Devon knelt on the top step of the hotel porch. The wood was sun-warmed and scoured smooth from years of wind and snow. “Sylvia,” she said softly but firmly, tugging gently at the sobbing girl’s clenched hands. Sylvia raised her head. “We can’t leave this place, perhaps for many hours. Do you understand?”
Sylvia sucked in her breath on a sob. “Sí.”
“It’s possible your baby will be born here. On the mountain.”
“No.” The word was a wail of despair. “No, Devon, please. I want to go to the clinic. To our cabin. Anywhere but here. I hate this place.”
“She’s right,” Jesse said, bending forward, looking almost as miserable and frightened as his sister. “She can’t have her baby here. She needs to be at the hospital. Or the clinic.”
Devon felt tears sting her eyes again, but she held them back, just as she had when Miguel touched her and the urge to throw herself into his arms and sob out her fear and uncertainty had been almost more than she could bear.
“Women have been having babies outside for thousands of years,” Lydia said calmly.
Miguel leaned over and smoothed a big hand over Sylvia’s hair. She looked up at him from wounded eyes. “It will be okay, Sylvia. You’re in good hands. You’ll do fine.”
Another hiccuping sob stole her words, but she nodded. Devon began to croon, speaking softly, encouraging Sylvia to watch her mouth and try to breathe as she did. The girl gripped Devon’s hands so hard Devon almost cried out in pain herself, but finally Sylvia did as Devon instructed, and eventually the contraction passed, leaving her limp and gasping.
Devon realized that she and her grandmother
were alone with the girl. She looked up to see Miguel and Jesse just disappearing into the trees that bordered the creek. She looked back at Lydia.
“Three minutes,” Lydia said as the contraction eased. “Let’s move. We might find someplace more pleasant for Sylvia to labor.”
Devon stayed where she was for a moment, her insides knotted with fear. She couldn’t do this. Not alone, not even with Lydia, out here so far from The Birth Place and Arroyo County Hospital. She wasn’t the same kind of midwife her grandmother was, that Hope and Gina were. She needed the reassurance of fetal monitors and medical backup. She didn’t have the necessary instincts.
“Devon.” Lydia’s voice was firm. “This is what we are. This is what we do. It is woman at her most powerful and her most vulnerable. She needs you to guide her through. And you will.”
“How?”
“Stop thinking so much, my dear. Listen to your heart, trust your hands. You are good. Very good. You have the instincts and the compassion—let them guide you.”
“OKAY. We’ve got this baby jacked up as high as it will go. Now. On the count of three, start rocking.” Miguel had taken everything of any value from Manny’s old truck before affixing the jack to the undercarriage where he figured it would give him the best leverage. Jesse didn’t obey. He just stood with his hands balled into fists.
He’d been helpful enough so far, but now that it was actually time to dump the truck over the edge, he’d lost his nerve.
“Isn’t there some other way?” he asked for about the tenth time.
Miguel hung on to his patience. He pushed his hat back on his head and looked at the kid. “We need the other vehicles up there. It’s too big a gamble to leave them here for the fire to get.”
“How will I pay him for it?” Jesse asked, his voice cracking, betraying the youth behind the macho facade.
“I don’t know.” Miguel wiped his hands together. “Is that what you’re worried about? Compensating the old man?”
Jesse held his gaze for a moment, then looked down. “Yeah. He loves that damn old truck.”
“Aren’t you worried about being in trouble for stealing it in the first place?”
“I didn’t steal it.” He flushed. “I borrowed it.”
“I’ll have to hear that from Manny.” No reason to bring up the underage driving. The kid was miserable enough.
“Are you going to turn me in to la migra?”
Miguel braced both hands against the truck. He turned his head and looked at the kid. He was wearing sunglasses and the boy was squinting against the sun. He outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. He was a lawman with all the power of New Mexico state law behind him, but Jesse didn’t flinch or look away.
He was an officer of the law, but he was also a human being. “No,” he said.
“What if Manny…? What if he…?” Jesse jerked his thumb toward the truck.
“We’ll deal with that when it happens. But right now it doesn’t make any difference how it got here. It’s a hazard to health and safety and it’s got to go. Now push.”
Jesse braced his arms alongside Miguel. “Are you doing this because of her? Devon?”
Miguel stared at the faded green paint of the truck cab. Off in the distance he could hear a helicopter’s rotors beating the air. “What makes you think that?”
“’Cause you’re a good cop. Manny says so. You wouldn’t go against the law just for me and my sisters. You’re doing it because of Devon. I see the way you look at her. She looks at you the same way.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Now start rocking this old crate. One. Two. Three.”
Jesse pushed, but he wasn’t about to hold his tongue. “You love her. And I think she loves you, too.”
His tone implied he didn’t have the foggiest idea why, though. Miguel shook his head. Were his feelings so obvious that even a fifteen-year-old could see how much in love with Devon he was? It seemed they were. Maybe he ought to ask Jesse for his opinion on what to do to win her back. He was striking out big time on his own.
“Keep your opinions to yourself or I just might change my mind about turning you in.” Miguel took a deep breath. Manny’s truck had been made before Detroit started using aluminum and plastic, instead of steel. It was heavier than hell. He dug in his heels. “No more analyzing my love life,” he puffed. “She’s rockin’ pretty good. On the count of three. Push.”
For a long few seconds the old truck teetered on the brink, threatening to slam back down on three wheels, then a last straining push sent it over with a crash that echoed off the rock walls for a full thirty seconds. They stood, breathing heavily, looking down at the exposed undercarriage with its slowly rotating wheels.
“I’m in big trouble,” Jesse said mournfully.
“We’ll both be in trouble if we don’t get these other two cars up to where the women are.”
“Okay.” Jesse took off at a trot, then looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll drive the Blazer. You go first.”
Miguel swallowed a grin. The kid had guts. He’d make a good Marine one day, if he ever got his green card. He didn’t even want to think of the red tape and strings he’d have to pull to keep the three of them—no, in a couple of hours it would be the four of them—in the country, but he was damned well going to yank on every one of them. For his sake and Devon’s, as well as theirs.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DARKNESS CAME EARLY, because the smoke blocked the last of the sunlight. Flames danced along the ridge, here and there illuminating the smoke from below, while untroubled by the fire on a mountaintop in New Mexico, the moon and stars shone above. Jesse and Miguel had gone to the disabled pickup and gathered the camping equipment the kids had scrounged during their stay in the mine. They’d taken it to the small spring-fed grotto above the town where the women were.
“We found it when we stayed here,” Sylvia explained while resting between contractions. She was reclining on the old mattress that Jesse had “scavenged” from Daniel’s place and Miguel had wedged against a boulder. Devon had covered it with a waterproof sheet from her midwife box, then added one of the thin cotton blankets she kept in a storage container in the back of the Blazer. “It’s where we got our water,” she went on. Suddenly she began to breathe heavily again. Devon knelt beside her and held out her hands for Sylvia to clutch. When the contraction was over, she said, “It’s clean, not like the mine, or the buildings of the town.”
“I never knew it was here,” Devon said. “I don’t think Miguel did, either, and he used to come here a lot when he was a boy.”
The little grotto was pleasant and green, open to the sun, with thick grass, nourished by the life-giving moisture of the spring as it bubbled up out of the rocks before seeping back into the stony ground. The space wasn’t much larger than a big room. The rocks that sheltered it from view were smooth and sun-warmed, and would hold that warmth well into the cool of the night.
Miguel and Jesse fashioned a curtain of sorts for Sylvia’s privacy out of some lengths of old pipe and the blankets that Miguel kept in his emergency supplies. Along with the cotton blankets Devon carried with her, and the ones that were among Jesse and Sylvia’s belongings, they would be comfortable enough during the chill of the mountain night.
And they would be staying the night. Miguel had finally made contact with both the firefighting crew and the police dispatcher after he and Jesse drove the vehicles onto the open ground near the mine entrance. The flare-up was contained, but the road was blocked between Silverton and his grandfather’s place, and it would be morning before bulldozers could be spared to clear it.
“Devon,” Lydia said, “I’m going to send Miguel back here to help you while I warm a couple of blankets beside the fire.” She’d been sitting half behind, half beside Sylvia on the mattress supporting her as she labored, periodically massaging her neck. It was fully dark now, and the temperature was falling quickly.
The smell of smoke in the air was strong,
not because the fire was coming closer, Devon had assured Sylvia over and over again, but because the air was heavier, holding it closer to the ground. Off in the distance now and then they could hear the roar of chain saws and the growl of powerful engines as the fire crews worked their way closer to the little valley.
“She’s fully dilated,” Devon said to her grandmother. “The baby’s moved well down in the birth canal.” Because the temperature was dropping, Devon had only removed Sylvia’s ruined panties. They’d found an old sweater in the truck and put that on her for extra warmth.
“I know. That’s why we need the warming blankets ready,” Lydia reminded her.
Devon managed a smile. “No microwave or autoclave to do the job out here.”
“I’ll hold them close to the fire and then fold them over on themselves. It’ll work fine, you’ll see. We can do our work without those things just as midwives have for hundreds of years.”
Oddly enough Devon agreed with her grandmother. Something had changed inside her over the past two or three hours. Always before, she’d felt comforted by the beeps and whooshing sounds of monitors and automatic blood-pressure cuffs, the ringing of phones, the calls of nurses moving up and down the halls, the background noises of a busy hospital obstetrics department. Now she found herself welcoming the silence. She was more than ever aware of the laboring mother, attuned to the changes in Sylvia’s breathing patterns, the building of the urge to push that she needed to talk her out of until the time was right. Her sense of touch seemed more finely honed as she palpated the distended uterus, her hearing more acute as she listened for any change in the rhythm or strength of the baby’s heartbeat as the contractions ebbed and flowed. This was right and natural, and for the first time she understood fully what Lydia had always known. She shouldn’t try to control the power of the birth force, but let it work through her for the benefit of mother and child.
“You’re doing fine, Sylvia,” she crooned, bracing the girl’s knees as she rocked through another wave of pain.
“I’m not,” Sylvia whimpered. “I’m going to die. And there’s no priest.”
The Midwife and the Lawman Page 21
